1100 Jobs axed at SR Technics.

Run_to_da_hills

More than 1,100 jobs are to be axed at a SR Technics after losing four key contracts some from its former owner Aer Lingus.

Management at the firm, which is headquartered in Switzerland, blamed the closure of its Irish operation on rising costs and the global downturn.

Just Like Dell we will see a lot more spin off jobs will go down with this one.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0212/breaking9.html?via=mr

FOGOFUNK

Im a second year apprentice, its a sad sad day. We were all shocked, we expected a few redundancies but not a full closure.

Owen

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

the closure of its Irish operation

But the jobs in Cork aren't being affected, so there is no closure of the entire Irish Operation, please read the entire article you're posting in future, and not just gleam the sensationalist part and flout that around.

Sincere condolences to those who have lost their jobs and are feeling the loss ... but there seems to be a small bit of good news in the article too :

Article wrote:

Line maintenance operations carried out by SR Technics at Dublin Airport will continue "as normal" but the company said these activities would transfer to another provider "at some time in the future"

This would seem to be at least a small silver lining in a big cloud that there will be jobs transferred to a new provider in the future who will need trained staff.

FOGOFUNK

ned78 wrote: »

But the jobs in Cork aren't being affected, so there is no closure of the entire Irish Operation, please read the entire article you're posting in future, and not just gleam the sensationalist part and flout that around.

Sincere condolences to those who have lost their jobs and are feeling the loss ... but there seems to be a small bit of good news in the article too :



This would seem to be at least a small silver lining in a big cloud that there will be jobs transferred to a new provider in the future who will need trained staff.

I doubt he was trying to be sensationalist, and the line jobs are a small percentage of the overall staff.

FlutterinBantam

I don't think he was either.

Celtic Mech

My sincere condolences to all who will be effected by this. As an ex employee of the place, it really strikes you when you know a vast amount of the guys personally who will be at such a loss. My only hope is something good will come out of this...i.e before the 14th march, another firm taking up at least one of the hangars thus saving a few jobs.
But when will the guys in Zurich ever learn...their way of working and thinking cant be the same all over the world. Based in Switzerland, they try to make everyone comply to the same standards, ideals, value as themselves, as the ex CEO tried to pump into everyones heads that time with some 6 sigma thing he introduced!!!
It just doesnt work! You need local knowledge.....I certainly would not speak to a local in Ireland, Switzerland, USA etc in the same way.....there is a way of approaching each nationality which will achieve the results that you, as a manager, require to achieve the company's goal.
I really do hope jobs can be some way salvaged thru the usual last ditch efforts. A great bunch of guys to work with.

Mythago

That's a real shame about SRT:( I worked there many time as a contractor and while it had it's problems I enjoyed working there.

Bluetonic

Surely the writing was on the wall for these jobs 10 years ago during the TEAM debacle when they were posting losses of 70m IEP. When FLS sequentially got rid of this division five years ago they said its reason was it was unprofitable.

As the owners of SR have said these jobs are on the lower end of skilled jobs and the cost of doing business in Ireland does not make sense.

I wonder what the average wage in SR is?

Regardless of the above still bad news for North County Dublin.

FlutterinBantam

I sympathise with the workers of SR Teknics totally, but I heard Claire Daly on
Drivetime RTE1 today.

Nationalise, sorry, re- nationalise Aer lingus, and nationalise SRT !!!

That was her answer.

What planet is that woman on?

Whether we like it or not, globalisation is with us and firms will seek to reduce costs where necessary.

We are costing ourselves out of viability, now the SRT workers have my total sympathy, but years of being tied in with Aer Lingus as a semi state have driven quite a lot of reality out of the equation.

Ms. Daly's contribution certainly didn't help, in my opinion.

Celtic Mech

that clare daly one is away with the fairies! All you need now is for her to arrive in one of those VW vans the Hippies used and she be sorted!
But in relation to SR Technics...very strange decision by the Swiss...SR Technics, as a whole, SRT Dublin lost the least amount (if not made a profit) out of All SRT's maintenance Bases of Dublin, Stansted and Zurich!!! Their plan, as it seems is to now pull all work from Dublin and move to Zurich and see what they can do! I know of a few lads who went to work over there...said the place was as bad as Dublin for work practices if not worse!!
I wonder will the Unions be allowed to put together some possibilities for future to salvage the majority of jobs, introduce pay cuts and serious changes in employment terms..? What harm would it be to listen to meaningful suggestions on ways to go forward, reduce costs all around and save jobs while remaining competitive..

ScabbyLeg

I would imagine the cost base in Zurich is similar to that of in Dublin?

What sort of capability did SRT have in Dublin? I had no idea that so many people were employed there. A quick look to their website doesn't give any information specific to Dublin.

So, line maintenance? Fair enough.
Painting? Aircraft Overhaul? Did they have capability for engines, overhaul of LRUs, landing gears or anything like that?

It seems that given the aircraft sales boom from about 10 years ago, there is potential to make money in the MRO business now.

Run_to_da_hills

ned78 wrote: »

But the jobs in Cork aren't being affected, so there is no closure of the entire Irish Operation, please read the entire article you're posting in future, and not just gleam the sensationalist part and flout that around.

I was misinformed by the Press Association. Maybe you had better get on to them.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hqXASBxFJ_pmshkydrXye1AxAVxQ

Xavi6

Sad day indeed. My oul lad has been through Aer Lingus, TEAM, FLS, SR Technics and whatever other shite they've had to deal with in between and after years of strike action and job uncertainties it looks like the curtain has finally fallen on the whole debacle.

Another disaster for the country.

FOGOFUNK

Yeah, claire daly is a complete wagon, made herself look like a moron on national T.V.

She has no grasp of the situation in SR Technics and shouldnt be allowed comment on it.

Re-nationalisation is the stupidest idea ive ever heard my life. The facility in dublin was/is viable financially but it needs independance from Zurich.

theramrobinson

Does anyone think that some sort of investor can be found because at the end of the day srt are pulling out, you have 6 hangers lying idol, people say that it can make money so is this not the opportunity for someone to come in save jobs and make money.

vms7ply9t6dw4b

Celtic Mech wrote: »

But when will the guys in Zurich ever learn...their way of working and thinking cant be the same all over the world. Based in Switzerland, they try to make everyone comply to the same standards, ideals, value as themselves, as the ex CEO tried to pump into everyones heads that time with some 6 sigma thing he introduced!!!

That Six Sigma "thing" he introduced is proven to improve quality and reduce costs and is used all over the world in countless industries. Maybe they delivered it badly or maybe you and the other workers shouldnt have been so reisitant to change? But you cant say they didnt try and make the business viable

FunkyDa

'Six Sigma', 'Formula One', 'Forward Driver', 'Kaizan', were all 'spit&polish' on the business. The only way to save the business in Dublin, would have been for ALL the employees to have taken a 50% pay cut, and the government to row in with an operating subsidy(possibly hidden under a regional development fund). BTW, the Aer Lingus work is now being done in France(not known to be a low cost location).

Celtic Mech

ScabbyLeg wrote: »

I would imagine the cost base in Zurich is similar to that of in Dublin?

What sort of capability did SRT have in Dublin? I had no idea that so many people were employed there. A quick look to their website doesn't give any information specific to Dublin.

So, line maintenance? Fair enough.
Painting? Aircraft Overhaul? Did they have capability for engines, overhaul of LRUs, landing gears or anything like that?

It seems that given the aircraft sales boom from about 10 years ago, there is potential to make money in the MRO business now.

The capabilities SRT Dublin have would be 707,727,737 all series, 747-100,200,300, (747-400 Only up to A Check Max), 767 Airbus A318,A319,A320,A321,A330,A340 all series.
The used to have a single hangar that was dedicated to painting (hangar 3) but stopped this years ago due to the hassle involved! They have an APU overhaul shop, Landing Gear, Wheels and Brakes, Avionic Shops than can overhaul LRU's provided they are declared within their M.M.O.E.
They have a Paint shop and also a Composite Shop that would be used to carry out repairs to non-metallic items. There is also a Tech training School that is PART 147 approved for Basic and Type training.
Apart from aircraft, their is also a services garage which is located between Hangars 5 and 6. it does Vehicle maintenance for most of the vehicles in the airport..HGV's also. Will regularly see the airport fire engines in there.

FunkyDa wrote: »

'Six Sigma', 'Formula One', 'Forward Driver', 'Kaizan', were all 'spit&polish' on the business. The only way to save the business in Dublin, would have been for ALL the employees to have taken a 50% pay cut, and the government to row in with an operating subsidy(possibly hidden under a regional development fund). BTW, the Aer Lingus work is now being done in France(not known to be a low cost location).

They are actually sending them, as mentioned above, to SABENA Technics for soem of their checks...lets just say SABENA are sometimes commonly known as Such A Bad Experience Never Again...Hmm...i rest my case. Its a pity tho that companies nowadays cannot see further than the budget sheet. In Aircraft Maintenance...you get what you pay for and this is well known. I have seen aircraft that were maintained in the Gulf region in a low cost operation of maintenance...the aircraft then came to Dublin on C Checks...they were in Bits..full of Corrosion..basic neglect and failure to carry out work correctly!


I Hope somehow that things can be saved for some at least. I would guess, IF that were to happen, you would see Hangars 1-5 either knocked down or sold off and Hangar 6 operated alone as a single entity on an as low cost base as possible. Interestingly, cant find the link handy, but SRT have sold the Lease for the Hangars onto the DAA so God knows what they will plan for them!

On another Note...Im sure nearly everyone will agree..Aircraft Maintenance has to do with Maintaining Aircraft by Inspections, Routine tasks etc...Now..this involves a hell of a lot of Hands on Work on Aircraft. I do realize that, with this, it involves a large amount of office staff also..i.e. Engineering Dept, Planning, Sales, HR etc.. But when you look at them numbers..total Workers in Dublin 1135...there was a MAX of 440 People actually working Hands On on the Aircraft...and the rest in Offices...No Way Can that be Viable or sustained...440 ppl vs 695 ppl!!!

FOGOFUNK

Thanks for that celticmech.

truthflyer

SRT Dublin was heavily unionised right?

Mythago

Celtic Mech wrote: »

On another Note...Im sure nearly everyone will agree..Aircraft Maintenance has to do with Maintaining Aircraft by Inspections, Routine tasks etc...Now..this involves a hell of a lot of Hands on Work on Aircraft. I do realize that, with this, it involves a large amount of office staff also..i.e. Engineering Dept, Planning, Sales, HR etc.. But when you look at them numbers..total Workers in Dublin 1135...there was a MAX of 440 People actually working Hands On on the Aircraft...and the rest in Offices...No Way Can that be Viable or sustained...440 ppl vs 695 ppl!!!

Didn't realise the place was still so top heavy! Real shame it was never properly sorted out. Always enjoyed working in Hangar 6:)

truthflyer wrote:

SRT Dublin was heavily unionised right?

Indeed it was, but unions just don't seem to work in aviation engineering, mainly down to customers not being overly tolerant of delays.

Back in 2000 or so was working in Hangar 6 as the only contractor in cabin, the only permanent staff that would talk or help me out were an ex-contractor, an apprentice (i think) and the supervisor. Mainly due to me not being in the union or because "I was stealing their jobs". This is not indicative of all SRT engineers but their were a vocal minority of lazy disruptive people. In subsequent contracts the sitution improved, but I did notice that that particular group of guys weren't around.


Wonder with SRT out of the picture will O'Leary revive his plans/idea to bulldoze the lot & build a terminal?

ScabbyLeg

Thanks for the info Celtic Mech. It sounds like there is lots there that is potentially salvageable... even the tooling on it's own would have a considerable worth.

I believe some portion of Aer Lingus contracts went to Lufthansa - at least component services support afaik.

truthflyer

ScabbyLeg wrote: »

Thanks for the info Celtic Mech. It sounds like there is lots there that is potentially salvageable... even the tooling on it's own would have a considerable worth.

I believe some portion of Aer Lingus contracts went to Lufthansa - at least component services support afaik.

The plan is to move the tooling to the Diamond Hanger.

Foggy43

Celtic Mech wrote: »

On another Note...Im sure nearly everyone will agree..Aircraft Maintenance has to do with Maintaining Aircraft by Inspections, Routine tasks etc...Now..this involves a hell of a lot of Hands on Work on Aircraft. I do realize that, with this, it involves a large amount of office staff also..i.e. Engineering Dept, Planning, Sales, HR etc.. But when you look at them numbers..total Workers in Dublin 1135...there was a MAX of 440 People actually working Hands On on the Aircraft...and the rest in Offices...No Way Can that be Viable or sustained...440 ppl vs 695 ppl!!!

I think there are a lot of maintenance organizations like this. BA LHR have 1,500 persons in engineering, although this figure is less now since the pre Christmas management cull. Only 400 working hands on aircraft, this didn't change. Another management cull on the way so we are led to believe.

Celtic Mech

Foggy43 wrote: »

I think there are a lot of maintenance organizations like this. BA LHR have 1,500 persons in engineering, although this figure is less now since the pre Christmas management cull. Only 400 working hands on aircraft, this didn't change. Another management cull on the way so we are led to believe.

Unfortunately you are right on this one. At the end of the day..each of the lads working hands on is working 8 hour shifts on average. You could make him/her work completely flat out for that full time and he/she is up to 100% productive (in the ideal world)...but after this, you Have to start looking elsewhere for cuts, productivity increases etc. It was the lads working hands on who always were hit with the cut backs, while the majority of the office workers remained unscaved. Believe me, this is in no way a Blue Collar VS White Collar argument but just a view from someone who spend a few years working in the place in the past.
Interestingly i was reading the Irish Indo yesterday...The CEO did basically say that the Government in no way offered them any incentives to stay etc. Maybe with pressure from local politicians in North County Dublin, this may be looked into. I cant see people not fighting till the end on this issue...if it makes a difference..who knows. Only time will tell.
For my ex-colleagues, i really do hope it does make a difference. No matter what the number of jobs that may be salvaged, it will be better than All being lost. At least it may allow a few more to pay mortgages, support their families and pay bills. Keep Fighting guys!

diverdriver

I'm afraid the writing was on the wall long ago for SRT. There will be no rescue package. Perhaps in the future a new business will go into the hangars but base maintenance is dead in Dublin. Aer Lingus couldn't make money out of it and neither could FLS or now SRT. The only way they could attract business is to take a loss on each aircraft they got into the hangar. Turn around time is another issue. No airline can offord much AOG. I've no idea whether SRT were competitive on that aspect either.

I speak as someone who spent 16 years knocking around the maintenance business including being a customer of TEAM as it was. What I do remember of TEAM was however what how often I had to chase them to ensure A. The work was done on time and B. They actually carried out the work as requested. I remember one Friday trying to get in touch with someone at TEAM to ensure a repetitive AD was carried out. I didn't manage it and they didn't do it and we were short of an aircraft the following Monday.:mad:

They may well have improved a lot since then but we put up with a lot of that because the price was right. Obviously the price was no longer right as even Aer Lingus bailed out. The airline business is very international and the customers more so. They don't care about local issues. They are interested in cost and turnaround times. They take quality for granted because in the airline business it often is. (Not always but mostly).

Once the customers deserted them, there was no business, simple as that.

As for the apparent over supply of office workers in MROs. That's easily explained. As I'm sure most of you know, aviation is big into paperwork, masses of the stuff. Someone has to shuffle it around. I was white collar for years. When I took redundancy, I was way behind in my work. In fact I had difficulty convincing my boss to let me go. The cartoon cliche of the worker at his desk with the in-tray piled high is not fiction. Having said that there is often a fair few middle-management and supervisory staff, idling away the hours playing solitaire or posting on this forum half the day. Obviously not enough to save the company by culling them.

AlekSmart

Once the customers deserted them, there was no business, simple as that.

There is the associated element of what type of customers the Dublin Facility actually managed to attract.
One of the most notable elements of my involvement in the early stages of Team Aer Lingus was the amount of African business which it attracted in the early days.

I`m sure many of the original AL M+E people who were less than enthusiastic about the Team philosophy are somewhat philosophical in the aftermath of the SRT demise.

In the aftermath of the official opening of Hangar 6 the elation soon vapourized as the actual workload began to be appreciated.
Suffice to say the original Aer Lingus Main Base work was just about right for the original M+E setup.
However the realization that the BAC 1-11`s and the Shorts 330/360`s were now a memory as well as the increasingly electronic nature of the newer Boeing offerings meant that change was inevitable.

However,what appeared to happen was an increasing trend to fill the hangar space with aircraft from any source and in the Aviation business the nature of that customer can be VERY important as each invoice extends to serious amounts of 0`s.

The length of time some of the Nigerian 73`s spent in various Team Hangars was....well...interesting as was the delicate footwork over the ACTUAL amount of work which was required vs the amount the Owners were prepared to pay for.

What that resulted in was a company which operated literally on a Pay as you Go basis,with teams being allocated and removed from Checks according to the amounts of funding being recieved.

The awful mind numbing sensation of sitting around the break-rooms or wandering abroad throughout the terminal buildings to get through one`s working day soon created a certain "atmosphere" which I believe remained throughout the Team/FLS/SRT years.

As the Aviation Maintenance field became more mercenary and price conscious the tendency of Aircraft Owners to fly around whilst playing Maintenance Facilities off against each other increased.

Thus it would not have been unusual for teams to spend several days sitting in mind numbing idleness only to be whipped awake at 15.00 on a Friday to do an A check on a Futura 737 ,with all the attendant "Barriers" to ensure it flew out on Monday Morning....Great Crack,lucrative for many staff in the short term,but all too indicative of an underlying Management problem.

And as diverdriver sez,the Aviation Maintenance game is submerged under a massive weight of documentation which the Information Technology era has failed to make any inroads into.

This reliance on the printed word demands a large proportion of staff dedicated to maintaining the Tech Libraries and to collating the vast raft of documentation required for every Aircraft Check or component replacement,something which placed great strain on the Team operation as some of the relevant documentation could be somewhat slower in arriving than the Aircraft itself.

Ah well,it was an interesting gamble which could have paid off.

How is Shannon Aerospace doing these days ?

FOGOFUNK

Its not over yet.


Rte.ie breaking news

Fabio

Fingers crossed they can keep some jobs anyway.

diverdriver

Hmm, if it does come off. It will be a very different regime. I doubt if the unions will get a look in either. Quite a lot smaller too. Maybe just certain components. I wouldn't hold out much hope for the majority of the jobs.

I can relate to Aleksmart's comments. Team Aer Lingus were very much a product of the old Aer Lingus, which if anything resembled an arm of the old British empire colonial service as much as it did an airline. Many pilots and supervisors in Aer Lingus spent time overseas seconded to various companies sometimes accompanied by their families. Clearly there was never enough work for them in Ireland. In my dealings with Aer Lingus, I always found them a little bit too relaxed when it came to getting the work done, although the quality was always good, when they did it.

Yes indeed it was interesting doing work for the Nigerians, getting paid was an issue. I remember a moss covered Nigerian 707 that sat in Dublin for years because of money owed. It wasn't just TEAM that suffered in that respect. Also their reps, always needed to be 'encouraged' shall we say. A problem I believe endemic in that country.

Someone needs to write a book about the whole thing.

Celtic Mech

It has been found out, as a Fact, that SRT Dublin has actually NOT posted a loss in the previous 4 consequetive years. In fact last year they were up 2.5 million euro.!!