WORKERS STAGING a sit-in at the showcase Waterford Crystal Gallery yesterday challenged visiting politicians about the Government’s handling of the crisis which has seen production come to a halt.
About 150 workers gathered at the showroom yesterday, the fourth day of the occupation, while some challenged Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism Martin Cullen who was there in relation to the issue. The workers on Sunday evening voted in favour of continuing the occupation.
Minister Cullen yesterday said he could understand why the occupation happened.
“I think the workers and everybody . . . we’d all prefer if it hadn’t happened. But we are where we are.”
“But I’m here this morning and I have to say there’s a sense of calm about the place and I think that’s a good thing.”
However, the Minister was challenged by workers upon leaving the plant.
One man wanted to know what the Minister meant when he said things were better for them than they had been:
“You said that we were better off . . . that ‘you’re better today’.
“I have no job this morning, after 42 years, and you’re telling me I’m better off . . . thanks very much.”
Mr Cullen said he was referring to the various proposals to keep the company alive and it was the company’s “prospects” that were better than on Friday.
Meanwhile, TD for Carlow-Kilkenny, deputy Bobby Aylward, Waterford Deputy Brendan Kenneally and Waterford City councillor Tom Murphy, all Fianna Fáil, also visited the plant yesterday.
Mr Aylward was also challenged by workers as he left the gallery yesterday.
“The people in the street; they have enough of these people who are getting away with millions, right?,” asked one worker.
The man, who did not wish to be named, added: “Like, there are ordinary citizens in this country who invested in this place . . . where is their money now? They expected a small little dividend from it.”
Workers who were not served with letters informing them that their jobs would be terminated, turned up for work yesterday.
Some of these workers, who have been given clearance to work from their union Unite, ensured that the furnace continued to function yesterday. Tending to the furnace at the Kilbarry plant is a continuous, “non-stop” process.
One former furnace operative, Bobby Gaulle, who worked at the plant for 37 years and took redundancy in November, said he is still owed “about €60,000”.
Mr Gaulle said that were the furnace to cease operating, it would cost “in the region of somewhere between” €8,000 to €11,000 to get it operational again.
“What happens is that the material hardens and the sides of the furnace would cave in.
“The way furnaces are built, they are kept together with heat. If you reduce the heat or knock off the heat she caves in on herself.
“And the stuff inside then just goes hard. Even to repair it would cost up to three million.” Throughout yesterday, John Foley, a former chief executive of Waterford Crystal, engaged in talks with the receiver of the company, David Carson, and later with union officials at Kilbarry.
Unite’s Irish Regional Secretary Jimmy Kelly last night said that until yesterday morning, the receiver had resisted allowing Mr Foley into the plant to “look at the books”.
Speaking from the visitors centre at Waterford Crystal yesterday morning, MEP for Munster, Kathy Sinnott, said all TDs, MEPs and Senators should take a 20 per cent pay cut on their wages and “share the pain of these difficult times with our constituents”.