Celtic Linen shed 100 staff after hammer blow to hospitality sector
THE staff car-park is a little quieter than usual at Celtic Linen’s huge plant in Drinagh at the moment. While the company dates back some 90 years and is traditionally one of the bigger employers of Wexford people, it has not been impervious to the far-reaching implications of this Covid-19 crisis.
Company CEO Donald Campbell sat some 100 workers down last week and told them they were being temporarily laid off, a decision he says was taken with deep regret in ‘unprecedented times’.
‘I know the term “unprecedented” is being used a lot in the past couple of weeks, but it’s very applicable in this instance,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately this thing does bring its challenges and we’ve had to make some difficult decisions. Obviously at the hospitality sector, which accounts for a lot of our customers, has been completely decimated. Customers have been forced to close overnight. As a result, we’ve had to lay-off a significant amount of staff on a temporary basis.’
Mr Campbell was keen to stress that these measures were just that - temporary.
‘Absolutely, I’d be keen to say to staff that as soon as the work returns, we’ll look to take them all back,’ he said. ‘We’ve a lot of valued and long-serving staff in our hospitality service who we’ve had to let go.’
The linen partner to hotels and hospitals right across the country, the Wexford based company generally delivers over one million freshly laundered items per week. While the closure of hotels comes as a hammer blow to the business, one would imagine that given the healthcare emergency facing us, the hospital side of things is getting quite busy, however, Mr Campbell says this is not the case just yet.
‘Well I suppose we’re in the phase that the Taoiseach is calling “the calm before the storm”,’ he said. ‘At the moment, hospital beds are being vacated as people prepare for a surge in cases. We have no feel for how this will go, but we’re ready to react and we still have the healthcare plant running as normal.’
For the staff that are left at Celtic Linen, they are doing their best to observe HSE guidelines on social distancing and stay safe.
‘There are challenges involved with social separation and all that type of thing,’ Mr Campbell said. ‘The staff have really been working with us and have reacted brilliantly to the changes we’ve had to make. We had to react very quickly and make changes to the layout of the plant and staggering breaks and things like that. Obviously the health and safety of our staff comes first and foremost.’
While following St Patrick’s weekend and facing into the Easter holidays, this would expectedly be a busy time at Celtic Linen. However, for now at least, things are a lot quieter at the plant. If the surge of Covid-19 hits us as expected though, things are sure to get a lot busier as they work to get fresh linen and bed clothes out to hospitals around the country.
‘We’re planning for a medium term impact to the business,’ Mr Campbell concluded. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t see the hospitality sector back up and running in the immediate future.’