Dell To Cut Jobs At Irish Facility

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

23 May 2002

Just a matter of days after Dell Computer Corporation announced a significant cost-cutting programme, the firm said it would cut 150 jobs at its major manufacturing facility in Limerick in Ireland. Dell said the voluntary redundancies would apply to all administrative departments and organisational levels at its Limerick operations, which employ almost 4,000 of the company's 5,000 Irish workers. Manufacturing staff in Limerick are unaffected by the announcement.

Workers in Dublin and Wicklow are also unaffected and Dell said that departing Limerick workers will be eligible for six weeks' pay per year of service, extended medical and life cover, plus career counselling and outplacement assistance.

In explaining the lost jobs, Dell said that its Irish manufacturing operations had been consolidated into a single Limerick facility in Raheen and this realignment had resulted in the duplication of some administrative and management roles. Already the Limerick site is Dell's most cost-efficient manufacturing operation worldwide.

In a confidence-building gesture, however, the company said that it has plans to invest another US$20 million in upgrading the custom-built site.

A strong emphasis on cost reduction have led the company to move operations to low-cost environments such as Malaysia and India, but the firm said emphatically last week that it had no plans to pull out of Ireland, while trailing the possibility of job cuts.

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