Mixed news on jobs front

There was mixed news on the jobs from in Galway this week, with the announcement of 100 new jobs at Hewlett Packard – however, their neighbours at Boston Scientific will see 150 lay-offs.

The new jobs will be in HP’s ‘Cloud Research and Development) at their state-of-the-art new facility in Ballybrit, which is due to be completed early next year.

Mark Gantly, Managing Director of HP in Galway said: “The technologies being developed here in our Galway R&D facility will play a key role in future development of global cloud services from HP.

“The new positions will assist HP’s enterprise customers with cloud planning, implementation and operational needs.

Individuals recruited for these roles also will also become active members of the OpenStack community, contributing design blueprints, new code, bug fixes and code reviews,” he said.

Meanwhile, Boston Scientific is to lay off 150 workers at its Ballybrit facility over the next eighteen months.

Staff at the facility were told yesterday that the jobs will be phased out.

The Galway City Tribune understands that the lay-offs affect full-time and temporary ‘contract’ workers.

A statement from the company to this newspaper reads: “Following the completion of a number of successful product launches, Boston Scientific will be returning to normal production levels at its Galway facility.

“As a result, Boston Scientific is planning to reduce its temporary production workforce by 150 with positions being phased out during the next 18 months,” the statement reads.

It’s understood that the company employs around 2,800 people in Galway.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.