139 jobs are to be lost and another 45 are at risk following the announcement by Vodafone Ireland that 'a portion of the existing contracted call centre operations will be moved to other locations within the Vodafone Group and to other specialist contractors in Ireland'.
Following a review of its call centre operations, Vodafone has said that 45 roles would go in Vodafone, although all impacted employees will be offered the opportunity to transfer to alternative roles within the Vodafone Group in Ireland.
139 jobs will be lost in Rigney Dolphin, Vodafone's Irish call centre partner.
Vodafone said that some of its mobile data services would move to Vodafone Egypt from August of this year.
The Vodafone mobile back office will move this activity to India from October.
The collections operation will move to a new Irish operator.
The Communications Workers' Union has said that while Vodafone had offered to redeploy or offer a redundancy package to directly employed workers, it was seeking to deny all obligations to its customer care team employed through Rigney Dolphin.
CWU General Secretary, Terry Delany has said that 'Vodafone has enjoyed exceptional profitability in Ireland since it entered the market and continues to be highly profitable, extracting €120m in profits from its Irish operations last year.'
He continued, the company's plan to shift moderately paid Irish jobs servicing Irish customers to off-shore locations in India and Egypt, at a time when over 400,000 people are unemployed and ordinary workers and businesses are struggling to keep their heads above water, displays breath-taking callousness and insensitivity.'
Terry Delaney continued, 'the company appears happy to make profits from its Irish customers, enjoy Irish pro-business supports and Irish tax rates, but is not willing to reciprocate in supporting Irish jobs to service its Irish operations.'
