Bowed heads as bewildered staff file out
Workers at Dell in Cherrywood got on with their lives yesterday as a shadow hung over the Irish operation
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MOST of the shocked 1,500 workers at Dell's Cherrywood facility kept their heads down yesterday evening as they filed out to their cars or boarded the shuttle buses that bring them to the Luas or DART stations.
They had shuffled in and out of the office all day, taking in the April sun to light a cigarette and chat amongst themselves about the news, broken to them at lunchtime, that 200 jobs are to go at the facility.
The 3,000 workers down in Limerick were probably plodding through the same motions, joined in anxiety with those in Dublin about how the IT industry in Ireland, one of the key pistons that powered the now spluttering Celtic Tiger engine, would react to the withdrawal of one of its biggest players.
The Dublin workers who spoke yesterday seemed to contradict themselves, with some saying they expected the cuts to come, but, when they arrived, were like "a bolt from the blue".
"I found out this afternoon at one o'clock," a worker who lost her job in the finance department said. "We kind of saw it coming, but it was still a shock. But I'm relatively happy. I've been here long enough anyway."
Another worker said that although a "lot of people saw it coming, a lot of them in there are still upset".
"I suppose the timing of it came as a shock," one man who lost his job said. "It came quite suddenly. I've been here for five years but these things happen, out of the blue. But, I suppose, it's an opportunity to re-evaluate the way it's going."
The worker, who did not wish to be named, said he was not unduly worried about his financial situation and that his redundancy terms "were pretty standard for an IT company -- about six weeks per year".
Most of the workers just walked on and refused to comment, but there was a recognisable bewilderment in their stares.
Anger seemed to find expression through an anonymous posting on the internet last night, which seemed to defy the carefully stage-managed nature of the day's lay-offs.
The worker started by saying yesterday "was not a fun day", but had harsher words for how his colleagues were let go. "Yes, I do work for Dell . . . as to how they picked the names? Most of us feel it was a random number generator. Sack HR I say."
- Fiach Kelly
