US pharmaceutical firm Wyeth is to cut 150 jobs in Kildare while Waterford Crystal is to seek a further 280 redundancies at its Waterford plant, ending most manufacturing after 61 years.
About 150 jobs, including 50 temporary positions, are being lost at Wyeth Medica Ireland in Newbridge, Co. Kildare, it was announced Tuesday afternoon.
The pharmaceutical company, which employs over 3,000 people at five different locations around the country, is to reduce job numbers at its Newbridge site to 1,050.
Wyeth has blamed lower product volumes, and the need to reduce costs as the reason behind the job losses.
The company also has facilities in Limerick, Sligo, and in Ballycoolin and Clondalkin in Dublin.
In Waterford, the trade union Unite said that Waterford Crystal is to seeking a further 280 redundancies from its plant at Kilbarry on the outskirts of the city.
The job cuts would leave about 70 manufacturing jobs at the Kilbarry plant, while 55 employees will be employed in the Waterford Crystal tourist visitor’s centre at Kilbarry.
In November 2007, 490 job cuts were announced.
Last May , a request for a State guarantee on a €39m loan was rejected by the Government, while the company had debts in excess of €470 million and a significant deficit in its pension fund.
Waterford Wedgwood, the parent company, claimed that Government assistance would be akin to the public bailouts of Northern Rock in Britain, Bear Stearns in the US and the rescue in the 1980s of Insurance Corporation of Ireland.
Waterford Crystal employed 3,200 people in Ireland, at its high point in the 1970's.
Glass making in Waterford dates from 1783 and in 1947, Czech immigrant Charles Bacik, grandfather of Irish Senator Ivana Bacik, opened a glass works in the city because of the reputation of the original glassware.
In the early 1950s, the operation was acquired by the Irish Glass Bottle company, which was controlled by the McGrath family who also operated the Irish Sweepstakes.
John Foley, chief of the Waterford Crystal unit, said in 2007 that the group employs 1,300 staff in Indonesia for the same wage costs as 90 staff in Britain, itself a cheaper labour market than Ireland.
