17/04/2009

Protests Held Over Job Losses

About 200 people have taken part in a rally in Belfast to support those who have lost their jobs as a result of the recession. The protest was over some 2,000 recent job losses in Northern Ireland's manufacturing industry - including that at Newtownabbey's Nortel.

The event is to highlight how the businesses in Northern Ireland lost 2% of their staff in just four days before Easter.

Almost 1,000 jobs alone went at aerospace company Bombardier while posts were also shed at car parts company Visteon, telecoms firm Nortel and engineer FG Wilson.

Speaking before the event, the Assistant General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Peter Bunting, said: "The recent job losses can be partly blamed on the global economic situation.

"But insult has been added to injury by the employment practices of some employers who have taken advantage of the weak employment rights legislation," he said, referring to the continuing sit-in protest by workers in west Belfast's doomed Visteon plant.

Mr Bunting said these would lead to further deprivation and hardship affecting families, local communities and small businesses supplying these companies.

See: Visteon Settlement Rejected

(BMcC/JM)

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