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The Mandate union, which represents some 1,000 former Debenhams workers, has urged the Taoiseach to make available to workers € 3 million in direct cash payments, rather than non-monetary skills enhancement and training supports.
Earlier today, workers, who lost their jobs when the Irish Debenhams operation went into liquidation last April, rejected settlement proposals drawn up by Labor Court President Kevin Foley, which focused on a training and skills enhancement fund. of 3 million euros that will be made available to affected employees.
Gerry Light, the mandate’s general secretary, said the union believes Foley’s settlement proposals had been emphatically rejected because they did not provide cash benefits to workers and because the government had shown no urgency in implementing legislation to prevent them from a similar situation arises in the future.
Mr. Light expressed the view that when the government made the decision in principle to release 3 million euros for the workers’ training fund, it should also have been made available on the basis of a cash payment.
He said that if that decision was reversed to allow cash payments, the dispute was likely to come to an end.
The state has already paid € 13 million to finance layoffs and statutory payments and other labor rights, but the union had requested up to € 10 million more to offer the four weeks per year of enhanced service benefits envisaged in a collective agreement of 2016..
Even if the € 3 million training fund were converted into cash, it would not achieve what the union had originally sought.
Mr. Light said that what the workers were looking for was fair and reasonable, and could be achieved, if there was the political will to do so.
Since the liquidation, workers have picketed the 11 stores in Debenhams Ireland preventing KPMG liquidators from taking stock.
They argue that the proceeds of the shares should be closed to fund the improved firing conditions.
Before the Former Employee Mandate vote, union stewards had already recommended the rejection of Foley’s proposals on the grounds that they did not provide any cash pay for staff, many of whom were already entitled to receive state training. .
Last September, they had also rejected as inappropriate an offer from the liquidators of a 1 million euro ex gratia fund, plus a third of the net proceeds from the sale of the shares.
Those proposals were not put to a vote among the general workforce.
In a statement, Mandate confirmed that 430 of the approximately 1,000 former workers voted and 393 rejected the proposals, a margin of 91% of the votes cast.
The proposal document stated that the Government would establish a € 3 million fund for training, skills upgrading and business creation, but more importantly, it prevented workers from having access to the cash in the fund. .
“Debenhams’ elected shop stewards will now meet to determine next steps in their campaign for a fair layoff package and changes in legislation to ensure workers are not treated like this in the future,” the union said.
Mr Foley’s package of proposals focused on a € 3 million training fund administered by Solas to support career guidance, training, education and business start-ups that would continue to exist for two years or until disbursed completely.
In his report, Mr. Foley found that the current legal framework limited the ability of the liquidator to help resolve the dispute, and that the 2016 collective bargaining agreement for enhanced firing conditions on which the union was based no longer applied. legal.
Mr Foley confirmed that Debenhams Ireland was sunk with debts totaling 18 million euros, and that the state assumed the 13 million euros of statutory redundancy payments for workers.
He pointed out that the main preferred creditors of the Debenhams Ireland liquidation are the Department of Social Protection and the Commissioners of Revenue, with a debt of about 18 million euros.
However, he warned: “The available resources are far exceeded by the debt contracted with these preferential creditors.”
The president of the Labor Court also pointed out that the state had been held responsible for legal redundancy payments totaling more than 13 million euros, without the employer contributing to those rights.
He noted that the extension of the liquidation has exhausted almost all the assets in cash, which at one point had been around 4 million euros.
Mr. Foley’s report acknowledged that the Department of Business Commerce and Employment is currently reviewing the labor and company law provisions related to layoff situations, but cautioned that these changes will not be retrospective.
Given that Mr. Foley concluded that his proposals represented “the maximum achievable in a very difficult situation”, it is unclear what will happen next.
Debenhams liquidators KPMG declined to comment on the workers’ rejection of the conciliation proposals.
In the meantime, Debenhams in the UK continues to interact with a number of third parties regarding the sale of all or part of the business, manager FRP Advisory said today.
The manager said that while this process continues, the continued liquidation of the business is being planned as announced on December 1.
He said renewed Covid-19 closures in the UK meant that several stores, including Debenhams’ flagship store on London’s Oxford Street, where he has been unable to agree that lease extensions will be closed permanently.
In total, 320 jobs will be affected by these closures, FRP said.
Additional information from Reuters
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