Fears are growing for a significant number of jobs at major Waterford employer Bausch & Lomb where all workers have been summoned to meetings with management tomorrow afternoon.
The contact lens manufacturer, with 1,400 staff in Waterford, is not only the largest employer in Waterford but one of the biggest in the south east region.
Today, management were remaining tight-lipped on the nature of the scheduled meetings with staff – taking place in three separate sessions from lunchtime tomorrow — other than to say they intended to meet with all their workers to update them “on developments in the business”.
All other stakeholders including the media, they said, would be briefed after the employees.
At present, the 1,400 staff at the eyecare plant are on short-time working following another announcement back in January. Since early February, they’ve been taking unpaid leave of one week per month, a situation they were told was likely to remain in place for six months but would be reviewed on an ongoing basis.
The short-time working was introduced, the company said at the time, in response to the state of the global economy. A spokesman said it was prudent not to unnecessarily build high inventory levels of product without being certain of what impact the economic downturn might have on consumer purchase decisions.
The management said they were working closely with employees and the social partners to find solutions to meet the current challenges.
The Waterford plant, which opened in 1981, was something of a pioneering project for Bausch & Lomb in that it was the first overseas contact lens manufacturing facility. Bausch & Lomb is one of the world’s leading suppliers of eye health products. The Waterford operation started on the industrial estate with just a couple of hundred employees.