Ericsson lay off 300

Ericsson laid off 300 people in their Dublin plant today.

In a statement, the company says that some of its Irish operations will be moved to other low-cost locations as part of its efforts to cut down on the number of locations from which it operates.

Seems like the kind of statement that has been pretty standard in the news over the last few months. Irish manufacturing and low tech jobs being moved to low cost centers in Eastern Europe and Asia. Except it's not that at all. Apparently these jobs are in research and development. You know, the kind of jobs the government thinks we can still compete for. If Ireland can no longer compete for R&D jobs then we're really screwed.