Fears for thousands of retail jobs as Covid bites into the crisis

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Fears are mounting that thousands of Irish workers in large fashion chains and general retail will not survive the elimination of winter jobs, even as the lifting of level 5 restrictions sent shoppers back to stores today.

It comes as the outlook for Irish city centers could turn much bleaker amid doubts that Britain’s Arcadia, which owns Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Miss Selfridge, Evans and Burton, will find a buyer afterward. entering the administration in Britain and Ireland this week.

In the Republic, the Mandate union has warned that 900 jobs are at risk if Arcadia collapses completely.

On Tuesday, Debenhams, another struggling British retailer, said it would close all its 124 outlets and its online store in the UK, which employs 12,000 people. The retailer had already controversially closed all of its stores in the Republic in April, even as it continued to sell products online to the Republic from Great Britain.

Union and employer experts say the fallout from the retail crisis, which has been accelerated by the Covid-19 storm, cannot be minimized and warn that many workers returning to work this week could be permanently laid off when stocks run out after Christmas.

When the Irish stores reopened, the new figures showed that there were almost 56,900 people working in retail and wholesale, representing almost one in five of all workers in the sector, who needed Pandemic Unemployment Pay to make ends meet. month during the last closing.

A large number of retail workers will go back to work when the Level 5 restrictions are lifted, but there are fears that stores in once-busy centers will shake up many workers again after the Christmas rush.

“You would have to worry a lot about the sustainability of many of those retail jobs in the first few months of next year when the holiday fever has worn off and under the possibility of more closures,” warned leading economist Jim Power.

The Mandate union said it fears the most for fashion retailers and curtain stores, which have faced the brunt of the Covid closures. Other large retail employers, including supermarkets that were allowed to stay open, have exploded this year.

The mandate’s general secretary, Gerry Light, said there were concerns about retail jobs during the winter and that government intervention would be required to keep the jobs until a recovery can begin.

He said the government must protect “traditional brick and mortar retail in particular and the thousands of jobs it currently offers.”

Fergal O’Brien, policy director for the Ibec business group, warned that after the Christmas rebound, retail jobs could be lost again starting in January.

Citing an estimated additional savings of 10 billion euros that households have accumulated during the crisis, Ibec said he was optimistic about the outlook for the economy, but that the moment of recovery would be boosted by the launch of the vaccines.

And O’Brien warned that “the cumulative impact of the closures” will test the viability of many retailers in the coming year.

We are not done with this yet and we should definitely not be complacent. When we get over it and confidence returns, we will see the unleashing of purchasing power.

“The cash is certainly there. It will come back to the economy,” O’Brien said.

British retail fashion groups were facing a crisis even before the start of the Covid-19 crisis.

They were pressured by other more successful European fashion rivals, as well as by high rents and the accelerated shift to the internet driven by the pandemic.



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