Belfast aerospace company Shorts is to cut its workforce by up to 280. Unions and staff were informed that the jobs would have to be axed because of a cut in aircraft production by its Canadian parent company Bombardier.
The company warned there was a risk of further redundancies later in the year. Last October Bombardier announced it was scaling back production rates of a number of its aircraft because of the state of the global airline market.
Shorts said as a result that a total of 556 jobs were likely to go in January and July. The January job losses were delayed and the company said today it had managed to protect around 100 jobs through the repatriation of outsourced work to its East Belfast plant.
The company said it hoped much of the new wave of cuts could be achieved through voluntary redundancy and early retirement, as well as redeployment of staff within the company. The latest cutbacks will reduce total employment at Shorts to around 5,300.
