MANAGEMENT AT Bausch and Lomb in Waterford yesterday evening met workers following local speculation that the company would be seeking more than 100 redundancies at the plant.
A series of meetings took place at the plant yesterday, four months after the company announced it was seeking 195 voluntary redundancies from its 1,400-strong workforce.
Bausch and Lomb makes contact lenses and other eye healthcare products and is the biggest employer in Waterford and one of the biggest in the southeast.
Management met union representatives at 4.30pm yesterday, while the first meeting with workers got under way about one hour later.
Sources at the plant yesterday said that an announcement was “expected tomorrow”, and while most workers expected more than 100 voluntary redundancies, one source said “the rumour doing the rounds is over 200 [voluntary redundancies]”.
One worker yesterday said that “more people wanted the redundancies in March than were available” at that time.
Following the company’s announcement in March, a spokesman said: “Bausch and Lomb remains committed to maintaining its facility in Waterford as a centre of excellence, but in order to ensure this, inefficiencies must be completely eliminated.”
The company has not yet made any comment about yesterday’s meetings.
The Waterford plant opened in 1981 and was the first overseas contact lens manufacturing facility for the company.
Workers at the company were placed on short- time working in February and while this was expected to remain in place for six months, it was cancelled in May.
Management said the decision to suspend short-time working was taken in response to an increase in orders for lenses manufactured at Waterford, in addition to the implementation of other cost-saving measures, such as the voluntary redundancy package.