The Government was urged yesterday by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) to "get real" about protecting manufacturing jobs. Following a meeting of its executive council, Congress claimed that public policy towards manufacturing had become "too fatalistic".
It described Tuesday, when more 600 jobs were lost in four plant closures in the Republic and the North, as a "black day for workers".
Mr David Begg, ICTU's general secretary, said the implications of globalisation had hardly come as a surprise to anyone.
The movement by employers of labour-intensive manufacturing jobs to low-cost regions was a phenomenon affecting all industrialised countries.
"We also know the solution to the problem but we need to get real about doing something towards implementing it," he said.
Mr Begg said both the Enterprise Strategy Group report published last year, and the European Task Force on Employment chaired by Mr Wim Kok, had identified skills enhancement as the appropriate response to the problem.
But while there was general agreement about this approach in principle, there was less evidence of initiatives to put it into practice. Most of the emphasis to date had been on producing graduates to enhance the quality of the labour supply, Mr Begg said.
However, this would not help the existing workforce at risk.
Mr Pat Delaney, director of the Small Firms' Association, said further job losses were inevitable unless "fundamental flaws" in the State's business model were addressed.
