Eircom to axe 1,200 jobs

gurramok

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/eyauqlcwqloj/rss2/

brakingnews wrote:

Telecom giant Eircom is looking to shed more than 1,200 jobs as part of a radical cost-saving plan, the company confirmed tonight.

The workers will be axed over the next 18 months, but it is not yet known what positions will be affected in the former State-owned company.

The redundancies will be another devastating blow to the country’s beleaguered economy, which has seen unemployment rise to a staggering 11%.

A company spokesman said: “It’s part of our restructuring plan.

“We’ve got to reduce our cost base.”

Talk about bad timing regarding the ESB announcement. This disaster of a company whose infrastructure is the pits is just getting worse.

Time to re-nationalise as privatisation has failed?

mike65

Its good news, they are way over-manned and under performing.

Sqaull20

How's it good news?

You think the standard of service is going to improve or something?

We are still going to have the same crap service!!! but loads of families lives are going to change :rolleyes:

gurramok

mike65 wrote: »

Its good news, they are way over-manned and under performing.

Not sure about this.

Would nationalisation cure it as our broadband infrastructure is 3rd world and we need broadband to help the economy in these dark times as the economy needs it?

dave-higgz

gurramok wrote: »

Not sure about this.

Would nationalisation cure it as our broadband infrastructure is 3rd world and we need broadband to help the economy in these dark times as the economy needs it?

UPC 10mb unlimited usage!! €30

jimmycrackcorm

Sqaull20 wrote: »

How's it good news?

You think the standard of service is going to improve or something?

We are still going to have the same crap service!!! but loads of families lives are going to change :rolleyes:

I agree totally. I remember meeting an eircom worker who was moved from directory enquires into a totally useless job becasue she couldn't be fired due to the union. They say a company's best assets are its people... that explains why we have a 3rd world BB infrastructure then.

If only the ESB could follow suit.

silverharp

To be honest in the residential market if you have a mobile and Skype , why even bother with an eircom line , its just dead money

Firetrap

It's a horrible company but I just cringe at the sight of another 1,200 people losing their jobs and going onto the dole.

Creamy Goodness

yeh that's great considering you can count the amount of people who can get that on one hand :rolleyes:

upc's roll out plan - is there even one? - is laughable.

Sqaull20

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

I agree totally. I remember meeting an eircom worker who was moved from directory enquires into a totally useless job becasue she couldn't be fired due to the union. They say a company's best assets are its people... that explains why we have a 3rd world BB infrastructure then.

If only the ESB could follow suit.

Bit unfair to blame the workers for the state of them?

Its not like those OZ cowboys have pumped resources into company or anything!!

They have spent fcuk all since they bought the company and they are always looking for handouts from the goverment.Its easy money for them and now they can give the same level of mediocre service with an extra 45 million or so in the pocket This is good news for no one as the competition is a joke and you can blame the goverment for that too.

What Eircom needs is resources and man power, not cut backs!! Good news, yeah :pac:

af_thefragile

Instead of re-nationalising the institution why not push in the opposite direction of proper capitalism towards a fair free market rather than this pseudo-capitalistic (which is becoming more and more left wing socialist by the day) economy!

Instead of having just one almost monopolised giant in the sector like Eircom, if we had a good competition between 2 to 3 or maybe more different businesses in the sector, there would be many more jobs and the economy would be in much better state.

Sleipnir

My GF contracted in one of the Eircom call centres and I can remember quite a few tales.

1.) The manager would arrive in the office in the morning, put on his slippers and nobody could knock on his door until Marianne Finucame was over.

2.) Another manager was being moved to another office on the floor upstairs but he wouldn't go unless he was paid "inconvenience money"

3.) They wanted a fountain installed and the whole office feng shui'ed untill someone pointed out that having a fountain and so much I.T. equipment in such close proximity probably wouldn't be such a good idea. They did go ahead with a feng shui consultant.

I say give Eircom to a troop of monkeys.

Sand

Any nationalisation should be limited purely to the infrastructure monopoly, which should never have been privatised in the first place. The rest of the Eircom business (the actual marketing of the service) should be left in private hands.

Purple Gorilla

How come no other main news site has picked this up?

RTE- Nope
Irishtimes-Nope
Independent- Nope

Not even a mention on Eircom's site under Press Releases or Investor Relations..the only recent one there is about the TaemasBridge takeover...

af_thefragile

I think a privitised business will always do a better job than a nationalised one.
A privatised business will have to think and work hard to figure out ways to make constant profit by maintaining the interest of the consumer by providing a quality service at an affordable price. By having competition businesses would have to compete against each other to keep constantly providing the best and the most affordable service in a steady state of progress.

The problem with a nationalised business is that the state doesn't have the time to think so much about it with all the other jobs its got to do. Neither does it like to take the effort. Instead it just sets up a mediocre service which it runs at a lousy inefficient manner and covers up its losses with the hard earned taxpayers money! With little progress in the service as there is no competition it needs to worry about. Even if there was competition, its not a fair competition cuz unlike the private business, the government business would get away with doing a lousy job as it covers it losses though the tax payers money. And the government ends up setting a monopoly based on flawed economics.

This can be seen every time you take the public transport. The buses are lousy, rarely on time (5mins late is late! there are countries where public transport is precise to the minute, we don't need to be excused from that just cuz we're "laid back"!) and the service overall is pretty poor and it runs on a loss.

And due to the lack of fair competition, a private business can't get anywhere cuz of the monopoly set by the government.
Hence i strongly believe the government should stay away from businesses, education and people's money!
Its job is to maintain law and security and thats all it should do.

Darith

In south Korea the government bought all the the tier one exchanges. These were the exchanges which had connections to to all respective premises, houses etc. This infrastructure was sold to at least one operator whom acted as middleman btw customer and other operators whom took or provided traffic between these exchanges. The results have been a good BB system.

cyclopath2001

af_thefragile wrote: »

A privatised business will have to think and work hard to figure out ways to make constant profit by maintaining the interest of the consumer by providing a quality service at an affordable price.

Hmm, like Anglo-Irish bank?

Disease Ridden

At this stage I look at the Irish economy the way I do the Irish football team; I either want to see it do well or I want to see it crash and burn.... 80 % unemployment and starvation, pestillence and misery for most. But thats just me. We all deserve itfor not appreciating the boom years enough and for squandering the wealth.

Sqaull20

Disease Ridden wrote: »

At this stage I look at the Irish economy the way I do the Irish football team; I either want to see it do well or I want to see it crash and burn.... 80 % unemployment and starvation, pestillence and misery for most. But thats just me. We all deserve itfor not appreciating the boom years enough and for squandering the wealth.

We never had the wealth!!!

Now what do you want

nesf

Purple Gorilla wrote: »

How come no other main news site has picked this up?

RTE- Nope
Irishtimes-Nope
Independent- Nope

Not even a mention on Eircom's site under Press Releases or Investor Relations..the only recent one there is about the TaemasBridge takeover...

Irish Times: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0418/1224244976716.html

af_thefragile

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

Hmm, like Anglo-Irish bank?

I don't know the full story about that bank but from what i've learnt they lent out billions of euros of loan to property builders and when the economy collapsed they went down with it. Then there was a loan scandal the bank went bust and so the government took over and nationalised it.

Its just another example of banks getting bolder cuz they know if they fall, the government will save them. If the government stayed away and the bankers knew if they screwed it up and the bank goes down, then it'ld all really come down onto them, they wouldn't take such risks in the first place. This is how the free market system works.

In a proper free market system, when a bank goes bust, the bank goes down. The leaders of the institution get prosecuted. The bank either shuts down or goes for sale. Yes people lose their money but if this was the way to be then the bankers would be a lot more careful with how they're going to run the institution and even if one bank goes down, it wouldn't end up taking the whole world economy down with it. The economic crisis we're facing is due to globalisation.

I believe the government should put the anglo-irish bank back on sale now that it has done saving the people's money. Which in this current economic state is not gonna happen. You see how everything is caught up in one big web of mess where everything is connected and one thing effects another.
This world is heading towards an ugly version of socialism where individual states and economies don't matter anymore. The whole world is just one big global business.

Am I the only libertarian free-market advocator out here in a world full of left-wing socialists?!

BostonB

Eircom fail. Is anyone surprised? Needed to culled and something else put in its places years ago. But not use any of the same people if possible.

NewDubliner

af_thefragile wrote: »

I don't know the full story about that bank but from what i've learnt they lent out billions of euros of loan to property builders and when the economy collapsed they went down with it. Then there was a loan scandal the bank went bust and so the government took over and nationalised it.....
Am I the only libertarian free-market advocator out here in a world full of left-wing socialists?!

Anglo is a fine example of libertarian free-market practice, hence the shortage of enthusiasts for it. The bank failed because it took reckless and imprudent risks and disregarded the welfare of its shareholders and most of its customers.

If you think that companies are run for the benefit of customers, you must be very, very young.

In the same way, value for customers is very far down the list of priorities for the people who control Eircom.

djpbarry

Sqaull20 wrote: »

We are still going to have the same crap service!!!

You could switch to an alternative service provider?

af_thefragile

NewDubliner wrote: »

Anglo is a fine example of libertarian free-market practice, hence the shortage of enthusiasts for it. The bank failed because it took reckless and imprudent risks and disregarded the welfare of its shareholders and most of its customers.

If you think that companies are run for the benefit of customers, you must be very, very young.

In the same way, value for customers is very far down the list of priorities for the people who control Eircom.

In a proper free-market system all the consumer is the one who decides which businesses run and which don't.
The businesses would have to run for the consumer if not no one will buy its product and it'll fail. Just how it used to be in the old times!

As i mentioned its all interrelated. A libertarian free-market state would leave both the businesses and the customer vulnerable to loss. Hence the customer would have to get smart, take responsibility and get wise with how and where it decides to spend its money.

So in a libertarian state you've got a wise customer and a transparent business. If the customer realises the business has other plans than serving the best interest of the customer, he'll just chose another business which is more honest and hence the dishonest business will fail.

This is the problem with all you left wing socialists. You guys always go on saying the people are too stupid to make their own decisions while the businesses are too evil to be trusted, hence give all the power to the government to control the businesses and people's lives!

We libertarians say the power needs to be with the people and the people's owned businesses. The people need to get smart and take responsibility to their actions. The businesses need to work to serve the customer or else if no one is buying their product, they're gonna fail and no one is gonna come to save them.

Yes, i do believe most companies run for the benefit of themselves which in turn serves towards the benefit of the customer. A better business will create a better product which will serve the customer better. Unlike what happens in a socialist state where the same product keeps being fed into the people's lives and they all buy into it like sheep.

Also you must be very young if you believe the government run businesses run for the benefit of its people!

What happened to Anglo-Irish bank and Eircom is a result of this pseudo-capitalistic society we've got today not free-market capitalism.

spank_inferno

af_thefragile wrote: »

In a proper free-market system all the consumer is the one who decides which businesses run and which don't.
The businesses would have to run for the consumer if not no one will buy its product and it'll fail. Just how it used to be in the old times!

As i mentioned its all interrelated. A libertarian free-market state would leave both the businesses and the customer vulnerable to loss. Hence the customer would have to get smart, take responsibility and get wise with how and where it decides to spend its money.

So in a libertarian state you've got a wise customer and a transparent business. If the customer realises the business has other plans than serving the best interest of the customer, he'll just chose another business which is more honest and hence the dishonest business will fail.

This is the problem with all you left wing socialists. You guys always go on saying the people are too stupid to make their own decisions while the businesses are too evil to be trusted, hence give all the power to the government to control the businesses and people's lives!

We libertarians say the power needs to be with the people and the people's owned businesses. The people need to get smart and take responsibility to their actions. The businesses need to work to serve the customer or else if no one is buying their product, they're gonna fail and no one is gonna come to save them.

Yes, i do believe most companies run for the benefit of themselves which in turn serves towards the benefit of the customer. A better business will create a better product which will serve the customer better. Unlike what happens in a socialist state where the same product keeps being fed into the people's lives and they all buy into it like sheep.

Also you must be very young if you believe the government run businesses run for the benefit of its people!

What happened to Anglo-Irish bank and Eircom is a result of this pseudo-capitalistic society we've got today not free-market capitalism.

Correctimundo!

but I deem it wouldnt be a common view around here.

NewDubliner

af_thefragile wrote: »

In a proper free-market system all the

That might be in some fantasy world but not here.

The PDs used the same kind of arguments, it was just a cover story for joe public getting ripped off.

If you're lucky companies are run for the benefit of shareholders, that's as good as it gets. But in some case, it's the senior execs.

As regards the unfortunate customer, prices are fixed by cartels and an illusion of choice is created.

Any lay-offs at Eircom will not benefit customers in any way.

hellbent

Here's the issue: should the Government re-nationalise eircom or let new owners buy it for, say €95M, who then strip the remaining cash(>€230 M)from the company, asset-strip the property portfolio as much as possible, and then default on their €4 BILLION of debt, causing the bankruptcy of the company?

Because, it eircom goes, there's no point in saying "so what, we'll use alternative providers" - they can't exist without eircom, as they use the eircom infrastructure to provide connections to premises. No eircom , no phone service at all. Surely communication counts as 'systemic' infrastructure, as much as the term applies to the banks.

Eircom was going well until privatised. It had shed a lot of jobs, was making huge profits (having been 'fattened up' for privatisation), and since then it is mainly new technology that causes the requirement for fewer jobs, same as in any company.

The robbers who took over in the intervening years are those responsible for the sad state of the company now, not employees. Virtually no money has been spent on infrastructure in the last 4 years, despite promises to develop 'next generation' services. The country need to buy back eircom now, on the cheap, and run it until the infrastructure goals of this nation are realised.

And surely, by then the irrational desire to flog off essential services, like eircom, the ESB, Bord Gais, etc, will have passed.

As for eircom being a crap company, look at the huge percentage of returning customers they got, customers that obviously found the alternatives to be even more crap.

af_thefragile

NewDubliner wrote: »

That might be in some fantasy world but not here.

The PDs used the same kind of arguments, it was just a cover story for joe public getting ripped off.

If you're lucky companies are run for the benefit of shareholders, that's as good as it gets. But in some case, it's the senior execs.

As regards the unfortunate customer, prices are fixed by cartels and an illusion of choice is created.

Any lay-offs at Eircom will not benefit customers in any way.

There have been many free-market states in the past that worked perfectly.
It was only when the government starts interfering with the businesses that the markets started to screw up.

Its not the government who decides how businesses are run but upto the businesses themselves to find the best product.
We wouldn't have laptop computers and fancy mobile phones if it wasn't for businesses competing with one another to create the best product that would give the most customer satisfaction.

Also the mobile phone service providers run quite like a free market system too. The public are free to chose between vodafone, O2, meteor and 3. All of those businesses compete of each other to provide customer with better and cheaper service. If it wasn't for that competition we wouldn't be having networks giving off offers like free texts and calls and cell phones getting cheaper and more affordable.

The car business is another good example. Although there have been mergers and now in Europe its just two giants competing off each other. There's the VW group and the Fiat group. But there's still competition between the two and from predominantly the Asian market and hence to keep up car manufacturers need to keep releasing better, newer models every year to keep up or else they'll get left behind and fail (like GM!).

Now when you've got a monopolised industry like Eircom is in Ireland with a majority share in telecommunications sector, you stop seeing rapid progress and the quality of service starts to drop. And so when another more promising new business comes along in the sector giving people better deals than the old monopolised one, people will flock to get the new product from the new business and the inefficient old one starts to fail. This is exactly what has happened with Eircom.


Cartels are formed only when they're allowed to form and this can only be done when there is not much competition in the market. In a market with heavy competition like in a proper free-market, Cartels won't be able to hold together for long.


Also as a response to the comment the person above made, Eircom is a crap service indeed. And indeed the people who run Eircom have been lazy to keep up with the times to improve service.
The reason other service providers aren't much better is cuz Eircom was a monopoly until not too long ago and so other companies haven't had much time to build up their own proper infrastructure yet.
Eircom also likes to use a bit of its nationalistic pride to attract customers. Support Eircom cuz even though its ****, its Irish!! Which was part of the reason why it got a good few returning customers and because it decided it was time to catch up with the other service providers and it improved a fair bit.
Still many people prefer other service providers to Eircom when it comes to broadband internet. Eircom just has the strong hold over land line telecommunications which as there being not many better options (due to the reasons mentioned above) and people can't be bothered to switch to a new one, Eircom has managed to maintain its customers.

hellbent

af_thefragile wrote: »

Now when you've got a monopolised industry like Eircom is in Ireland with a majority share in telecommunications sector, you stop seeing rapid progress and the quality of service starts to drop. And so when another more promising new business comes along in the sector giving people better deals than the old monopolised one, people will flock to get the new product from the new business and the inefficient old one starts to fail. This is exactly what has happened with Eircom.

People always flock to alternative providers of a service that was previously a monopoly, usually in a fit of pique, and probably rightly so too. It also helps that the pricing structure of the alternative product is pre-determined by a regulator to make the move attractive, and to guarantee loss of market share for the monopoly. After all, that's the whole point of de-regulation, so why say it indicates the 'failure' of the monopoly? It's simply a normal part of any company experiencing a new competitor on the block.

af_thefragile wrote: »

The reason other service providers aren't much better is cuz Eircom was a monopoly until not too long ago and so other companies haven't had much time to build up their own proper infrastructure yet.

AFAIK, eircom is just 10 years in existence, since it was privatised. Denis O'Brien's company was already in existence for some years before that providing an alternative to the then Telecom Eireann. You say the other companies haven't had enough time to put in their own infrastructure? That line of argument is a bit thin at this stage. Truth is, the newcomers never intended to put in any infrastructure, they simply wanted eircom, a private/public company since 1999, to hand over its own infrastructure for free, and allow these niche-providers to attain super-profits. I doubt if any of the alternative providers has put in more than a few kilometers of copper cable, and then only in Dublin2.

Anyhow, I'm not saying eircom isn't crap: a lot of people think so, so their experience must've been pretty awful. What I am suggesting is that the Government need to seriously think about the possibility or likelihood of eircom's demise, and whether they should buy it again - re-nationalise it due to its 'systemic' importance.

Praetorian

I think there are a hell of a lot of good people working in Eircom, but there are too many doing very little for huge money. A friend of mine works about 4 hours per day and earns about 40% more than average industrial wage. It's just madness.

It would a be a full expensive circle, but I'd be for nationalisation with maybe 500-600 job losses. I'm sure the EU won't let us nationalise will they?