Aerospace manufacturer Bombardier is to cut up to 400 jobs at its Belfast plant.
The Canadian company, one of Northern Ireland’s largest employers, confirmed in a statement today that it will cut 300 temporary and contract jobs, and is seeking 90 redundancies from its permanent workforce of 5,000.
It follows Bombardier’s announcement of an organisational restructure in July which would see its workforce reduced by 1,800 across its global aerospace operations.
In the statement, Bombardier said: “We have reviewed our requirements in Belfast, with the aim of reducing costs whilst ensuring we maintain productivity and competitiveness.
“As a result, we regret to confirm that up to 90 Bombardier employee jobs in Northern Ireland are at risk of redundancy.
“The company will be lodging a formal HR1 redundancy notice with the Department for Employment and Learning, following which there will be a 30-day consultation period when we will explore a range of means to mitigate the number of potential compulsory redundancies.”
Jackie Pollock, an officer for the Unite union, lamented the impending job losses to UTV.
“I think from the announcement Bombardier made in July about reorganisation for their worldwide operations, everybody has been apprehensive about how Belfast was going to be affected,” he said.
“We see now the news that just short of 400 people are going to lose their livelihoods, but the knock-on effect of that, there would be hundreds of other jobs supplemented with those 400.”
