FEARS ARE growing for a significant number of jobs at major Waterford employer Bausch & Lomb where all workers have been summoned to meetings with management this afternoon.
The contact lens manufacturer, with 1,400 staff in Waterford, is not only the largest employer in Waterford, but one of the biggest in the entire southeast region.
Yesterday, management would not comment on the nature of the scheduled meetings with staff which are taking place in three sessions from lunchtime today. However, they did issue a statement saying they intended to meet all workers to update them “on developments in the business”.
All other stakeholders including the media, they added, would be briefed after the employees.
At present, the 1,400 staff at the eyecare plant are on short-time working following another announcement at the factory back in January.
Since early February, workers have been taking unpaid leave of one week per month, a situation they were told was likely to remain in place for the next six months but would be reviewed on a continual basis.
The short-time working was introduced in response to the state of the global economy, the company said.The management said they were working closely with employees and the social partners to find solutions to meet the current challenges.
The workers have been liaising closely with Siptu over the past few weeks since the short-time working was announced.
Siptu branch organiser for Waterford, Marie Butler, said yesterday she was as much in the dark about what is happening now as the workers.She confirmed the union had been asked to attend a meeting with company management at 1pm today.
“I feel that any further comment by Siptu in advance of today’s meeting would be unhelpful to all involved,” she said.
The news of possible job losses at Bausch Lomb came as another major blow to Waterford yesterday, a city that has been hit hard by bad news on the jobs front in recent months.
There is still a large degree of uncertainty about how many jobs will be saved at Waterford Crystal in Kilbarry.
This follows news on Friday that a bid by KPS Capital Partners, a New York-based private equity limited partnership, for several Irish and British assets of Waterford Wedgwood had been successful.
Short-time working is also in place at the Cork Road factory of another big Waterford employer, toy and games manufacturer Hasbro Ireland.
This company, which employs 300 people, announced in January that it was putting its workforce on a three-day week from February 9th until the end of March.
The staff was also asked to take an extra 15 days’ unpaid leave over two months.
The Bausch Lomb plant, which opened in Waterford in 1981, was something of a pioneering project for Bausch Lomb in that it was the first overseas contact lens manufacturing facility. Bausch Lomb is one of the world’s leading suppliers of eye health products.