Taking the Apple out of Cork
By Roisín de Rossa
This week the machinery for the PCB operation at Apple Computers
at Hollyhill, Cork, starts shipping out. It's on its way to
Singapore, and with it go the livelihoods of at least 550 people.
Apple has been reticent about just how many jobs are to go along
with the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) facility. Amidst headlines
that Mary Harney had saved the Apple jobs, and that jobs were
safe in Apple's Cork plant, shop stewards say that there will be
200 voluntary redundancies of so-called `permanent' staff, and
between 300 and 400 layoffs of the temporary workers. It's about
a third of the workforce.
This is just the start of the `downsizing'. Apple contracted out
a lot of work to local firms - Horman's Electronics, Walsh
Western and O'Connell's Transport, Chip Electrics, GB Insulation,
Dovertrop, and many other companies must all be affected.
``Some people have worked in the company for 10 years or so. Some
have been temporary workers for 4 or 5 years. Temporary workers
have no entitlements - no redundancy money. They are not even in
the Union, (SIPTU). How will they meet their payments? The
closure will bring real hardship to many of us,'' says, ex-shop
steward, Frank Wallace.
Holyhill lies amongst some of the worst unemployment blackspots
that reach over the back of Cork's Northside. If Apple's Cork
plant was one of the paws of the Celtic Tiger it did not
substantially affect the area which has unemployment rates of
around 80%. But, as Don O'Leary, Sinn Fein community activist,
says, ``Apple took very few on from this part of the city. The few
from here who did get jobs in Apple, they could then move away
into private housing, which now, with the lay-offs, they will not
be able to afford.''
Apple is shy about declaring its profits, or just how much is
earned in Hollyhill. But after massive losses of over $2 billion,
Apple this year is back in the black, with earnings in the first
quarter of 1998 at £34 million, and quarterly value sales at
$1.578bn.
Ultimately it is all in the hands of the multi-millionaire boss,
appropriately named Steve Jobs. Along with his friend Steve
Wozniak, Jobs, then in his early 20s, took America by storm when
he started Apple back in the late 70s. In 1985 Apple had a 15%
market share. Now it is down to 4%.
Conditions were good in Apple. Basic gross pay for assembly
workers is around £240 for a 36 hour week, with 5% annual pay
increases. Before Christmas management introduced a 12 hour shift
system. There was talk of a strike. ``There are a group of workers
in here who are stirring up trouble. We're going to force them
out. They are a cancer on this factory,'' was management's
response at a meeting of factory floor workers. It wasn't much
different from Jobs' attitude to his employees. ``We've 10,000
mediocre employees that have to be cleaned out,'' he is reported
as saying.
``But,'' Frank says, ``it was very democratic in the company. You'd
call management by their first names, all new style human
resource management. Four shop stewards were elected to join a
Partnership Process run by IBEC's Irish Productivity Council.
They took us off to wine and dine, in the best hotels, on
overtime. They talked about the need to increase productivity in
the PCB area. but when we raised the issue of rewards and
recognition, the management side set up a subcommittee. The only
reward on offer was job security. It looks a bit thin now under
the circumstances of closure of the PCB operation.''
Frank is angry. He says: ``The company got a £15m grant from the
IDA to finance the new machinery for the PCB operation... and
this in addition to the tax breaks. Look at it. 10% profits tax,
and no witholding tax. That is all government money - our money -
helping to finance a $10 billion company, owned by
multi-millionaires. It doesn't make a lot of sense, least not to
the people of Cork.''
But it does to the IDA. The IDA in its annual report published in
June says that it expects to lose 5% of the electronic industry
jobs annually, but anticipates 3 new jobs annually at the hi-tech
end in their place. ``Too bad for the pockets where the Celtic
Tiger had its paws stuck in, like Clonmel (Seagate), Limerick
(Dell), Galway (Digital) and so on,'' says Frank.
What happened? ``Bad management and waste,'' says Frank Wallace
ex-shop steward in the factory. `It was incredible. Computers
which couldn't be sold. They took a hatchet to smash them.
Workers offered to buy them, cheap. No, said management - the
bookwork would be too costly! Could they not have given them to
the local schools, community groups?'' he asks.
``They've eight assembly lines, and one line would do 60 computers
in a night. You could go home then. Management says that the
computer industry is seasonal. They'd take on temporary workers
on a Monday morning and put them out on a Monday evening.
`Seasonal' is just another word for bad management and bad
planning in the computer industry. Its not like picking spuds.''
other Apple worker explains: ``Management introduced new labour
saving machinery to get components from the warehouse to the
assembly line called Automatic Search and Retrieve System. They
had little computer operated buggies, each with electronic
cameras, special lifts and cranes to move them through the
warehouse. They never worked. A visiting delegation wanted to see
them in operation. `Hold on a minute.' said the foreman, `I'll
just call the lads.' Two of them hid behind the buggy and pushed
it! The lifts, and a specially constructed tunnel - the only
people who use them now are workers dropping over to the coffee
machine.'
Some shareholders blame the previous CEO, Gil Amelio, for the
losses. This might have had something to do with his pay which
was fixed at $990,000 a year, plus a two component bonus, which
guaranteed Amelio a further $1 million a year, for 5 years
(irrespective of company results) just for showing up to work.
Jobs himself has another word to explain the losses - the Gil
factor. Ridiculing Amelio, Jobs coined the phrase `Gil-o-meter'
as a gauge of stupidity - two `gils' being dumber than one!
Apple's losses might also have had a lot to do with their
troubled dealings with Microsoft and its boss, Bill Gates,
supposedly now worth over $50 billion in personal wealth. However
with Amelio's departure, Jobs is back as interim CEO in Apple and
in a partnership with Microsoft which ultimately got to use Mac's
icon system in the place of DOS, something which everyone who
uses computers is very pleased about.
To reclaim the market, Jobs has gone for `Pro, Go and Whoa'. Pro
is the `93 Mac Desktop with a chip made by Motorola, twice the
speed of a Pentium II. Go is a laptop to cost below $1000, which
the workers call the luggable, and the IMac, which is to be on
the shelves in the US in August.
IMac is a see-through computer, with translucent keys and a mouse
which lights up. There is some talk that its production may be
moved to Cork.
Although Steve Jobs is back in the saddle, the jobs are still
going to Singapore. And it is not because Jobs wants money. ``I
have more money than I ever wanted in my life,'' he says. ``Nice
for him,'' says Frank. Amelio, who was dismissed by the board and
wrote of his well-paid experiences describes Jobs as a conniving
backstabber ``obsessed with power''.
Whether he is or not, assembly worker jobs are going to the Far
East, because wages are one tenth of Irish wages and with the
collapsing Asian currencies, it gets cheaper and cheaper for the
West to buy into their economies.
``Jobs is a vegetarian - not just any old vegetarian, but a Vegan.
He doesn't eat honey cause it upsets the bees to take it away
from them. Its a pity he doesn't worry about how it upsets the
workers to take their jobs away,'' says Frank.
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