A union has said that there is “no justification” for what it has said will be 55 job losses at the Lurgan site of a packaging company.<\/p>\n
Smurfit Westrock, which also have a site in Dublin, said they have begun a consultation process to restructure its Lurgan plant in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
The company said the restructuring is part of “a planned investment programme over the next 18 months” that will” strengthen and modernise operations”.<\/p>\n
The general secretary of Unite the Union, Sharon Graham said there was “absolutely no justification for these jobs cuts”.<\/p>\n
Unite said it is a third of the workforce.<\/p>\n
Smurfit Westrock has approximately 97,000 employees across 40 countries.<\/p>\n
The Lurgan operation manufactures corrugated packaging, offering a range of sustainable solutions for industries including food, beverage and cosmetics.<\/p>\n
The Union added this was “the latest blow” to the manufacturing base in the Lurgan area.<\/p>\n
It added in recent years there were also large-scale redundancies at Glen Dimplex and at Associated Press in Portadown.<\/p>\n
Unite regional officer Sean McKeever said workers “face losing their livelihoods”.<\/p>\n
“Our members are hugely concerned that this is the first step to shutting the site,” he added.<\/p>\n
The CEO of Smurfit Westrock Ireland and UK, Eddie Fellows, said the proposed restructuring is focused on securing a “resilient and sustainable future for the business and our customers”.<\/p>\n
He added restructuring is expected to be complete by the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A union has said that there is “no justification” for what it has said will be 55 job…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-781684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}