The European Commission will contribute €14.8m to help find
new jobs for 2,840 Dell workers in Ireland made redundant when the
US computer maker shifted production of mobile PCs to Asia.
This is the first time the EC has used new crisis measures
brought in to ease job cuts from the recession. The Irish
application will now go to the European Parliament and the Council
of the EU for agreement.
The Irish application related to 2,000 redundancies at Dell's
Limerick plant and 840 in eight of its suppliers and downstream
producers. The plant made desktop PCs. Sales dropped 23% in the
first quarter of 2009, as firms postponed purchases.
This plus the company's decision to relocate mobile PC (laptops,
notebooks and netbooks) production from Limerick to lower cost
Asian manufacturers, mostly in China, prompted the
redundancies.
The commission has received 27 applications for more than €154m
for help with some 33,300 redundancies. The Dell application is the
first relating to computers, but mobile phone firms BenQ and Nokia
in Germany have also applied.