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Updated 10.25pm
MORE THAN 400 jobs are to go in Dublin after Lufthansa Technik Airmotive announced it is closing its plant in Rathcoole.
Staff at the jet engine overhaul facility were served notice of termination of their employment today.
Workers had been warned last month that closing the company was being considered as an option as Lufthansa Technik faced declining revenues and shrinking international market opportunities.
The company held a 30-day process to consider closing the company as it consulted with trade unions and staff.
There has been no agreement with the three trade unions involved on severance terms for workers.
SIPTU has criticised management for serving redundancy on workers while negotiations at the Labour Court on redundancy terms are ongoing.
“Although this news is not unexpected… it is still a devastating blow to the workers and their families,” said Karl Byrne of SIPTU.
Byrne said that the Labour Court is fast tracking its discussions and a recommendation will be issued ‘as soon as possible’.
“We hope that all sides will respects the industrial relations process and that the affected workers can be provided with certainty in relation to their redundancy terms. This highly skilled workforce has been loyal to this company for many years. They deserve to be treated with respect and gratitude”.
Lufthansa Technik said today that an offer from an outside party to take over the facility did not lead to any acceptable solution.
Lufthansa Technik took a 60 per cent shareholding of Airmotive Ireland, which was set up by Aer Lingus, in 1997. It took full ownership in 1999.
Originally published 12.19pm
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It’s the sign of the times we live in. Got my P45 today also but have to pick up and stay strong for the little people at home who wouldn’t understand dads ranting and raving about something completely out of his control.
16yrs slogg and all ill get is 33 weeks dole . What a kip they’ve made of our country.
Gowanoutathat, sorry to hear that, I got mine in October but I have a new job so don’t despair hopefully in the new year something will turn up for you. I know it’s hard at Christmas and trying to keep happy for the little ones, my husband lost his three years ago and my son two years ago!!!! No time is a good time but I think this was coming from a while back or am I mistaken? I’ve been there X 3 and it’s shite, I wish them all the best.
Gowan. I hope things work out for you & the little people. You sound like you have the right mindset.
I am very sorry to hear of your situation Gowanoutathat . Don’t give up, keep sending those cv’s & register with recruitment agencies as they usually have temp work available as well… I was in your situation & I know what its like. without sounding like a know all or a bossy boots persistence pays off.. If you register with fas they are good also get in touch with the vec to discuss career options & usually they provide very good courses which you can get if you are on social welfare & it may lead to better things.. I wish you the best of luck with everything & a safe Christmas .
As a member of staff at LTAI I will set straight some of the idiots on here. It was not the union that closed us nothing got to do with it. Lufthansa AG closed the place. They have squandered and wasted 40million euro on tooling for a saviour engine model for us but as soon as we were up and running they also started working on that engine in Germany. They split the company up taking the leasing side of the business off the books which drops our profit.
They also let our sports and social club wast 30,000 euro of our money building a new gym knowing that they were going to close.
Giving our notice on the day we finish for Christmas is typical of the attitude of this MD and the parent company
@Brian, I am so sorry, what a terrible thing to hear just before Christmas.
I hope you secure work very soon.
Brian thank you for posting the information and providing clarity. It’s terribly sad and worrying when people lose their jobs but at this time of year it’s a really low blow. My sympathies are with you and your co workers. I really hope you have better fortune in 2014. It seems 2013 hasn’t been good for many of us.
We are pulling out Pixieheads…..get competitive !
Sorry to hear about the bad news Brian. Cold hearted capitalism at its worst with no consideration towards its loyal workers , Chin up dude
Can’t wait for the first person to blame any of the following: troika, government, the banks, Germany, Angela Merkel…
*sits back and waits for the mayhem*
You can’t offer your sympathy to the workers? No just attempting to incite a stupid response.Well done you.
I blame the government, troika, banks, Germany, Angela merkel and rob
Actually, I have offered my sympathies to workers I know there, in person.
I’m not trying to incite a stupid response, but thanks for providing one, I’m merely pointing out that LTAI was in trouble LONG before the countries current woes. That fact will be ignored by many who read this article, conveniently.
Apologies if I offended you.
Cheers Brendan!
Rob,You didn’t offend me, I apologise if I misjudged you.However there are a significant amount of idiots on this site whose only goal is to illict ridiculous responses distracting from the substance of an article.Anyway have a good Christmas.
Hopefully the workers in question can secure employment elsewhere.
Weirdly, it’s the trolls on this site that prompted me to post what I posted. I’m all in favour of reasonable debate with someone who has opposing views or minority ones, but the ones who only come on here to stir shit get up my nose. Especially when half of them only ever structure their “post” around either a) an extreme viewpoint that’s at odds with the main stream, which they don’t actually believe anyway or b) a combination of the words government, troika, Germany, Merkel, banks…
I can see how my intention could be misinterpreted though.
Merry Christmas
What a truly boring tool you are, Rob.
Rob – in case it has passed you by – Airmotive was bought by the GERMAN company – Lufthansa, who have made this call. Therefore people are quite entitled to blame the Germans on this one. Its brown noses and me feiners like you that has this country the way it is – screwed!!
Well, they are German. The employees at liebherr in Kilarney should take stock here. Don’t mess with the Germans. They WILL bite you in the ass.
When the turf was turned on the site on Berlin, it was only a matter of time. Im told an American crowd want to buy it as a going concern. But Lufthansa don’t want the competition. So they could sell to the yanks and save all the jobs, but they won’t.
Please don’t spout hear say and rumours, it benefits no one…
Please ask my balls.
As having been an employee for 13 years I am disgusted in the way we came to receive our notice. When I started back in 2000 this company was churning out engines in a way that the Hamburg engine shop are still doing right now. The company was clearing over 30 million in profit nearly every quarter and I am sure those profits came in handy to build the new 60 million euro engine shop in Hamburg. The loyal and skilled workers of LTAI bent over backwards for this company over the last 4-5 years in not receiving average wage increases and in accepting other terms and conditions with false promises and lies about a new engine type that would see us well into the future. It was quite obvious for a while that we were just getting the off-cuts of this new engine type while Germany would receive the bulk. The new MD was introduced about five years ago after he closed the engine shop in Melbourne Australia. The Lufthansa board of directors knew they were winding up operations for a long time but yet used LTAI as guinea pigs for computer systems and work methods that didn’t work whilst wasting millions of euros not to mention the 30,000 euro they let the sports and social club waste building and kitting out a brand new gym that has been open about six weeks. After all these millions they have wasted we are now in a ridiculous labour court battle trying to get a half decent severance package. My fellow colleagues and I have little chance of finding another job and for me personally it looks like I will have to emigrate and leave a lot behind. It winds me up that people come on here who have no connection to the job in any way shape or form and try to diagnose what happened and start pointing fingers after reading an article somewhere. It baffles me when the government get mentioned in this whole mix as most people know they are all a useless bunch of morons and I am proud to say I have never voted once. I also appreciate the good comments from everybody else. Have a good Christmas everyone and a happy new year.
No doubt the boss is being hailed as a hero in head office for having the ‘balls’ to deliver this on the last day before Xmas holiday, hes a real tough guy alright considering there were talks ongoing, but the Europeans are getting used to treating us like s**t aren’t they, they take their lead from our own tools
i hope the talks yield a good severance deal and best of luck to all the workers in the future.
This latest MD is nothing but an ignorant bollox!! My brother in law was in the labour court today with the union and I’m sorry to say to both yourself and Brian that things didn’t go your way, they have sided with the company and the package the court has put forward is WORSE than the one the company was offering. Really lads I think the only option left open to all of you is to have a sit-in. If the plant isn’t emptied of the machinery over Christmas then you weld the doors shut and hold all the machinery and any engine parts that are in the plant to ransome the way the lads in Vita Cortex did and they were there for months but eventually ended up getting what they were due. My brother in law has been there for almost 30 years and there are men there longer than him.
Very sad but what a militant union
Unions fault is it? Explain please…
Shut up Guiseppe
Eh! good man Larry constructive as always…
Sad news for families and just before Christmas
I have been dipping in and out of The Journal for a while and trying to figure what type of people take part in the discussions. Having seen Jean McGrath’s comment which simply stated that it is “sad news for families and just before Christmas” getting 31 red thumbs (at time of writing) I now know that there are a lot of thick people out there. Will anyone of you who red thumbed this comment (and many other comments on this thread sure) please explain why you took such action or are you using software to troll the net and red thumb at random?
very sad to see real jobs go while the makey uppy quango ones carry on regardless
Step 1. Get on the public pay roll
Step 2. Stay there
Bad news, but the reality is that Lufthansa have been trying to close this place for years.
Sorry for all workers concerned have been there myself at this time of year.
Unimaginable news the week before christmas. I know they were softened up a few weeks ago but the timing is horrendous, a lot of worried families over the christmas period.
But we’ve turned a corner , the Troika is gone , we are creating a thousand jobs a week !!!!!! If that’s the case Enda you should no problems finding employment for these highly qualified people .
Keith
That’s not the way business works. You don’t take highly skilled aircraft technicians and build a business around them you idiot. The contracts must be in place for overhaul and servicing of engines in the first place and that sector in global terms is in a slump at present.
Now do you understand?
R
Richie
The government are telling us , the Irish people that they are creating a thousand jobs a week , it all you hear when you turn on the news and see any minister no mater what his or her brief is saying , the point I was making was the so called jobs they refer to are not going to help these people , and the many more highly skilled who are loosing their jobs on a weekly bases .
can anyone find Richard in the photo up there cos i can’t, unless he’s hiding under a car or something, wouldn’t surprise me.
I know how it feel for all of them… Christmas is out of mind … :-(
Where’s Richard Bruton the mouthpiece now.
Yes indeed where is the Minister for jobs where is he hiding?
PaulMc
Asking if the Minister for employment is in hiding actually shames you and massively disrespects the employees who have to go home this evening and discuss their devastating news with their families. Which of your three brain cells gives you the idea that Minister Bruton could save or cause the loss of these jobs and why would you try to open a vicious line of unintelligent argument when we should instead be commiserating with the employees and encouraging them during such a difficult time.
Richie stop being such a tool.
he’ll back on next week, another photo… 18 jobs to be created over the next 2 years with IT giant…
usual shite.
He can’t! He’s always been a tool.
Funny how no Government Minister or TD is on the airwaves promising to help.
They are like fly’s claiming all their hard work helped employment when announcing 5 Jobbridge internships.
But where are they when they are needed?
Playing the 19th with the banker, accountant & lawyer!
I heard Buswell’s was packed last night.
Probably having breakfast around now before they go back to their constituencies for Christmas.
You’d be complaining if a minister was on the radio likely saying their words were empty etc. – it’s damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
My sympathies to the workers but the company wasn’t making any profit here for a long time and it was always destined to close given the falling business.
You don’t know what you are talking about Gerard McAuliffe, its wasn’t that long ago that LTAI were pulling in 60 – 90 million a year, which helped build the state of the art plant that they now have in Hamburg.
@ Rob Morgan, if you know some of the workforce “personally” then you would be well aware of the fact that they have bent over backwards to save their jobs and accommodate the management. For the last few years, there has been plenty of overtime but under the last agreement that the lads accepted none of them have been paid for their overtime, all they could do was bank their hours. And as a matter of point – there were lads doing overtime in the plant this week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great timing.
Next up for Lufthansa group is the Raid on the pensions of another shannon based subsidary
Bull – they have already raided the pension pot,, they are 10 million short!!!! and that is why this has all come about now.
What a Christmas present.
Bad timing to say the least.
What did the Union do? F…. All
this is bad news -. Where is Bruton now – any announcements from him ??
there will be a ‘thousand’ more jobs created next week, calm down, we’ve turned the corner remember! even on Christmas day 100 jobs will be created! It going to be all ok!
yea Brutons a spoof alright, for every job created here, 3 are lost. It’s a merry go round.
This is a sad day. There are the type of should jobs that are really important to our economy. It’s the type of skilled work we should be encouraging, not everyone wants to work in IT.
This is terrible news for a lot of highly skilled people and my heart goes out to them and their families. There is never a good time of year for this sort of news. Hopefully, their skills will stand them in good stead.
However, at times like these it is not unusual for companies to pull back work to their home base, especially companies with a very high national profile such as Lufthansa. For all the hype, Germany is not anywhere near the economic paradise some would have us believe and there must have been huge pressure on the Lufthansa board from the German government. Having a known hatchet man installed as MD is never good news……..seen that one in action.
Not allowing an American competitor to buy the plant ? Not good from an employee viewpoint but the only feasible decision from a business standpoint.
Not helpful comments, I know, but it’s really all I can give. Perhaps some of those affected could see a way to pool resources and start a specialist company to utilise their skills. Just thinking out loud. Truly hope this all works out for you.
I blame the Germans for this
So you should, it is a German company!
No respect for there workers who gave many years to the company through good and bad times, announcing this at this time its like they wanted to get one on them doing this right before christmas !
Wow what a great union the staff have out their, sorry had out their,
I’m not an employee or a relative of anyone working with Lufthansa Technik but I have to voice my disgust with the way they have been treated. A business once again shafting their workers before Christmas. At least the workers don’t have to stomach their stupid decisions anymore. The Labour Court is telling them to accept the paltry redundancy, why??? My commiserations to staff & families affected and I hope the new year brings a new job in a company devoid of self-interested MD’s in pursuit of personal gain.
@Go Deas, Though unidentified, I agree with you.
This mistreatment of workers can, still, be stopped.
Public sector Union, #ASTI tried to stand (failed after 6 months);
Mandate private sector Union may still stand.
SIPTU private sector may still stand.
Unions should UNITE, as intended, instead of #ICTU selling workers to #Govt?
It is called “Solidarity”.
Remember that?……….
4 weeks per year plus 2 weeks statutory makes a total of 6 weeks per year of service is hardly paltry,if you concider the self employed dont get one red cent,these employees are doing very well.
As a highly skilled workforce..could the workers not pool their reduncancy and operate maybe as a co operative and tender for work in competition with luftansa and the other players.
If the operation was profitable could they not continue and take the profits going forward?
I blame the bondholders, they too are responsible for the bad weather. The company has always said the unions were a disgrace, so I reckon it’s their fault
I think Redthumbs 44 would be a better name for you.
@enda1… begrudgers0 What a FINE specimen you are!
Socio-Political-Analysts the world-over find you ABSOLUTELY fascinating.
@enda…begrudgers0
Anyway, I wonder how much #FG pays to get you to tell lies, or do you do it for FREE, as the party rakes in HUNDREDS or millions?
How SMART are you, again?
*of* millions.
“Hundreds OF millions”! (allegedly UNACCOUNTED for……).
Allegedly.
Fine Gael. Allegedly……..
Tim are you drunk?
Frohlicke Weihnachten meinen Freunden.
What’s the problem? We have it on good authority from Indah, Eamonn and Richard that fifteen hundred jobs per month are being created – shouldn’t be difficult to find new employment for these skilled workers. :-(
Was ist das?
Was is the? Is that all you’re saying?
So sorry for these people losing their jobs at this time of year. Having said that I heard on the radio earlier that they are getting 4 weeks redundancy for each year of service on top of the statutory redundancy which is 2 weeks. So that’s 6 weeks wages for every year of service which means someone that has been there for 10 years will get over 1 years wages tax free. I’d take that not a bother and surely you could find another job within a year? Every cloud has a silver lining, or a gold one in these lads case!
This is very sad news for all the employees of LTAI and their families – especially at this time of year. the Government, the trade unions and the employees should now have urgent talks to try to agree a way of trying to save this important facility and keep the skills and the workforce in Ireland. It is a great shame that LTAI has decided not to sell the facility to a competitor but I suppose that is a sensible business decision for Lufthansa. This sort of business is highly competitive internationally and I suppose it is inevitable that German owned business will give priority to retaining jobs in Germany. As someone has pointed out, sectors of the German economy and certain regions are finding it tough enough to compete internationally. The Government should immediately commission a leading international consultancy firm with expertise in aviation and engineering to examine the options whereby these skills, these workers and their families can be kept in Ireland. And if I were Richard Bruton I would get on the phone to Michael O’Leary of Ryanair, Willie Walsh of BA/ Iberia and any other Irish people in leading positions in the aviation industry and obtain some free and Frank advice as to what should and could be done.
Enda, time to build a tescos!
Its has to be said this news is not a surprise, at least not to me,i recall even when it was owned by the national carrrier it was beset with union squables,while traveling in the UK last week there was a news story of an aircraft maintenance facility at the rapidly expanding Stansted Airport,where Ryanair have a major European hub,a sign perhaps of things to come.
Haha! You are all fierce funny! (especially the anti-union guys, who think public sector are the majority members! Lol……!! )
ROFL……
I notice that the govt shills, here, tend not to post with a picture or a real name.
Isn’t that interesting?”
“If an EGG says it, don’t trust it…..”, seems prudent to me………
have your say