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TRADE union leaders in Northern Ireland condemned Michelin bosses and unionist politicians following yesterday’s announcement that 860 jobs will be lost in Ballymena when a tyre factory closes.
The company announced that it would “run down” and shut its factory in the County Antrim town by mid-2018 as part of a restructuring plan that will also see investment in its facilities in Dundee and Stoke-on-Trent.
The announcement comes a year after another major local employer, the JTI Gallagher tobacco factory, announced plans to close its operation in the town by 2017, with the loss of 877 jobs.
Management at the lorry tyre factory, which opened in 1969, warned for a number of years that high energy costs were making production increasingly unsustainable.
A company statement claimed that competition from Asia had created overcapacity, adding that other European plants performed better than Ballymena.
But unions and the Communist Party of Ireland blamed the Stormont government for the devastating blow to the community.
Unite regional co-ordinating officer Davy Thompson said: “Ministerial inaction has resulted in a situation where high energy costs have left the Ballymena plant having the second-lowest operating efficiency and now facing closure.”
He said an extra 500 contractors and many more in the wider economy in Northern Ireland also faced redundancy, calling the decision a “cruel blow” just before Christmas.
Irish Congress of Trade Unions assistant general secretary Peter Bunting said he had raised the threat to jobs with Democratic Unionist Party members of the Stormont assembly over the summer.
“And yet nothing was done to avert this catastrophe for the 860 workers in Michelin, the 500 contractors and the wider economy of Ballymena, already reeling after over 1,000 jobs lost with the shifting of JTI tobacco to eastern Europe,” he said.
Belfast TUC vice-chair Kerry Fleck pointed out that Michelin had received £2.7 million in public funds from Invest NI in 2004 on the assurance that jobs would be safeguarded.
“Have Michelin succeeded in getting an even more lucrative welfare package in Dundee and Stoke-on-Trent, as they engage in the normal transnational contribution to the race to the bottom?” she asked.
