Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

More than 100 workers at Activision Blizzard in Blackpool in Cork city face redundancy within the next couple of weeks. Their company was purchased late last year by Microsoft for $75 billion, which is the largest video game acquisition transaction volume in history. Microsoft is arguably the largest company in the world with gross annual profits last year of $146 billion. It plans to gut nearly 2,000 Blizzard jobs worldwide. The Blackpool workers have many issues they would like to discuss with the company. These include a reduction in the number of job losses, a fair redundancy package and making any and all redundancies voluntary but the company refuses to talk to their trade union, Game Workers United Ireland, which is part of the Financial Services Union. How can the Government defend a situation where a huge American corporation can buy up a company with a base in Ireland, announce life-changing changes for its workforce and refuse to talk to the union chosen by long-standing workers in that company to represent them?

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