Trade unionists meet Trade Minister over Short’s future

A group of trade unionists have met with Stormont Trade Minister Sir Reg Empey to voice their concerns over the aerospace company’s future in Northern Ireland.

The group, who lost their jobs as part of a major cutback by Bombardier Aerospace at Short Brothers, met with the Minister on Thursday March 7. The delegation included prominent union representatives Gary Faulkner, Noelle Boyle, Kevin Doherty and North Down UUP assembly member Peter Weir.

Last month both Mr Faulkner and Miss Boyle were excluded from a trade union meeting with Sir Reg because they no longer worked for the company. They represent the design engineering section and have criticised Shorts quite publicly for the 1,000 redundancies announced last September.

Shorts have blamed the economic effect of the attacks of September 11 on the aviation industry for the jobs cuts.

This has been dismissed by MSF representatives however, who say the company may be using September 11 as a reason to reduce the high-end design operations in Belfast.

On Thursday Mr Faulkner said they were able to express their concern that the privately owned company was receiving millions of pounds of grant aid and loans from the UK Treasury department and whilst not producing any guarantees about retaining jobs in Belfast.

Gary Faulkner, who was formally a MSF union representative said they made it clear to the Minister they were very concerned about the future of the design engineering department within the company. He said: “Our view which we shared with the Minister was that without an effective design engineering operation in Belfast Shorts’ future in Belfast is very limited.

“If the skills base in Northern Ireland is allowed to be removed it will be gone forever.”

As the province's largest employer in the private sector, the near 1,000 redundancies represented some of the worst losses Northern Ireland has seen for many years. A total number of 2,000 are expected to go before the end of the year. Shorts have said no further redundancies will be made until April and again in August.

A spokesperson for Shorts commented: "While we very much regret losing highly valued employees, it is essential that the company remains competitive and ready for the upturn when it comes."

(AMcE)