Fears grow for for 100 Caterpillar jobs in west Belfast

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There are growing fears for the future of around 100 jobs at the Caterpillar financial Service centre in west Belfast.

It follows a decision by the company  to outsource its global finance operations.

The news came just 24 hours after the demise of Wrightbus in Ballymena.

1,200 staff lost their jobs on Wednesday after the bus manufacturing company fell into administration.

Workers at Caterpillar's finance operations are now also facing the prospect of redundancy.

They were told on Thursday that the business will outsource its finance operations to Accenture.

Accenture is a Dublin headquartered company which operates globally, and which has long standing relationship with Caterpillar.

However, the firm does not have a presence in Northern Ireland.

Redundancy will be offered to those affected. Caterpillar has operated out of west Belfast since 2005.

The company closed its Monkstown plant three years ago with the loss of 250 jobs but still has a manufacturing site in Larne.

It's understood other UK Caterpiller locations will also be affected by the outsourcing decision. 

In a statement the company said:

"As part of Caterpillar’s continuous journey to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its finance and accounting operations, the company informed employees on September 26 of its decision to move to a global process model and partner with Accenture for the delivery of select finance and accounting activities.

This partnership will lead to a transition of work currently performed at multiple Caterpillar finance operation locations to multiple Accenture finance operation locations.

 Caterpillar performs finance and accounting work in over twenty countries, and we anticipate that this will have an impact in most of our major finance operation locations.

Accenture is currently working with us to complete an analysis of current processes.

This will be a phased transition approach over the next 12 months, and we will communicate with our employees as we know more. We are not estimating job impacts currently but do anticipate some impact".