éirígí Tir Chonaill

Gallaghers Job Losses will Lead to Fresh Wave of Emigration

01/02/2011

The socialist republican party éirígí has condemned the owners and management at Gallaghers Bakery in Ardara, county Donegal, following the announcement of the loss of 124 jobs with the remaining 65 jobs also at risk. Party spokesperson for Tír Chonaill Micheál Cholm Mac Giolla Easbuig said the job losses would devastate the economy locally and lead to a fresh wave of emigration from the county.

Gallaghers bakery Ardara

The job losses come as the parent company Aryzta, which also owns the Cuisine de France brand, have decided to shut down their frozen bread production line at the Ardara bakery and move it to Dublin.

Mac Giolla Easbuig said: “These job cuts have been imposed, not to protect the company, but to maximise and increase the profits for the shareholders. It is just the latest in a long line of examples of the greed and callousness with which multi-national companies operate. They amass vast profits created by the labour of their employees, who are then cast aside as expendable commodities once the multi-national decides they can secure a few extra euros profit for themselves somewhere else.

“The job losses are a devastating blow to Ardara and the entire south west Donegal region. This is a region that is already reeling as a result of mass unemployment and forced emigration, something we were led to believe was a thing of the past. Workers and their families who are already suffering hardship as a result of the savage cutbacks imposed by Fianna Fáil and the Green party in recent years, are now being thrown on the scrapheap with no opportunities for employment in the region. The end result will be ever lengthening dole queues and a fresh wave of emigration from the county.”

Responding to the manner in which workers were informed of the job losses, Mac Giolla Easbuig said: “The contempt with which the owners and management treated their workers is astonishing. Workers were informed by journalists outside the plant as to how their jobs were going to be dealt with. This is disgraceful behaviour and exposes the callousness of the company who care nothing about the impact their decisions will have on the very people who have created their wealth for them.”

He concluded: “The decision by management not to take questions from the assembled workers and to only talk to them individually is an attempt at the age-old tactic of trying to divide and weaken the workers resolve. It is now essential that the workers, those who have lost their jobs and those whose jobs are under threat, unite and organise to protect their rights and that of their families and wider community.”