"At the back of your mind, you just wonder what to do next"
Paul O'Connor's first reaction on hearing his job was going was: 'How am I going to educate my children?' How can I make sure they get the proper education that I did not get?'."
PAUL O'CONNOR,
Flextronics
PROSPECT man Paul O'Connor worked for Flextronics until he was made redundant last June as part of that firm's cutbacks. As he admits himself, Flextronics were "like a mothership to Dell", so as soon as the cutbacks at the US firm were announced, alarm bells began to ring in the company which serviced 90 per cent of Dell's needs.
When he learnt his job was gone, Paul - a union man - asked himself the usual questions.
"I had two young children, Erica, 11, and Sarah, 9, as well as a mortgage, so my first reaction was: 'How am I going to educate my children?' How can I make sure they get the proper education that I did not get?'."
Paul kept himself sane by taking part in home improvements. He took his two young children to school, instead of his wife doing this.
But there is just one word to describe the feeling Paul - who had worked at Flextronics for more than a decade - experienced on his first day without employment.
"Depressing. You get redundancy payment, and the children think it is Christmas all over again. But at the back of your mind, you just wonder what to do next."
Flextronics operates on a skeleton staff of just a few people in Raheen now - and these staff members are set to leave the plant shortly. It is a far cry from the 500 or so people who worked for the company when Dell employed a peak of 5,000 people in Raheen.
Indeed, Flextronics has now moved to Lodz to service Dell's new manufacturing plant in the Polish city.
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