40 Jobs lost as Contact 4 closes

Wage fears as sudden closure of call centre results in 40 job losses

40 employees at the Dingle based call centre Contact 4 lost their jobs last Thursday when centre manager Imelda McCracken received a phonecall indicating that all operations were to be halted immediately and that everyone employed there was to pack up and go home.
The Glasgow telemarketing company established call-centres in Dingle, Achill Island (Mayo) and Gaoth Daobhair (Donegal) almost three years ago with over €3million euro in grant aid received from local Gaeltacht authority Udarás na Gaeltachta.
The employees, who were paid on a monthly basis, now face an anxious wait to determine whether or not they will receive their wages for the past five weeks, in addition to other monies owed such as outstanding holiday pay, bonus payments for sales targets reached during work and, in some cases, redundancy payments for full-time employees.
"It was a normal working day, we were pushing on the phones to reach our daily sales targets when at 3pm I received a call from head office in Glasgow to say that the centre was closing there and then and that everyone had to go home immediately" explained centre manager Imelda.
The immediacy of the shock closure has devastated those who had been employed there, many of whom have young families, mortgages and were 100% dependent on the centre.
It is also a tough blow to the many employees who had received skills training in the centre, having returned to work after long-term unemployment.
"You would never expect that something like this would happen in 2007, its like something out of the 1970s" added local man David O'Neill who, as a senior employee, is owed several weeks holiday pay as well as bonus payments for sales targets he achieved during work.
Other employees at the Dingle centre are disgusted at the way they have been treated. "We have been shown absolutely no respect," said Michael Smurfwhite, who has been employed with the company for the past two years. Major building had been undertaken at Dingle's Udarás buildings in Milltown to facilitate Contact 4's arrival including the construction of a large extension and car park in an area of scenic beauty beside a river bank.
Some criticisms have been levelled locally towards Udarás na Gaeltachta who brought originally brought the company to the area.
However a statement released by Udarás na Gaeltachta this week indicated that they too had no prior notice of the closures which resulted in the loss of 108 jobs in Dingle, Achill Island and Gaoth Daobhair.
"These closures are a serious setback for employment in the Gaeltacht but it is worth noting that Údarás na Gaeltachta has shown its ability to source modern service investment, which generates substantial employment for Gaeltacht locations and will endeavour to build on the skills base built up in this sector over the past number of years" read the statement.
However this has done nothing to quell the distain felt by many of the employees. "We cannot believe that an agency of the Government, who invested so much money in this, would allow something like this to happen where employess are just told to pack up and go home" said Mr. Smurfwhite.
"This is not like Dublin, you can't walk down the road and get another job. What are we supposed to do now?"