Look back at life at the Loom
15.10.09
Special Fruit of the Loom feature compiled by Liam
Porter, Simon McGeady and Damian Dowds of the Inishowen
Independent.
THERE was a time in the 1990s when Inishowen was the hub
of the biggest employment phenomenon ever to have swept
through Donegal. Having grown from a small family-owned
firm owned by the McCarters, the clothing giant Fruit of
the Loom became not just one of Donegal's biggest
employers but one of the country’s.
Throughout the 1990s things just appeared to be getting
better and better. Not only was the factory in Buncrana
going from strength to strength, but the company was
expanding its bases right across Donegal and Derry.
Factories sprung up in Malin Head, Raphoe, Milford,
Dungloe and in Campsie in Derry and at its height the
firm employed over 3,500 people in its six plants.
Then, ten years ago, came the first signs that the days
of Fruit of the Loom’s manufacturing base in Donegal
were numbered.
Early in 1999 the company announced a series of job
losses and 770 workers in Milford, Malin Head and
Buncrana lost their jobs and the first of a series of
shockwaves swept through the company.
By September of 1999 the 200 workers at the factory in
Raphoe had been told that the were to lose their jobs as
well and at the same time the company announced that
around 2,000 workers at plants in Derry and Donegal were
to be placed on a three day week.
A month later a further 190 job losses were announced
for Fruit of the Loom in Buncrana and all of a sudden
over 1,000 jobs had been shed by the company in the
space of a year.
After that, the uncertainty for the future remained with
workers at the factories in Buncrana and by 2004 the
company had issued a statement outlining its plans to
restructure its European manufacturing operations that
would result in a process of phasing down its facilities
in Ireland over four to five years.
Since then all of the manufacturing has ceased at the
Fruit of the Loom factories in Buncrana and the
satellite plants in Raphoe, Milford, Dungloe, Templemore,
Campsie and Malin Head are long since closed.
But the impact that Fruit of the Loom has made on
Inishowen and the North West remains huge.
Many workers who lost their jobs have gone on to a
variety of different careers, showing a resilience,
determination and confidence to succeed that will remain
vital to the local economy in these tough times.
And the area can now boast vital pieces of
infrastructure like the Fullerton Pollan Dam, built and
developed because of Fruit of the Loom’s presence in
Buncrana.
Ten years after the first of the job losses, the
Inishowen Independent has spoken to several former Fruit
of the Loom workers as they recall their time with the
company who at one time was Inishowen and Donegal’s
biggest employer. These are their stories… |
Annemarie McLaughlin
(Machinist and quality controller)
Annemarie McLaughlin from Muff spent almost 11 years
working in Fruit of the Loom until she took redundancy
in September 1998. She worked in unit number three at
the old Ballymacarry plant where she sewed sleeves onto
t-shirts for six years before being promoted to a
quality control position.
“It was a great place to work, especially in the early
days,” she recalled. “There was a great atmosphere on
the factory floor, with the staff playing lots of pranks
and practical jokes on one another. And on big occasions
like Christmastime there was a really good atmosphere
about the place. But when we moved to the new site a lot
of the carry-on was curtailed and there was a lot more
rules and regulations introduced.”
“The money was great,” Annemarie continued. “We were
paid a ‘piece work rate’ and worked hard – some people
even worked through their lunch breaks – and there was
loads of overtime for the first number of years. Fruit
of the Loom must have pumped some serious money into
Inishowen in wages alone.”
“I really enjoyed the quality control job,” Annemarie
said. “But in later years there was a sense that it was
too good to last. They kept expanding and building more
and more units – and the new factory where Flanagan’s
are today really was state of the art – |
 |
but people felt that it was
only a matter of time before it would come to an end.
The canteen they built was absolutely gorgeous, and had
the best of everything. But there was a sense by 1998
that it was coming to an end and I took redundancy. I
was lucky enough that I had a job in the family shop
here in Muff, where I still work today.”
Despite all the camaraderie, staff reunions haven’t yet
taken place. “I’m still friendly with several of the
girls I worked with, but there are people that I worked
with that I haven’t seen since 98, which is hard to
believe,” Annemarie said. “It would be great if there
was a reunion, but you’d need some size of a hall to
host it.” |
 |
Mairead Diggin (HR
Manager)
These days, the Fruit of the Loom bosses are viewed by
many as the ‘bad guys’ who pulled the rug from under the
feet of their Irish workforce in the chase for fatter
profits, but back in the winter of 1986, they were the
proverbial knight in shining armour.
“WP McCarter were operating on a very tight margin when
I started working there. We were always one wrong turn,
one lost order, away from closing down.
There was an explosion in the boiler house in the early
eighties and the staff just thought that’s the end. The
Fruit of the Loom takeover was a phenomenon that people
in Buncrana could not have seen coming. Suddenly to have
this massive outpouring of cash,” said Mairead Diggin,
who joined the factory as a trainee manager in 1979.
McCarters was already a big operation in the
mid-eighties, employing over 450 people, but the
American makeover would see that number mushroom and
leave Mairead’s in-tray creaking under the weight of job
applications.
“At one stage I had 5000 applications for jobs at our
factories in Ireland. People from as far away as Cork
and Waterford would travel for interviews, |
many of whom got jobs and
relocated to Donegal. Some settled here and live in the
area still.
“We continued to grow up to 1998 when things started to
go the other way. Including Derry, there were 4500
employed by Fruit of the Loom in Ireland at the peak.”
As well as hiring, as HR manager Mairead had a myriad of
other responsibilities, from dealing with employee
complaints, plant security and the co-ordination of
visits by potential clients.
“With a company as big as Fruit of the Loom, industrial
relations took up a lot of time. I had to deal with
insurance claims. And with so many different plants you
had to be fair when moving workers around them.”
Mairead remembers the speeches Mr McCarter gave to the
assembled staff.
“Willie was always good at encouraging enough people to
think of the company as their own, and the workers
responded by doing what they had to do to keep the
wolves from the door.”
It wasn’t all a heads down race to meet targets for the
Fruit of the Loom workers though.
“The company was a great social network for a lot of
people. Many of the workers were from rural areas and
the time they got to spend with their co-workers is I
think what they miss most.”
Mairead was one of the last Fruit of the Loom workers to
leave, staying on until 30th of June 2006 when she left
for a new job in Letterkenny. She still lives in
Buncrana. |
Sarah McClenaghan
(Trainee Department Manager)
SARAH McClenaghan had worked for McCarter’s for 38
years, but when the American revolution came in the mid
1980s, she embraced the change.
“When Fruit of the Loom were taking over I flew to
Louisville in Kentucky to learn the new methods of
production that would be used in Ireland. When I was
over there someone gave me a stop-watch to time a
worker. I had never had a stop-watch before and didn’t
know how to work it. We were to have ‘time and study’
managers like they had in America. The transition was
hard on the old McCarter’s workers, and some of them
took voluntary redundancy at that stage,” said Sarah who
travelled to the US headquarters on three separate
occasions.
She says it helped that there was some continuity from
the old regime.
“It was great that McCarter’s stayed on when FOTL came
in. The workers felt safer because they were still
there.”
As manager of the trainee department Sarah, from St
Columba’s Avenue, had to make sure that the vast numbers
of new recruits |
 |
needed for Fruit of the
Loom’s Buncrana operation were brought up to the
required standard in double-quick time.
“I was allocated 6 instructors to train who I turn had
to teach the new workers. When the trainees came in they
had six weeks to get up to speed. There was a special
training unit set up for trainees to practice on.”
One of the things that stands out was that young men as
well as women were on the stitching machines at the
Shore Front, not something you would have seen in shirt
factories locally before then.
For a time Fruit of the Loom brought prosperity
Buncrana.
“We worked 39 hours a week and finished early on a
Friday. On Friday afternoon Buncrana was booming with
people shopping.”
Sarah started working for McCarter’s in 1947, aged just
14. She spent 15 years as a machinist before becoming a
supervisor. Her brother, Alex, and sister, Mary, also
worked for Fruit of the Loom.
Sarah was on the outside looking in a decade ago when
the American company began cutting back their workforce
here.
“I came out at 60, in 1994. I took early retirement
because my husband, Cathal, was in ill-health. It was
sad when the job losses started, because I still had a
lot of friends who worked there and had a good
relationship with the McCarters.
“A lot of the workers left school when they were 15 and
had no qualifications, but the Fruit of the Loom workers
got a good redundancy. A lot of them got big money and
were able to buy their own houses, even the single
people. I have a niece in her 30s who was able to do
that.
“There was a taskforce to help get them back to work and
the Celtic Tiger was starting so most were able to find
other jobs. It wouldn’t be so easy if Fruit of the Loom
shut down today.” |
|
