Bombardier To Cut Nearly 1,000 Jobs

Jobs at the Belfast factories of plane-maker Bombardier may be at risk.

The company has announced today that it is cutting aircraft production rates and reducing manpower throughout all its sites, and a statement from the east Belfast facility notes, "we regret to confirm that 310 Bombardier employee jobs are at risk in Northern Ireland".

The company will now be lodging a formal HR1 redundancy notice with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment shortly, following which there will be a 90-day consultation period with our Trade Unions to explore any means to mitigate the number of potential job losses.

However, the company expects that these employees will leave through voluntary means and will have to "also let go" the remainder of its temporary subcontractors - comprising 665 people.

This is in addition to the announcement in early February that 300 subcontractors' jobs would be lost.

A spokesperson for Bombardier in Belfast said: "We deeply regret the impact this will have on those affected and their families.

"Unfortunately, however, the force of this global recession is unprecedented, market conditions have worsened, and Bombardier is revising downwards most of its aircraft production rates and implementing measures to meet challenges facing the whole aviation industry.

"We need to do all we can to protect the business now so that when we come out of the recession we will be in a strong position," the statement continued.

However, Bombardier produced strong results for the past year and the company is said to be continuing to invest in the future, in new programmes like the CSeries where the total investment in Belfast is in excess of £500 million, including a new factory and equipment.

It has been a black week for Northern Ireland's manufacturing sector with 95 workers made redundant at the engineering firm FG Wilson on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, 210 people were laid off as car parts company Visteon closed its Belfast plant and just the day before, on Monday, 87 jobs went at Nortel in Co Antrim.

(BMcC/JM)