DUBLIN, Ireland, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Unions in Ireland are not happy that some 500 of their workers at Irish Ferries will soon be replaced by Eastern Europeans, mainly Latvians.
The new workers will work for far less than what the union workers were earning. But the issue raises a larger question of whether Ireland, which benefited enormously from globalization in the past, may now be forced to change its course because its economy is no longer as robust as it was in the 1990s.
"We have been a major beneficiary of outsourcing for the last couple of decades," a financial services company economist told the International Herald Tribune. "And now people are starting to see that it's a double-edged sword."
Eastern Europeans have been flocking to Ireland and Britain after the European Union last year admitted 10 new countries, mostly from the former Soviet bloc.
Support groups in Ireland now fear the ferry dispute may damage immigrant communities that are trying to settle into a life in Ireland.
In a reference to France's bogeyman concerns about foreign workers, an economics professor said: "The Latvian sailor will become like the Polish plumber in Paris."
