Jobs Blow For Tullamore As Sennheiser Cuts 14
Thursday, 4 February 2010
By Camilla McLoughlin
FOURTEEN people are to lose their jobs at the Sennheiser manufacturing plant in Tullamore.
The German-owned sound equipment company made the announcement last Thursday, January 28.
The news that the company has decided to shed jobs did not come as a big surprise, as a number of its employees had been on short-time since last year.
In a statement Sennheiser said, 'The transition to a high value-add production model, coupled with changing market trends, has led to an over capacity for manual headphone production'.
The statement goes on to say, 'this has been managed, since last October, by short time working. Ongoing reviews of the long term outlook show no indication of an improvement in the current trend. As a result, we now must implement a reduction of 14 full-time employees. This will allow the resumption of a full time working pattern.'
In March 2009 the company let go 15 people and in September 2009 the company announced it was putting 60 of its staff on a three-day week.
The confirmation of redundancies by Sennheiser came just days after the announcement by a Japanese firm, Freund Corporation that they were to set up a plant in Tullamore creating 25 jobs over the next five years.
The Chairman of Offaly County Council, Cllr Noel Bourke said he was very disappointed especially in a week when jobs were being created.
But he stressed the need to work harder to bring more industry into Tullamore.
The chairman of Tullamore Town Council, Councillor Tommy McKeigue said Tullamore seems to take one step forward and two backwards.
Councillor McKeigue said Sennheiser has a long association with Tullamore and recalled a time when the company restored the tombstones of three German Huzzars who are buried in the old graveyard at Kilcruttin.
Meanwhile the company said, 'the long association between Sennheiser and Tullamore has been one of continual investment and improvement. It is Sennheiser's commitment to continue with this strategy into the foreseeable future.'
Sennheiser added: 'Previous investments have seen the Tullamore operation develop into a leading transducer production facility within the Sennheiser group. Underlining this, 2009 saw the largest single investment to date, of several million Euro in the latest high-tech automated production equipment, together with the recruitment of additional multi-skilled technicians'.
Sennheiser originally established a plant in Spollenstown, Tullamore in 1990 and more recently moved to its current operations location in the IDA Ireland business park at Sragh.
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