Dell Closes Ireland Plant; 2nd Largest Employer

Wide Angle writes in with a PBS report on tough economic news from Ireland: Dell announced that it will relocate its manufacturing plant in Limerick, Ireland to Lodz, Poland. "Dell's announcement... is a severe blow to the Irish economy, which has been hit hard and fast by the global economic crisis. Dell is Ireland's second-largest corporate employer and the country's largest exporter. Nineteen hundred shift workers will lose their jobs. ...Dell's closing is not a result of the economic downturn, but of a pattern all too familiar in the United States — corporations' perennial search for cheaper labor. Since 2000 several companies, such as Procter & Gamble, Intel, Gateway, and NEC Electronics, have moved manufacturing jobs from Ireland to China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. When Poland joined the European Union in 2004, it became an attractive place for companies to set up manufacturing plants. ... However, Ireland has managed to maintain and attract... 'knowledge-intensive jobs.' Google's European headquarters are based in Dublin, and Facebook announced late last year that they would locate their international headquarters there. But the overall economic picture for Ireland is bleak."

willingness to relocate

Perhaps Eire should have factored in that companies agile and willing enough to relocate once to Ireland would likely be sufficiently agile and willing to move to follow the sun again.

Re:willingness to relocate

Everyone in Eire with half a brain knew this was coming anyway...
Those relatively low tech manufacturing jobs were only ever going to be useful as a means of bootstrapping ourselves into a properly high tech economy.
Not sure the government knew this, but everyone smart working in tech did.

Re:willingness to relocate

Agreed. The Dutch voted against the constitution the first time (which was a surprise to the government, especially since they invested million in a semi-propaganda campaign) and weren't given a vote for the revised treaty because the government feared a rejection again.

Democracy 2.0. Give people a vote if you think they'll agree with you, take the vote away when you fear disagreement.

Re:willingness to relocate

This is what happens when capital and goods can freely cross borders but people can't. Capital will simply chase poverty in a never ending circle around the globe. When one poor, desperate country starts to get wealthy, corporations will simply move to the next one, and let the first slip back into poverty.

Re:willingness to relocate

This is what happens when capital and goods can freely cross borders but people can't. Capital will simply chase poverty in a never ending circle around the globe. When one poor, desperate country starts to get wealthy, corporations will simply move to the next one, and let the first slip back into poverty.

So what's the solution? If you get rid of the restrictions on people moving you destroy national sovereignty and identity. If you get rid of free trade/adopt protectionism you drag the economy down a few pegs and probably destroy at least as many jobs as you save.

I hate what we've become but I'm at a loss for how to fix it. Ideas?

Re:willingness to relocate

You say "destroy national sovereignty" (and all of the restrictions therein) like it's a bad thing.

Re:willingness to relocate

You say "destroy national sovereignty" (and all of the restrictions therein) like it's a bad thing.

You see restrictions where I see freedoms. Globalization has already created a race to the bottom for labor and environmental standards. Will our freedoms and rights be next in line? Will the United States be forced to adopt European restrictions on free speech [computerworld.com]? Will Europe be forced to adopt Islamic restrictions on free speech [outsidethebeltway.com]? Will the United States, Finland, Switzerland and Norway be forced to adopt stricter gun control laws?

Re:willingness to relocate

This is what happens when capital and goods can freely cross borders but people can't.

Both Eire and Poland are in the EU, free movement of people is guaranteed. If the Dell workers want to keep their jobs they can just move to Lodz.

Re:willingness to relocate

Problem is, the number of poor countries that are stable enough to invest in is not large, and once a country becomes a wealthy, it rarely slides downwards very far. Thus, this should end relatively soon, as soon as corporations run out of countries.

Good for Poland

Poland has very high unemployment rate [boston.com], one of the highest in Europe, and is also one of the poorest countries in Europe [propertywisebulgaria.com].

I realize that this sucks for Ireland but Poland is in far worse shape and needs the jobs just as badly if not more.

Make 'em pay

The fact is, since China has the unfair advantage of near-slave labor, the rest of the world as a whole needs to have stiff import tariffs to equalize this imbalance.

This really shouldn't be completely about the "world economy" and if it can be done cheaper in China, "why not"? It is completely fair to take into account other factors such as China's complete disregard for workers rights and environmental issues, not to mention truth in labeling with regards to all the poisons they put in food products.

Make 'em pay, it's the only way to get their attention.

Less taxes.

The 10 year discount is up. That's why they are moving, and Dell isn't the only corporation doing this. Ireland has a low corporate tax, and discounts it even further for the first 10 years a corporation operates there.

This calls for an Irish Limerick

There once was an old man of Esser,
Whose employment prospects grew lesser and lesser,
It at last grew so small
He had no job skills at all,
And now he's a college professor.

That's fine

That's fine as long as you have a job to pay for it. If all the manufacturing and knowledge based jobs end up in the cheaper locations then can the Western Economies keep going. I know that many economists say that it is the beginning of the service economy, and we can all be rich in the west by buying and providing services for each other but I am rather skeptical. If a whole country consists of PR teams, lawyers, restaurant owners and so on can they really "generate" enough money to be able to buy their "real" things from cheap overseas sources?

Re:That's fine

The distinction between "manufacturing" and "service" jobs is somewhat artificial. Every step in the manufacturing process is a service. Finding raw materials is a service. Getting them out of the ground is a service. Refining them is a service. Transporting them from place to place is a service. Assembling them together into a finished product is a service. Making the machines to do so is a service. All of these are services; "manufacturing" is simply a convenient shorthand to describe those services whose end result is an assembled physical product, as opposed to the many other services whose end result is not.

Thus, the fact that we have a service-based economy is not in and of itself a problem, provided that our services are sufficiently valued in world markets to purchase the manufactured goods we need as well as the other necessities and wants of life. It is a problem ONLY if our skills, or the products that are created using those skills, are no longer sufficiently valuable to earn us the kind of living we want, in which case, the obvious remedy (which scales up) is to learn new skills.

Re:That's fine

I guess one of the criticisms leveled at geeks is that they think they know everything...

So in that spirit, here's my "expert" analysis of world economic matters !

Isn't manufacturing computers just a service ? If you were Martha Stuart, you'd just get up early and grind-up the sand from the beach yourself to make your own CPU.

To my mind there's scant economic difference between a janatorial service and a manufacturing "service".

Furthermore; a janitor's job has to remain local and the janitor must be retained to keep the place sparkly, as opposed to a one-time manufacturing process for a durable item.

Janitors are an extremely high-value service, that's why so many of us have a personal computer built for us but don't have our houses cleaned for us.

Re:I don't care who slaps together my inspiron

Having spent over an hour and a half on the phone with Dell Canada on Monday just to get a quote (and a quote for twenty computers I might add), I'd say there is such a thing as "too cheap".

Re:Numbers seem odd

The population of Ireland is somewhere around 6 million - what does every *else* do there?

Farm potatoes and brew Guinness.

Re:Numbers seem odd

Farm potatoes and drink Guinness.

There. Fixed it for ya.

Re:Numbers seem odd

Actually they're not the second-largest corporate employer. That seems to be an incorrect inference on the part of the Washington Post, because the Dell Ireland website claims they're the second-largest *corporation*.. and the metric for that could easily be something other than employees, i.e. revenue. Of course, 1900 people isn't their entire Irish workforce either.

There are _definitely_ larger employers in Ireland. 1900 people at a single factory is enough to sustain a mid sized factory town of about 30,000 people (1/3 of Limerick). I know because I've lived in one. And I'm certain Ireland has a handful of towns that size and larger.

But just to grab some random Irish companies out of a hat and look them up: Eircom has 6,500 employees. Bank of Ireland has 16,026.

Re:The Race to the Bottom

We the consumer, demand cheaper priced products, why should we be surprised when manufacturers look for methods of reducing their costs? You don't exactly see them firing up manufacturing plants in Tokyo or Manhattan.

Corporations also demand more profit. Reducing costs helps that bottom line. Whether moving manufactoring locations ends up positive on that bottom line or not isn't always clear at the outset.

It's a Global Economy, get used to it.

It's been a global economy for decades. That's not the change.

Re:There once was...

There once was a company called Dell,
Who saw their costs starting to swell,
Labor in Lodz
Attracted their jobs,
So they told the Irish, "Go to hell".

Re:There once was...

Dell, as they moved away, laughed,
"To pay your wages we'd be daft."
On pink slips they wrote
A rude little note
"Dude, you're getting the shaft!"

Re:There once was...

Maybe I can help.

The correct pronunciation of the word "Woodge" is something like the Polish pronunciation of "Lodz".

Re:There once was...here are the funny bits:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose dick was so long he could suck it.
While wiping his chin,
He said with a grin,
"If my ear were a cunt, I could fuck it."


--- and here is the extended version of the original ---

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.


part 2:

But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,
The man and the girl with the bucket;
And he said to the man,
He was welcome to Nan,
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.


part 3:

Then the pair followed Pa to Manhasset,
Where he still held the cash as an asset,
But Nan and the man
Stole the money and ran,
And as for the bucket, Manhasset.