Dell Closes Ireland Plant; 2nd Largest Employer 494
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."
Re:There once was... (Score:3, Informative)
Being from Nantucket, I don't get the joke. I even read the article (imagine that) to see if there was some reference. In fact, being a native of Nantucket allows me to charge you 50 cents for each use of the word "Nantucket" (it's actually $3000, but we divide the royalties up amongst the entire population -- 50 cents is just my cut). However, if you can pull some strings to get us our own statehood (which we've tried for before) or our own nuclear missile base (from "Boston Legal"), I'll let my 50 cents slide.
Re:There once was... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Make 'em pay (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Make 'em pay (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Yeah! Because stiff tariffs worked out so well [wikipedia.org] in the past.
Re:Not the first time .. won't be the last (Score:2, Informative)
Re:There once was... (Score:2, Informative)
Just for the record, the correct pronunciation of Lodz in Polish is something like Woodge.
Cheers!
Re:Numbers seem odd (Score:3, Informative)
Well the Republic of Ireland is closer to 4 million (the north is part of the UK). There is about 2 million working I believe. 4 million - children - old people easily gives you that.
It says corporate employer so that rules out all public jobs. And in Ireland that means most education and health.
Most major companies would only have one major location in Ireland, so even the big ones are a few thousand. So it is easily believed. You'd only need a 1000 companies employing 2000 people to employ the whole country including the public workers.
Ireland would be the equivalent of a medium metro area in the US. Not many of those have many corporate employers employing more than 5k people I would guess, maybe Detroit?
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:5, Informative)
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:I don't care who slaps together my inspiron (Score:2, Informative)
It's called rural-sourcing, and it's why "import" cars are now made in places like Ohio and Alabama instead of Japan and Germany.
dom
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:4, Informative)
Not to spawn a pointless off-topic flame war or anything, but at least we have a constitution and so the population gets to vote on it. If the Lisbon treaty, which isn't a constitution, were put to a plebiscite throughout Europe Ireland wouldn't be the only ones rejecting it, in fact support for the European project is probably higher in Ireland than anywhere else in Europe.
Anyway, back on topic, it's a shame for the people in Limerick where the plant was sited, however the jobs going are the assembly line jobs, Dells European planning and management structures remain in Ireland for now.
Unemployment in Poland lower than in Ireland (Score:1, Informative)
According to Eurostat unemployment in Poland in November (6.5%) was lower than in Ireland (7.9%).
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
Polish economy has been booming in recent years.
Re:Numbers seem odd (Score:5, Informative)
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:Less taxes. (Score:3, Informative)
The enticement at that point is that it's probably cheaper to stay there than move the entire operation, which means either disrupting shipments for a while or paying for 2 locations for a while. You have to be able to save a significant amount of money elsewhere to justify it. And you have to do either guarantee that savings, or do it in the short run to have it make sense.
Hey guys I am from Poland (Score:3, Informative)
Hey guys I am from Poland and guess what? I can more or less speak english and even know how to post on Slashdot.
And there's more. We do embedded software and hardware here, we know Linux and it's been that way for years already.
So it's not different compared to where you live. And as for dell, easy come easy go. They won't stay here longer than 3-4 years and eventualy will continue moving east.
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:5, Informative)
Oh like citigroup buying a spanish highway construction company with 7bn euros in bailout money from our taxes?
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10450514/1/citi-to-buy-spanish-highway-operator.html?puc=_tscrss [thestreet.com]
Here's the day they got our bailout check. Note the dates:
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2636427520081126 [reuters.com]
Yeap we paid for it. Be pissed, very pissed.
I can't believe regulators aren't all over them for this. What are we paying them for? What good is all this bailout money doing if they are just using it to buy foriegn companies instead of saving the jobs of the people that effing paid for the bailout? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. That bailout money did NOT come from Europe.
Here's the layoff announcement of the US employees:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/154130/citigroup_layoff_could_decimate_it_jobs.html [pcworld.com]
grrr
-Viz
Re:There once was... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Less taxes. (Score:3, Informative)
Great logic there, comrade.
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:3, Informative)
Free movement of goods, money and companies is guaranteed. Free movement of people is certainly not [irishtimes.com].
Re:Not the first time .. won't be the last (Score:2, Informative)
The USA is not much different (Score:3, Informative)
As for Globalization, well USA is the current global top-dog expecting many other parts of the world to behave as it sees fit. We're probably a long way down this track already.
Re:as soon as corporations run out of countries. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:4, Informative)
There is actually a good reason to use the Irish name here: it makes it clear that you refer specifically to the Republic of Ireland, not to the island of Ireland as a whole.
Logistics (Score:1, Informative)
1900 is nothing for Lodz. Lodz's population is something like 700000 with highest unemployment rate among major Polish cities.
Apart from cheaper labour and government grants there is one more important factor - location...
Lodz is on the crossing of freeways (in construction) connecting Western and Eastern Europe and North and South.
Limerick is closer to the UK/France(slightly)/Spain/Portugal - but all the rest is same distance or closer to Lodz (Russia/Germany/Ukraine/Italy(slightly)) With no need to use ships/planes...
Polish transportation companies are much cheaper due to cheaper labor and gas.
At last - Russian wide railtracks end in Poland - eventually Transsiberian Railway can be used to move stuff from China easily...
Once freeways are built and railways improved post-communist Central Europe is very hard to beat on the logistics side...
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:1, Informative)
I'm Irish and I never refer to the country as "Eire", regardless of whether I am trying to distinguish the republic from the island. Please, just call it Ireland, and if you really must distinguish (which usually isn't necessary), use "the Republic of Ireland". It just looks really goofy to use Eire all over, and strictly speaking it should be "in Eireann", you can't say "in Eire".