The European Commission has announced that the EU's European Globalisation Fund (EGF) will provide €14.8m to match the Irish Government's €8m - - €22.8m in total or €9,500 per head - - to retrain, upskill and offer further educational opportunities to up to 2,400 affected workers who have been made redundant at the Dell computer manufacturing plant at Raheen, Co. Limerick and at ancillary enterprises in the Mid West region. Without begrudging the beneficiaries of the help coming their way, it is relevant to ask if this is another example of official reaction to collective power, which contrasts with individual powerlessness of tens of thousands of others who have lost their jobs.
Minister for Labour Affairs, Dara Calleary, said EGF funding will allow the Government to roll out a range of additional measures to assist affected workers with FÁS, Enterprise Ireland and CEBs (County/City Enterprise Boards), the local VECs and third level institutions in Limerick and the region, offering tailored personalised supports in terms of occupational guidance, jobsearch assistance, training courses, start your own business and entrepreneurship advice and support and accelerated routes into further and third level education.
We said in an article on Friday, that clientism confers an illusion of access to the powerful in Ireland but what counts is money and the collective power of vested interests - - be it farmers, trade unions including the one representing the highest earners - - hospital consultants - - and professional cartels operating in a system with little transparency.
Small company closures seldom get political or mainstream media attention, even though the job losses mount to thousands each month. While ministers claim bragging rights for as little as 10 potential new "high value" jobs, a closure only merits a ministerial statement if it happens in a minister's constituency or the closure is of a plant of a size that would prompt the arrival of a television crew.
Contrast the benefits bestowed through collective power, to the lot of the typical private sector worker, without a pension and exposed to the vagaries of the economic cycle.
Apart from not having a pension, the typical private sector gets basic statutory redundancy when a job is lost - - as with the data on development property transactions, or more accurately the lack of it, relevant data on redundancy is not available as it may shed unwelcome light on the issue.
The closure of a big company where staff are likely to be earning more than the average and in a pension scheme, also prompts a State “task force” - - in Dell's case under the chairmanship of former Kerry Group chief Denis Brosnan - - and on top of that, public money for consultants offering advice on producing CVs, starting a business with special grant funding available from State agencies, together with allocations of places in third level institutions, is provided.
Dell was not unionised but multinationals typically pay up to six weeks' salary per year of service compared with the statutory entitlement of two weeks. Dell workers forced the company to increase the payout cap from 52 to 104 weeks pay and the pay rates in the package, which previously covered only basic pay, were also changed. Workers were paid six weeks' wages for every year of service.
While former Dell workers will benefit from the special official attention, other unemployed workers from Limerick or Raheen may have just got basic redundancy and no special State/EU funded services or access to a third level institution.
Is this a fair system or is it just another of those arrangements in response to collective power like benchmarking, where ministers and central bankers - - they at least knew that there was no justification for it -- and the rest of the public service got a special pay and pension hike, at a cost of billions of euros?
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment says to date there have been 25 applications to the EGF for assistance across the EU. So far 18 have been approved to the value of almost €80m. The total value of aid sought to date under all applications is in excess of €130m.
The Irish application, which may well have been approved because of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty next month, encompasses redundant workers at Dells’s Raheen plant in Co. Limerick and in the following ancillary enterprises: -
