Spirit-Boeing-Airbus deal: 'Belfast is synonymous with aerospace – if we lose that it will be a travesty' says union rep amid fears for thousands of Northern Irish workers' jobs

That is the view from the union Unite, after news emerged that the French mega-corporation Airbus is seeking to take over the Northern Irish operations of US firm Spirit – but only in part.

George Brash of Unite said that such a move has been in the air since March, and revealed he has tried lobbying Joe Biden on the importance of ensuring the whole NI business is taken over by a single owner, otherwise the future of thousands of jobs is “uncertain”.

Spirit used to be called Bombardier and before that it was called Shorts – a firm with a history in Belfast dating back to 1936 when it built warplanes for the UK government.

Spirit is headquartered in Witchita, Kansas where it builds much of Boeing's worldwide fleet of planes.

As such, Spirit is part of the long-running titanic tussle going on between Boeing and Airbus to be the world's dominant aircraft firm.

The deal that’s now been done is a complicated mash-up, with Boeing gobbling up some parts of Spirit and Airbus getting others (although technically speaking, the deal only commits Boeing “to negotiate in good faith to enter into definitive agreements for Airbus to acquire certain Spirit assets”).

In Northern Ireland, the Spirit business is divided across the greater Belfast area with sites in Newtownabbey and Dunmurry and the hub in east Belfast, where the vast majority of the 3,600 employees work.

Today, about 40% of the work Spirit does in Northern Ireland is making wings for the Airbus A220 – a narrow-bodied jet which was first conceived of by Bombardier 20 years ago – as well as a handful of bits for its fuselage.

But the remaining roughly 60% of Northern Irish work is split among a patchwork of different jobs for multiple customers: Bombardier, Rolls-Royce, Honda, and others.

This 60% accounts for in the region of 2,200 of Spirit's Northern Irish workforce upwards.

Mr Brash, regional co-ordinating officer who has been with Unite for about 11 years, said these were "reasonably-paid" jobs, and if they go then the skills they involve "will be lost forever".

He said the whole workforce is interconnected, and the only way to guarantee the survival of all jobs on site is for it to be taken under the ownership of a single firm instead of being "carved up".

"The wing [of the A220] has been worked on by everybody on that site," in some way he said, not just 40% of workers whom Airbus wants to "ringfence".

"We need to make sure that, whatever happens, there is no carve up of the 60% that puts those jobs at risk.

"We've sent letters to President Biden, we've spoken to Boeing, we've sent letters to the First Minister / Deputy First Minister.

"Politicians need to call this out too to say the [business] must remain intact.

"We're worried about a carve-up and this then falls into job losses which would be absolutely devastating – and not just for east Belfast.

"This is the wider, greater Befast area we'rte talking about. Even within that factory people come from across that divide, from various parts of the country.

"The workers coming to that site come from all over the region.

"These jobs are highly, highly skilled jobs and if they start to go they'll be lost forever.

"The aerospace sector is synonymous with Northern Ireland. And to start losing that is an absolute failure and would be a travesty.

"The only in town is the site remains intact under one entity to protect those jobs."

He said he had written to Mr Biden about four weeks ago (without a reply as yet) and had met the US Consulate to impress the same points on them.

Mr Biden was in Belfast last year talking about the "enormous economic potential" of the Province and how he had directed special envoy Joe Kennedy "to bring more businesses, more investment, more opportunity here".