Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
UP TO 2,000 jobs are set to go at Eircom under a cost saving plan being drawn up by the company’s board of directors, TheJournal.ie understands.
According to an internal email, 30 per cent of the company’s workforce will lose their jobs between now and June 2014.
No compulsory job cuts are being sought as of yet, however those who have passed the age of 60 will be asked to retire.
In a statement, Eircom said it informed staff today that it was reducing the current workforce from 5,700 in order to accelerate a range of cost saving measures.
“It is envisaged that the existing workforce will reduce by 2,000 employees from our current level of 5,700 as part of the cost saving programme. Other changes include further modernisation of our work practices and consolidation of under-utilised office locations across the country.
Union representatives have been informed of the announcement and it is the company’s intention that detailed discussions on the programme will commence shortly.
Commenting on the announcement, Herb Hribar, eircom Group CEO said, “The challenges facing Eircom are significant. They require a fundamental transformation in the way we are organised, the business activities we prioritise and the work practices we have adopted in order to substantially reduce our costs and become more efficient.
The programme is ambitious but the challenges are not insurmountable. The business strategy remains sound and our strategic investment continues. Achieving these cost reductions is vital to providing the organisation with greater flexibility. It will enable eircom to deliver greater value, exciting new products such as fibre broadband and improved service to its customers across Ireland.
The Communications Workers Union said it understood that the management team at Eircom was undertaking a review of its operations including current staffing levels.According to Steve Fitpatrick, CWU Secretary General, any reductions in job numbers were a matter for discussion and negotiation between the Company and its workers.
“We welcome the managements’ commitment to engaging with the Eircom workforce and their Union representatives and we wish to stress that any further reductions in job numbers must follow established protocol and be on a voluntary basis only.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Wow. They have either lost a massive amount of business or have a spectacularly unproductive workforce.
Wow, hold your horses Simon! My dad works with Eircom and works very hard! Often doing as much overtime as he can. If he loses his job my family are fecked! Don’t go throwing accusations like that unless you’ve got valid evidence to back up your point/opinion.
probably the latter
Simon – the problem is not with Eircom’s workforce. The company was in examinership until June and it’s debt is over €2 billion. They are not competitive and are losing thousands of customers every month, primarily to UPC.
I remember with my last company trying to get Eircom to install lines for our new office. I’ve never seen so many hoops to jump through. And the Eircom engineers would refuse to do anything but plug the cable in at each end and turn on the modem. We had to supply and run the lines ourselves, and yet still Eircom were no shows on 4 occasions, and were incapable of providing us with information needed, before we rang the IDA in a fit of rage and they pressured Eircom into turning up.
I think we can put most of Eircoms problems down to one of the greatest privatisation disasters in history. The state sold a company, not without it’s problems but certainly capable of investing properly in broadband infrastructure.
Those citizens that bought shares, paid for Eircom twice and got shafted after the private sector asset striped it numerous times, loading it with debt and sinking the share prices. Meanwhile it has been raided by its own staff and it’s business model basically amounts to squeezing every last cent out of a network not fit for purpose via archaic fees like ‘line rental’.
The state is now in the relegation zone when it comes to the broadband league tables and it has the cheek to talk about the ‘smart economy’, it’d be funny it if it wasn’t so sad.
Eircom has suffered so badly over the last few years due to a number of factors. As the largest provider in the country it has a responsibility to provide necessary services which the run at a great loss. Having changed ownerhip somewhere in the reigon of five times in as many years there has been some difficult but poor decisions at the highest levels.
I spent some time working for Eircom in their sales and service department, the majority of Eircoms staff are working incredibly hard to keep a company, which carries burdens no other provider has to, from going under.
Carrying these burdens has meant Eircom has had to spend enormous sums of cash it didn’t have in an effort to keep their services as up to date as possibe. Their competitors have had the luxury of being more liquid and have therefore been able to bring better services.
Many people criticise Eircoms services without thinking about why they ended up like this.
I’ll add that it is well recognised within the company that the products are poor, customer service can be a nightmare and their hardware (lines etc) is falling apart in many areas but again, enormous burdens and poor leadership.
Unbelievable… Their workforce is 2-3 times their competitor’s per customer, their customer base is rapidly declining…AND THEIR STAFF ARE STILL WORKING OVERTIME???
Megan I asked a question. Your dramatically defensive response has given some clarity. Overtime? What’s that? If you elect to work Overtime, you are doing it for yourself. People who work hard are the ones who work overtime without massive incremental pay. Don’t worry about your Dad. He will be well taken care of.
Yes Neil you are dead right. What causes uncompetitiveness? An overhead structure in disproportion to its income. What’s the principal overhead. Salaries. Thanks for answering the question.
I worked for a while in eircoms telesales department.. It was a long time ago now but I found that the leads we were given were a massive waste of time. They had us calling people who couldn’t get broadband to try and sell them broadband.. Talking to marketing (the people compiling the leads) was like talking to a wall. They couldn’t get their heads around the idea that to call these customers and dangle the carrot of broadband – which they very much wanted – out in front of them and then say “oh Im sorry, your exchange hasn’t actually been enabled” (the system took so long to tell you this vital information) was wasting the customers time, wasting the agents time, costing the company money and generating nothing but ticked off customers. They still expected sales despite the fact that they were physically impossible.
If that issue hasn’t changed I’m not surprised they would be losing cash.
It wasn’t like that issue was confined to our team either..
The guys on the phones were generally very sympathetic with negative customer feedback – we could see it from the inside, the management team left a lot to be desired and they did make a lot of poor decisions.. Staff turnover was very high because of this reason, it was a tremendously frustrating job.
Eircom once took 9mths an 10 visits to install a business fibre comms solution where I work… They even sent a van round one day to put a sticker on the equipment. Farcical. Totally inefficient.
2,000 jobs there, 1,500 at an post and 100 at JJB. Yet you can bet the media will be smeared with the faces of Kenny & Co. when another 20 jobs might be created in the back end of nowhere.
spot on jason, kenny and co have been travelling the globe telling bare faced lies about the state the economy is in, they think if they just keep talking up this imaginary recovery itll make it true
I agree with you nearly 100 % Jason. its the back end of nowhere part? are jobs worthless if not in Dublin/Cork?
Jobs are jobs, Ireland desperately needs to address unemployment throughout the country. I just mean that the government seems to latch onto the smallest job openings in the most remote areas and claim them as some sort of major victory. Yet we see major companies in major populated areas cutting huge numbers of staff and suddenly Leinster House is hidden away without a whisper about the losses. You either speak actively about both creation and losses or you keep your mouth shut at all times. They’re trying to have their cake and eat it.
Jason – in addition to the job losses u mention there is also the 44 AIB branch closures last Friday with its consequential redundancies, with more to come between now and the middle of 2013.
Eircom never tackled the old P&T culture that they inherited. Work practices and attitudes seem the same as they were 20 years ago.
This has nothing to do with ‘de gover-ment’, it is the private sector and they are unable to compete with faster and leaner organisations.
Jesus, lets be honest here, if they can’t beat a sevice offering as shit as UPC, then theres no hope for them.
Their fault for being such an awful provider , I work in telecoms and even their business support is terrible , had everything from service engineers cutting the wrong lines to pbx equipment being blamed for line faults, mislabeled consumer units. Their broadband is terrible, they issue out some of the worst modems ever to home users .
I feel bad for the staff but this was a long time coming
too right you are, there a disaster to deal with. and meteor is just as bad. only in ireland would a company with a monopoly on telephone lines be able to run a company so bad that its makes a loss!
I have a cost savings tip for eircom ! Stop sending us phone books ! This is the 21st century , nobody uses phone books and they are unnecessary weight in the weelie bin !!!!
Then they tell us we have turned a corner. Who are they kidding.
John
Turning corners has nothing to do with it. Eircom has been uncompetitive for hears and every owner has lost their shirt on this unproductive leviathan . The idea of mass layoffs has nothing whatever to do with the performance of the Irish economy and this news has been coming for a very long time.
Ah now, I’d definitely say the economy has some what to do with it! Uncompetitiveness in a recession is surly going to cost jobs especially if they are looking after holding their profit base!!
A corner into a one way street we are facing the wrong way in.
hope kenny and his overpaid drones are pleased with their so called job creation strategy
when they hear this and the recent an post announcement well at least we are good little Europeans
They’re creating jobs, but it’s almost like putting a plaster on a bleeding artery. You can’t combat unemployment when your best achievements include 200 jobs over 4 years when you lose 3,600 jobs in one day. You can bet you’ll see at least 1,000 of them leaving over the next 6 months.
Vote YES for jobs!!! Hope all you lisbon voters are happy with yourselves
Eircom has been bought and sold and stripped of assets and value since its original float. It’s a disgrace that it was done this way. Should have been split into networks and service like ESB. how can the let go so many with such a large network. I understand efficiencies But 1/3 of the workforce sounds incredible..
terrible news with xmas round the corner,eircom will be dead and buried when sky arrive,another balls up by the govt but sure 50 jobs in a factory in the middle of nowheresville and enda predicts the jobs initiative is working,shame on them
Mick you do know Sky’s Broadband partner in Ireland is Eircom! so anyone who subscribes to skys broadband service when it rolls out will just be getting Eircom under the sky brand. Still have to deal with Eircoms incompedant Tech support and customer service staff who’s general answer to everything is the problem is your to far away from the exchange.
well sky did take on a couple of hundred staff in customer service to look after broadband,it way well be they are using eircoms infrastructure but if you have your tv with sky and they bundle both together for the same or similar price to what your getting at the moment with eircom phone and broadband,your gonna go with sky aren’t ya surely?
Sleepless nights ahead for many families :-(
Eircom have been a complete and utter joke of a company to deal with , I can’t get broadband but my neighbours all have it ? Five years now I’ve been trying to get broadband …
I had that problem Daithi, the line into the house from there box was faulty, they said if they can supply a phone service thats all they need to supply. BB was optional. Ended up having to pay them for a second line and gamble it worked, they would not even garrentee bb on it. Suffice to say I’m now with UPC..8mb BB from eircom versus 150mb from upc for the same price, no brainer. I pity the people outside the major cities who have no choice but to deal with Eircoms poor service.
Daithi, as a matter of interest, are there no other providers bar eircom? UPC for example. I assume they’re a joke too? Just curious.
John I don’t have a line capable of hosting broadband is the problem, similar to Derek, so no provider can give me broadband. They told me recently I could try applying for an extra line and see if that would be capable but no guarantee, and I’d have to keep it, and pay the line rental, for a min of a year even if it didn’t work. My only option is for the NBS and 3 mobile which doesn’t work if its windy …
If your lines poor and your neighbours have broadband why can’t eircom improve the line. Why can’t they bunch pairs. Has anyone every measured the loss, the loop resistance and the insulation resistance of your pair? I presume that there are specs that have to be adhered to in this country. When I used to be a linesman I always used a 500 volt megger to test line insulation. Obviously care has to be taken to disconnect sensitive customer apparatus first.
Once I had a problem which I was given to investigate which no one else had been able to find. I put my megger on the line in the exchange and could see smoke coming of of the insulation. The poor customers pair was changed out and she was happy at last. She had intermittent loss of service, always difficult to find.
Another trick which degraded service was to use line concentrators and a 1 + 1 carrier systems. I was told by engineers that line concentrators were used here which is why dial up Internet was bad in my community, but I do not no for a fact.
Ex BT apprentice and engineer retired.
Problem is that Eircom will maintain if you can recieve calls and make calls then the line is fine, they would rather loose a customer than give a customer a replacment line for free because BB is not working.
It is difficult but not impossible to complain effectively.
So you have to find a way of complaint which is acceptable. Bad transmission is usually caused by a high resistance joint that breaks down when ringing current is applied and difficult to find as it is intermittent. Ringing voltage is 70 vac and line voltage is 50 vdc. Persistent complaints will eventually lead to a line being tested by a person and not a machine. If the linesman is conscientious he will do his job properly! Bad transmission reports cannot be effectively disputed by a telecoms company.
One test that a competent person could perform is by measuring the current supplied to a 600 ohm resistor connected across the telephone line. this will give the line relay resistance and the line resistance by calculation using ohms law. Line loop resistance in the UK was limited to 1000 ohms. The exchange voltage is 50 volts. Obviously comparing current drawn to a 600 ohm termination on a neighbours phone compared to the same termination on your own line may give a clue as to the quality of your own line. Analogue meters of 20 Kohms per volt sensitivity are best for testing, high input resistance digital meters can give misleading results. Telephones are 600 ohms impedance so I think if I was arguing the case I would say to the telephone man I get x milliamperes current drawn by my phone on my line and y milliamperes on my neighbours line. Why is my current lower? There must be a latent fault on my line which precludes me from getting broadband. My line must be high resistance. (There are other faults that cause degradation of service but this is one test that can be made)
I would complain of bad transmission and would continue to complain of bad transmission every week. Several attempts would probably have to be made before an engineer would respond. Unfortunately this does require some technical knowledge. I would ask the engineer politely for the results of his test. Most engineers are approachable and on the side of the customer. I would ask him why my next door neighbours had broadband and I could not. I would ask if my bad transmission fault would preclude me from broadband. I would look and see that they were routed on the same distribution pole. If that was the case then the situation is not acceptable.
The next step would be to write to customer services very politely and ask them to detail why I was precluded from broadband provision when my neighbours had it and please could eircom provide me with service. I would explain that my neighbours were fed from the same DP (if that were the case) and therefore please explain why in detail!
As a last resort I would write to the minister and regulator.
The problem I used to find is that some jointers would use split legs occasionally. Remote testers do not pick this type of fault up. The really good jointers may be far and few between nowadays.
Unfortunately dealing with telecoms companies require a bit of knowledge to make progress. I had a few run ins when I used to use Vodafone for internet as I had to use an aerial mounted on a 30 foot pole to receive GPRS signals from 6 miles away and not line of sight. It worked reasonable well until we had three, but if the service was down the complaints clerk always tried to stonewall me and say you are out of area and we don’t provide service there. I used to persist and quote the level of signal that I normally received in dBs and eventually I would get to talk to a real engineer who said in future just get put through to me. After that I always got support.
It’s a question of knowing the right buttons to push!
I also had problems with three who said I was not a NBS customer and did not live in an NBS area. I said we’ll ok I will cancel my contract and reapply and they conceded and altered me to NBS with the increased download allowance. (They were in error but persistence won the day. Looking at my location assuming to apply for a new connection confirmed that I was in an NBS area despite their constant denial)
As a linesman I used to tell my customers how to complain effectively. That usually got results!
most of Eircom and an Post current difficulties stem from ridiculous decision s made by the unaccountable Regulator.
If you look closely at Eircom you will see that the CWU union had a massive hand in the debts there.They actually own shares in the company along with all the cast iron contracts of all PS staff, and at every sale the got huge windfalls. They also take a massive payment each year..Rid Eircom of its old work shy staff,remove the union and they actually have a good model..annaul profits are 400mil plus
I believe you but I think you’re lying.
After the words if you look closely at Eircom nothing else you say is true.
This would be shocking news if true, 2,000 people, you’ll have to get more sources as there will be a lot of families having sleepless nights!
Anecdotal stories about how hard people work in eircom are pointless!! The facts is eircom has poor strategy and wasn’t prepared for a shift in the industry with regards to upgraded networks!! It’s now left with an outdated network that just isn’t able to handle the level of bandwidth that will be required for the modern home !!
I was a technical officer with BT in the UK as was employed for 30 years until retiring. The Eircom engineers that were on loan to BT to after the last hurricane experienced there in the UK were as good as any BT engineers. At that time they said all of Ireland was up together with external plant.
Since coming to,live in Ireland in 2003 I was gobsmacked at how bad the overhead plant appears in the area I live in and have seen when travelling. Cables not run properly, stay wires broken or non existent where the should be. Wires held up on poles by nails, broken poles, leaning poles. Broken wires lying in hedges or occasionally wrapped around a pole and not recovered. Tree cutting in desperate need to reduce tension on cables. Because I had been a linesman during my career I still cannot help looking at a telephone route when travelling, it’s sort of second nature!
One afternoon in the UK I was sent out of my normal patch to travel 70 miles to a repeater station to investigate a power alarm. I remonstrated that I might not be the best suited person to send as I was exchange and lines trained, not power. But the computer system matched my skills as the best suited nearest person. So I travel to pick up a key as this site was restricted access, and the guy who signed out the key said ” why have you been sent, I have a man just a few miles down the road who will be finished his current job in half an hour”. So I get there and the fault was exactly as I guessed, a mains failure and the generator manifold was barely warm. The mains probably was restored about an hour before I arrived and nobody bothered to page me. In my opinion a computer system was not as capable of matching staff to jobs and monitoring alarms as a human is. Not an isolated incident by any means!
I would guess that engineers in eircom must have severe constraints judging by the state of what I have seen and worse problems than I experienced whilst working for BT.
Same problem as most engineers in BT used to say, too many chiefs and not enough Indians.
And when BT shed staff the guys were taken on at a lower rate by an external telephone company who then were employed as contractors by BT. But the guys didn’t care because they had their pensions and were still employed!
And I think the telephone infrastructure and NBS scheme is terrible in the country area where I live. Speed test on 3 is very low on occasion and below their guaranteed minimum. And the download allowance is not comparable to hardwired services.
But then council services and road repairs poor as well!
If I understand the article correctly, most jobs will go by asking employees 60+ to retire. Sorry, if I was 60 right now and probably would still be covered by the pensions schemes still in place when eircom and its predecessors where state owned, OMG… I’d sign on the dotted line quicker than they could lie about their broadband speeds!
And hello, all other telecoms providers in Ireland provide similar or, in most cases, superior service at not only a fraction of the cost, but also a fraction of the workforce. Surely, you do not need close to 6000 employees to run a telecoms network that will only have so much share of a market the size of Ireland.
To all those that believe they can get a better service with reduced staff numbers or think I can take my business elsewhere if necessary I say shame on you that you are so gullible as Eircom staff are the only ones in this state both fitting & fixing fixed lines. Many Eircom workers go beyond the call of duty to provide service to customers.
Sad news just when you think our country is climbing its way back out of the mess with new jobs now this happens major blow 1 step forward 4 steps back
just when who thinks our country is climbing its way out of the mess? on what are you basing that? because enda kenny told you so?
Gerard
What new jobs ?
Can’t believe nobody has actually mentioned the unions here!!! They are what’s wrong with Eircom! Get them out and fire anyone who strikes and watch the company soar back to profitability
There has never been a strike in Eircom but sure don’t let the truth get in the way if a good rant.
There has never been a strike in Eircom but sure don’t let the truth get in the way of a good rant.
Trolling without a boat.
The question is, would we actually notice if they went on strike??? When you phone them it’s like an obstacle course of menus before you even have a chance of speaking to a human being. (anyone would think they didn’t want you to get through to them!) As for repairing lines… that’s hit and miss at the best of times. The engineer will usually come around and tell you it’s probably something in your house that’s causing the problem so they can’t investigate it without charging you €100 plus. That puts most people off there and then from following up on a fault. So, what would we actually notice if they went out on strike???
It’s not that big a deal, they will mostly be voluntary redundancies for people who will be happy to take it, and will be spread our over the next 2 years. I think it will be a good move as it will cut a lot of unnessesary costs and give them room to improve.
a shining beacon of how the private sector do such a better job than the public sector in supplying services not and if this is not enough proof just check out how all the privitised services are doing the UK the public is definitely not the winner
UPC beat them hands down for home broadband with their poxy 8mb, a company full of chiefs with no ideas or imagination
You can’t really criticise the government for making up a recovery when the truth is that the original ‘boom’ was made up and a lot of excess, unnecessary jobs were left alone as companies didn’t need to be competitive. Things have changed though and companies are having to size themselves appropriate to their demand.
Our politicians are supposed to be planners for the future. Visionaries etc. these guys can’t see beyond their pensions. Opportunity after opportunity has passed them by and especially on the tech area. They now need to step up and target the 5g market as they are so late to get 4G. We will loose the Intelsat of this world very shortly. By then they will retire to the south of France.
There should be a 48 hr general strike against Eircom by their workers. These job cuts will only hasten Eircom’s demise.
And a strike is really going to help ?
Most permanent workers in Eircom are already on 9 day fortnights (-10%) they call it Donovan days after the last CEO Paul Donovan.
There is a disconnect between management, staff and customers that will not get any better over the next 18 months. I’m surprised they have any customers left at all.
Eircom is dead meat. 30% reduction in force in a company that has a five day call-out on trouble calls. Who in their right mind would do business with them? How do they sell 24mb/s DSL when a customer with 8mb./s DSL is only getting 3mb/sec? Why do they lie about their broadband speeds? Why are they at war with their customers?
Reduce the workforce by 30% in two years and in four you will be reducing it by 100%.
I have seen it happen more times than I can count. If I was doing business with Eircom, I’d insist on cash-only transactions, or I’d risk getting burned and having to fire my own worker when they stop paying.
Vote yes for jobs they said?? Who would have guessed that they were lying??
Oh, don’t worry. Apple has created 2 jobs in Sligo.
Eircom was destroyed by been loaded with debt by fly by night financiers. The ESOT colluded in that for money. Now Eircom broadband, for example, is only good where UPC cannot provide a service. Sad.
I’m Sinn Fein :)
The major problem that I can see with Eircom is that their management still think they are still in the days of their monopoly when their attitude to customer service was “like it or lump it!”. I used to be in a situation where I was on first name terms with the ladies in the regulators office, due to the bad phone line. I couldn’t make a call without the line dropping never mind getting broadband, until I discovered a loophole in their licence agreement from when they bought Esat. If your line isn’t up to standard, and you just happen to be in direct line of sight of a transmitter, they are obliged to put in a wireless line for you at THEIR expense. Many phone-calls to customer service and three days later they ran a whole new line from my house to the exchange. Still said I couldn’t get broadband on it but when I called Bt and switched supplier, they were able to give me a broadband connection. I’d go back to Eircom when Hell freezes over!!!
It’s a good example of how bloated and wasteful the public service is. When Eircom had to compete on a level playing field they lost a fortune because they were still stuck with the old public service ways. The same would happen with ESB and Bord Gas but they are protected by the powers that be and still have the monopoly.
The result for the ordinary man – we have really comtetitive telephone rates but are ripped off big time when it comes to energy prices.
Eircom never bought Esat it was BT.
Sorry, you are perfectly right, I believe it was Eircell . The requirement was there from when Telecom Eireann obtained their licence to set up Eircell. As this was all over a decade ago I was a little hazy on the finer details. They then changed their name to Eircom, like we’d all just forget the crackling lines and crappy service! Until the government steps in and takes back the lines and the exchanges and upgrades them we will have a communications infrastructure that, so called third world counties, would pity. Lets hope they take the money they save from those jobs and pump it into improving the network although the cynic in me believes that it will probably be syphoned off by whatever parent corporation owns it now.
have your say