YOUGHAL Carpet Yarns (CYC) has issued redundancy notices to its 320 employees, following their failure to vote on new rationalisation plans for the company's plant near Cobh. The notices take effect from this week for some workers.
However many CYC employees have over 15 years service, and entitled to eight weeks notice. The company is proposing to pay only the minimum statutory entitlements.
Last night the SIPTU regional secretary, Mr John McDonnell, appealed to the company to allow more time for negotiations.
The plant at Killaclyne has changed hands twice since 1990 and gone through two rationalisation programmes. It is currently owned by Carpets International, a US-based company, and another US firm, Couristan, is interested in acquiring it.
However, the takeover is conditional on further radical restructuring of the workforce, including .132 redundancies. It is understood that a major stumbling block in the way of acceptance of the new proposals is that the company wants the redundancies to be on a "first in, last out" basis, while SIPTU and the other unions in the plant want the redundancies to be voluntary. The other unions are Mandate, MSF, the AEEU and the TEEU.