Dell is the latest "technology" company to announce layoffs. There are fears that they could lay off up to 400 employees in the Irish based manufacturing and support offices in Limerick and Dublin. There’s some spin going on this afternoon, namely that 400 employees won’t be laid off. Instead, it’s likely that contractors won’t have their contracts renewed. They just don’t count. Grrr! Back in early 2002, I heard that Dell were recruiting for people in Eastern Europe for a new plant that would be built there. Their new Polish plant is actually bigger than the Irish plant. There cannot be justification for both plants being in operation unless Dell have monstrous increases in orders. Also, a Polish employee’s salary is 1/3 of what an Irish employee would expect. We can expect more job losses here … or should I rephrase that as natural losses via contracts not being renewed 😉 This trend of Eastern Europe taking jobs is set to continue beyond Dell.
I also noticed that there was a pretty sudden drop in the amount of contract work out there. There’s loads of guff about there being huge amounts of IT jobs being open. I’ve never believed that stuff … we used to hear the same bluffing back in 2001/2002 when the IT job market went to the wall.
There are some other bad signs too … unemployment numbers are up, the Central Statistics Office and AIB are saying estimates for next year are down and the construction industry (which is driving the Irish economy) is expecting huge job losses.
My advice: Batten down the hatches because my dodgy knee feels like there’s a storm on the way.