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."
Shorter commute (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose it is only reasonable. Now all these Poles who already work there will have much a much shorter commute. Good for them.
Not the first time .. won't be the last (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's fine (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:5, Interesting)
You say "destroy national sovereignty" (and all of the restrictions therein) like it's a bad thing.
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:2, Interesting)
If you're speaking in English, call it Ireland.
If you're speaking in Irish, call it Eire.
Don't mix and match in what was probably an attempt to sound intelligent and learned.
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:1, Interesting)
This is what happens when capital and goods can freely cross borders but people can't.
Erm, in the EU they can. We've got over ten thousand Polish people working here (Netherlands) and if you had walked in a temp agency office last year, you could have gotten a job in Ireland as well (IBM was seeking a lot of people for their customer support back then).
Chasing jobs to Poland doesn't make sense, that's all. Poor pay, poor work environment, insane hours, etc. I've spoken to a few people who quit working in polish factories of large Western corporations because even for Polish standards, it sucked.
Re:I don't care who slaps together my inspiron (Score:3, Interesting)
How many times have you had to clarify something, three times, to the person on the other end, and after that, are still unsure if they have a clue what you want?
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Make 'em pay (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you. Waving your hands at "Chinese slave labor" as a way to dismiss competition really grates at this point. Xenophobes: would you at least get your anti-China biases into the 21st century? Ain't slave labor at all. Employment in China is overwhelmingly voluntary, with wages set by more or less the same market forces as ours in the West.
Chinese WANT manufacturing jobs because they're EASIER and pay BETTER than the farm alternatives. Time to step out of the 1980s, guys. If you want to complain about Chinese, the current fashion is to rail against "Mercantilism". Read up on it and get back to us after that. Christ.
Honey (Score:1, Interesting)
Have a look at this: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/honey/ [nwsource.com]
Do you think China has come clean on this because of their own will?
I'm surprised the Chinese are still making honey. They have managed to wipe out several species of pollinators over vast sections of their country by grossly overusing pesticides. Uncontrolled industrial pollution didn't help either. There are places in China where farmers have to pollinate fruit trees with paint brushes. To be fair to the Chinese the USA is fast on it's way to suffering the same fate [wikipedia.org] for a lot of the same reasons. Neither government seems to care.
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:willingness to relocate (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure the government knew this, but everyone smart working in tech did.
I'd say that the government put it on their "let's not think about that" list and concentrated on making money before the bubble burst.
Democratic Deficit (Score:3, Interesting)
If the voters in the USA had had to vote yes in each State under plebiscite to amend the US constitution *or* to agree to accept new member States then I doubt it would have grown much.
And the USA did not have European conservatives fronting the funding for proxy anti-Federalism parties within the USA.
Re:Unskilled laborers act as a warning to the youn (Score:4, Interesting)
So let's have the government hold a gun to your head, take the fruits of your labour and distribute them to unskilled labourers. That should be okay, since life's a bitch and you might have better luck next reincarnation, right ?
Or we could try to make the life a little less of a bitch to everyone, including those unskilled labourers.
The fair consequence of being an arrogant jerk is to get whatever fate you callously wished upon those you considered lesser beings.