Shock as global giants axe 1,100 workers in Wales and N Ireland

By KRISTY DORSEY
Published on 14/09/2012 02:26

TWO industrial giants yesterday dealt a jobs blow to more than 1,100 workers in Northern Ireland and Wales.

The biggest shock was in East Antrim, where workers at FG Wilson were expecting to hear details of redundancies that, when first announced in the summer, were expected to amount to about 100 full-time job losses.

Instead, the engineering group has revealed it intends to shed 760 staff.

And consumer products giant Unilever will axe 350 workers following the closure during the next two years of three plants in Wales.

FG Wilson, a subsidiary of Caterpillar, is one of Northern Ireland’s biggest manufacturers with more than 3,000 employees. The company makes diesel and gas generators.

Caterpillar blamed the increased job losses – which will affect all four of FG Wilson’s facilities in Northern Ireland and be complete by the end of the year – on lower global demand for its generators.

However, the company is also transferring production of its 400 series sets to China.

Unilever will shut facilities in Bridgend and Swansea by the end of 2013, cutting 250 jobs. The Swansea factory makes personal care products, while Bridgend is a distribution centre.

A third site – Unilever’s IT centre at Ewloe in Flintshire – will close by the end of 2014. About 400 of those jobs will move to Wirral, but 100 posts will be shed. Unilever has a UK workforce of about 7,200 making products such as Dove soap, Marmite, Pot Noodles and Vaseline.