Their are a fair number of manufacturing jobs going East, but this is not anything different to whats happening in the rest of Europe and the US. I was reading the Sunday Times yersterday they had a piece about the German economy doing well,it expanded by 3.7% last year and unemployment went down by 1%, but the DAX 30 ( 30 biggest German companies) laid off 44,000 workers, and are forcing workers to cut their pay and conditions to keep their jobs.
About 2 weeks ago a press release was issued by a FG candidate in West Dublin stating that the Lucent Alcatel plant was closing with the loss of about 350 jobs, the company had to come out publicly and state that only 70 jobs were going as part of a global round of 10,000 job cuts. So, some of the extra attention over the last few weeks to job cuts is related to the election.
[broken link removed]
Their are also a record 14,000 job vacancies in tech, and one of the main problems is the lack of graduates in the sector. The number of PHD students in University is to double in the next 6 years, and the state backed R&D is to expand substantially and close the gap with some of our fellow European countries.
A case example that I would give is Cork, where I am from, Between the plants in Fermoy and Pfizer about 1,000 jobs are under threat or will be lost ( about 500 jobs in the Pfizer plants could still be saved if the plants are sold on). One of the two Pfizer plants in question makes Lipitor which will be going off patent soon, Walmart are selling generic drugs off patent for $4 per script, and the second plant was to be the site of their new blockbuster drug which failed trials.
I can think of 4 plants that are expanding in Cork in the tech and pharma sector creating over 2,000 jobs, e.g. Amgen, Eli Lilly etc. Beyond that VMWare and Vivendi are to create another 500 jobs, so the net effect in Cork will be a net gain of quality jobs. The media don't seem to understand that sometimes plants close in the private sector because the sales aren't there, not just because of high costs. Unemployment in the Cork region is 3.7% AFAIK.
The basic wage in Poland is €1.30, here €8.30 for low end jobs we will never be able to compete that's just a fact of life, and yes our wages are high here which may put off some companies alright. The workforce has expanded by over 3% net per year ( after losses) for the last few years, a major reason for this high increase has been Poles etc. coming here and filling positions that would otherwise be left vacant, if left vacant that in itself creates inflation because of the need to attract people to fill the posts, not all the jobs in an economy can be high end.
