Manufacturing workers fear they may be next

The manufacturing industry will be drastically hit and its workers are in a "state of alarm", the General Workers' Union has warned.

Fear is reigning and a considerable number of companies have approached the union with their concerns, union official Jason Deguara said yesterday.

"As soon as the employees see union officials at their workplace, even just for a committee meeting, they are in shock," he said when contacted.

The comments come in the wake of an announcement that Toly Products, a leading cosmetics packaging manufacturer, was laying off 84 workers - a move that follows on the heels of Trelleborg Sealing Solutions' introduction of a four-day working week.

Problems in the manufacturing industry have grown in the last fortnight due to the global economic situation and in the near future other companies will be facing similar problems as Toly and Trelleborg, Mr Deguara warned.

Mr Deguara remained tight-lipped on which companies face problems - they have been put down to about four by the union - due to the sensitive nature of the matter and to avoid the "pandemonium" at workplaces if employees discovered from the media that their jobs were in the balance.

The situation is dramatic, Mr Deguara said, adding the union was receiving calls from staff who were sensing they could be next because they had returned from a day's work in which they had nothing to do.

"Companies are requesting urgent meetings to discuss the situation. The message they are sending is that if it does not change, they would be forced to lay off workers, or at least introduce four-day weeks to relieve their expenses," Mr Deguara continued.

Some are saying they can hold on until mid-November but others, like Trelleborg and Toly, had to take immediate action. In the case of the former, it would have had to resort to harsher action and sack workers had not measures been instant.

In the coming month, the union will be working to reduce the 84 redundancies and voluntary early retirement schemes could be offered. The introduction of incentives, such as job sharing for women, is also being discussed.

The situation at Toly could have seen 20 more redundancies had it not been for the union's intervention, which could not accept that workers were dismissed while others were doing overtime.

An agreement with the company was, therefore, reached on the basis of the workers' flexibility so that production lines would not have to stop and customers would not be lost.

Talks are being held about how employees could be moved around departments according to need. Toly is ready to listen to other ideas to save jobs, Mr Deguara said.

On their part, employees are ready to make sacrifices to hold onto their jobs so they can pay car and house loans and even save their colleagues' future.

"They also know it will be very hard to find an alternative employment," Mr Deguara said.

Describing the hardship, he said a 27-year-old, with a loan of €30,000, told him she did not know what to do. Together with Toly's management, union officials spoke to workers until 11 p.m. on Wednesday to try and help them out.

"We are not in conflict with the company. On the contrary, we are working together to save jobs. This is a family-owned business, where the top management knows the employees and their families individually and their hearts are breaking," Mr Deguara said.

"When the final number of redundancies was decided, it was an emotional situation for both the management and us," he said. "These situations leave you with your back against the wall."

Today's workers are clued in, Mr Deguara said. "When they see what is happening in established companies like Trelleborg and Toly they know something could happen to them."

Their state of mind is weakening the economy because it is translating into a lack of spending, Mr Deguara said of the "vicious circle" that has been brought about. Their income is already on the decline because their bosses are telling them not to return to their part-time jobs, which is, in turn, making them more frightened.

Toly story

Toly Products was doing well until a year ago. But it was now receiving instructions from customers overseas to stop production of certain lines because of their huge stocks, which were piling up as their markets shrank.

The company had actually increased its customers but orders were minimal, the union said.

On Saturday evening, Toly received an e-mail informing it to immediately stop the Mary Kay cosmetics line, which meant that 60 employees had no more work to do.

The Toly situation has been looming since August, it said.

Problems started surfacing when the company told the GWU its shutdown would last two weeks, instead of one, because the order book had shrunk drastically.

Although the situation was not alarming, the company had already started to feel the blow and the situation got worse over the last couple of weeks, the section secretary said.

"The workers saw this coming," he said. "If you spend eight hours biting your nails when you should be working on a production line, you realise something is not quite right."