The management of Dairygold last night claimed a "very strong level of interest" from its staff in the €50 million voluntary redundancy package at its north Cork operations where it plans to cut 500 jobs.
As a Labour Relations Commission mediation hearing continued in Mallow, Co Cork, the 5 p.m. deadline passed for staff to register an interest in voluntary redundancy or face involuntary redundancy by December 17th.
While a company spokesman said he would not specify how many of the 1,500 staff were opting for redundancy, he said it would be fair to say the response had been "very strong".
He said that later today, management at Dairygold would be examining the applications and would tell its staff tomorrow whether their applications had been successful.
The speed at which the troubled dairy processing company moved following acceptance by the workers of the package to cut jobs, has been the main cause of complaint from the unions at Dairygold which recommended the package.
They sought yesterday's Labour Relations Commission hearing on the basis of the speed Dairygold had moved and on the level of forced redundancies which may result.
Before going into yesterday's talks in Mallow, Mr Joe Cunningham of SIPTU, the main union in the company, said he was opposed to forced redundancies and it was important that the workers be given more time.
In an uncompromising statement delivered to the commission yesterday, the chief executive of the company, Mr Jerry Henchy, said there was no alternative to the survival plan .
"We need to reduce our costs now and this means making 500 staff redundant before the end of the year.
"This is not negotiable. We have not put forward this number as some form of negotiating tactic, we are talking about people's livelihoods and futures and we will not play games with them," he said.
"The choice facing Dairygold and its staff now is a simple but stark one.
"Either 500 people leave the company now with a generous severance package or a much greater number of staff will lose their jobs with nothing but statutory terms in a short few years," he said. Like a sinking liner taking water, he said, Dairygold had now reached the tipping point, adding that Dairygold was in "deep trouble".
He said the redundancy package was a fair one and would be implemented in a fair and transparent manner.
It is understood the average payment on offer to staff is around €60,000 for each of the staff opting to leave.
Workers with 10 years of service can expect to receive €33,500 if they are being paid €500 a week.
That would rise to almost €100,000 where the worker was on similar wages with 30 years of service, based on 6.5 weeks pay for every year of service.
In the last financial year, 2002, the company lost €3.4 million on its business operation and profitability dropped by €20 million, a fall of 80 per cent on the previous year's performance. The company's core business, milk processing, lost €13 million last year and the projected losses for this year are €3 million.
The company has estimated that annual losses at the company, which employs just over 3,000 people, could be as high as €26 million in 2007 if remedial action is not taken.
After a decade of good times, the dairy sector has been badly hit by falling returns from the international markets which has seen demand for dairy products fall.