Bombardier Inc. is cutting 490 jobs at its operations in Belfast and plans to eliminate an unspecified number of contract positions. The cuts are part of a global restructuring the company announced earlier this month that will see 5,000 jobs eliminated and several non-core assets sold.
“That’s a body blow to all the sites here in Northern Ireland,” said Susan Fitzgerald, a regional co-ordinator for Unite, the union which represents most Bombardier workers in Northern Ireland. Ms. Fitzgerald added that the union was told of the cuts Wednesday morning and that along with the reduction in contract work, “we could be looking far in excess of 500 job losses here, which is obviously a major attack on the work force here.”
She said unions in Britain, Canada and across Europe are banding together to fight Bombardier’s plans, and she did not rule out job action in Northern Ireland. “Our starting point is to fight this,” she said. “I think everything is on the table here in terms of an active response to this.”
In a statement, Bombardier confirmed the job cuts and added: “We acknowledge the impact this will have on our work force and their families, and we continue to explore opportunities to help mitigate the number of compulsory redundancies. However, we need to continue to cut costs and improve the efficiency of our operations to help ensure our long-term competitiveness.”
Bombardier is one of the largest employers in Belfast, and after the cuts, the company’s work force will fall to around 3,200. That’s down from around 5,000 three years ago. The Belfast operations include plants that build wings for the C Series aircraft. That production is supposed to ramp up to 60 per cent of the plant’s current operation, from around 30 per cent today.
The layoffs come at a particularly sensitive time as British Prime Minister Theresa May struggles to win backing for a Brexit deal with the European Union that includes special provisions for Northern Ireland. The withdrawal agreement includes a backstop that would keep the U.K. inside the EU’s customs union for trade in goods and tie Northern Ireland even closer to EU regulations in order to prevent a hard border with Ireland. The backstop has been opposed by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which argues the province will be treated differently than the rest of the country. The DUP draws most of its support from the Protestant community and it fears that a bad Brexit deal could lead to reunification with the Catholic South.
Ms. May has insisted that the backstop will only become necessary if the U.K. and EU cannot reach an agreement on a new trade deal before the end of 2020. The U.K. is set to leave the EU on March 29, and the withdrawal agreement includes a transition period until the end of December, 2020, during which the U.K. will essentially remain within the EU.
A further complication is that Northern Ireland’s assembly has not been sitting for nearly two years because of a series of disagreements between the DUP and the Sinn Fein party. Ms. Fitzgerald said the political deadlock and the Brexit negotiations complicate the union’s response to the job cuts. “It just exacerbates the entire situation,” she said.
Paul Waldie