Forty jobs are to be cut at a meat processing plant in County Mayo arising out of the plant’s involvement in the BSE cull which is due to start there next Monday.
SIPTU branch secretary Mr Sean Nolan said the union was told at a meeting today with management at the Dawn Meat Plant in Ballyhaunis, that 40 workers would be surplus to requirement when the cull operation begins. Management have said there is a difficulty in running the culling process and supplying a commercial market under Department of Agriculture restrictions.
Fifty non-nationals including Portugese and Pakistani workers, were told before Christmas that they were no longer needed for work. Mr Nolan said these workers would have been employed on a week-to-week basis.
However 15 workers will be given the opportunity to re-deploy to the company’s sister plant in Ballaghdereen. Mr Nolan said the union would be looking for "extremely generous redundancy packages" for its members.
Speaking to ireland.com after the meeting Mr Nolan said the problem centred around sustaining the plant's commercial base. The plant had hoped to carry out the cull for three days and commercial processes for two days. But according to Mr Nolan management said this was not proving to be a viable option because the consumer market could not be sustained on what was effectively a two-day week.
He added that the cull would probably go on for six months and the plant believed that it made more sense economically to devote their efforts to that.
Mr Nolan said the union had more talks planned with its members and management in the coming days.
In a statement issued today SIPTU said it was increasingly concerned that the proposed culling up upwards of 750,000 cattle will seriously impact on thousands on jobs in the meat industry.
SIPTU's National Industrial Secretary, Mr John Kane said: "By participating in this cull, it appears that workers in the meat industry are being asked to co-operate in the demise of their own jobs."
Meanwhile the first cattle to be slaughtered under the BSE destruction scheme were destroyed today in Freshford, County Kilkenny.
The Minister for Agriculture has said that restoring confidence in the beef market is the most important issue in the immediate future.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs has been briefed by Department of Agriculture officials on the BSE crisis.
Officials said the Department had been completely transparent in its handling of BSE and continued to be. A spokesman said the Department also reiterated its position that testing rather than the purchase for destruction scheme was the preferred option.