great day for waterford crystal workers

G'wan the Glass workers & the Unite Trade Union - in particular Jimmy Kelly & Walter Cullen.
Heading home to the Deise shortly to enjoy a celebratory drink with mates some of whom are ex Glass workers - large bottles of course !
 
I'm delighted for the former employees, be they "wurkers" or "de management" but the real winners are the former owners who grossly mismanaged the business over decades and the unions who helped make the business unsustainable. Those jokers get to walk away scot free, leaving the people of Ireland to foot the bill. It's a great day, but for who?
 
Just this mean that the State is liable for every shortfall in a defined benefit pension scheme when the employer goes bust?? WOW!!!

Glad for the workers but the taxpayer having to foot the bill is ridiculous. Guess expecting the State to top up my defined contribution scheme following years of underperformance is too much to ask????
 
Sadly Waterford Glass in it's previous reincarnation & it's products were seen as dated & the downturn in the American market proved fatal.

Management did attempt to diversify but it was all too little too late , in fact Sir Anto & Peter Goulandris lost approx 450 million between them.

The ultimate blame however must lie with FF who failed to legislate for a workable pension protection fund , indeed the ruling today said that the State was in serious breach under the 2008 insolvency directive.

Thankfully the Glass has risen from the ashes & the new factory on the Mall is flourishing .

A spring in the step of all Waterford people today.

Hopefully ex workers in SR Technics & similarly effected workers are paying close attention to this ruling !
 
Hard to know , Jimmy Kelly Unite regional secretary estimates that the ruling re the Glass alone may cost up to 289 million.

Jimmy is an incurable optimist but I don't think he's too far off in this case.
 
Sunny said:
Glad for the workers but the taxpayer having to foot the bill is ridiculous. Guess expecting the State to top up my defined contribution scheme following years of underperformance is too much to ask????
Click to expand...

Sure why not?

The government are already borrowing €15,000,000,000 a year for the bankers bailouts, and the massively inflated levels of social welfare and public sector pay we have in this country.

What harm will another €10bn or two on the national debt do so long as we can bail out all the under-funded DB pensions too?

Our children are the ones who will pay for all this.
 
I wonder if there may be an issue with unintended conseques with this case.

It's no secret that some employers are looking to wind up as best they can any DB scheme, given the liabilities on the state, might there now be an incentive for the government to let's say be open to make this process easier and quicker?
 
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