Workers End Occupation of Debenhams Store in Waterford

The workers who had taken occupation of Debenhams’ Waterford City Square store ended their act of civil disobedience this morning. They emerged out of the shuttered store, blinking into the sunlight, on what would have been the fifth day of occupation.

The occupiers included four former employees of Debenhams in the city and a UNITE union member, who was refusing to leave the store in solidarity with the workers.

Having ended the occupation, the workers said they have been extremely disappointed with the State’s lack of support for their industrial action.

The Green Party TD for Waterford Marc Ó Cathasaigh visited the strikers at the picket line, this morning. However the workers say that they were further disappointed when the TD declined to sign the former Debenhams strikers’ pledge to picket.

According to the workers, during the final hours of the occupation, the Fianna Fáil TD for Waterford, Mary Butler, also declined to sign the industrial action petition.

UNFAIRLY DISMISSED

Michelle Gavin, a shop steward for the Waterford city square store, who has been with the British retailers for the past 27 years, expressed her anger at the end of the occupation. She said that the workers were "sick and tired of words from Government politicians."

“If Mary Butler and Marc Ó Cathasaigh can't deliver now for the Debenhams workers then I think a lot of people in Waterford will question what value, if any, they have as public representatives for working people in the city,” she said.

Thanking the supporters of the campaign, and of the occupation, Mags Sinnot, another former Debenhams worker, said that despite Government inaction, the workers remain committed to fighting for their rights.

“We are more determined than ever to secure a just settlement,” she said. “We're leaving that canteen and this building to step up our fight. We feel we achieved as much as we can from the occupation this time, so we will now re-join the picket lines to continue our fight to defend the stock which is our leverage.”

Hot Press visited Debenhams picket line in Waterford city yesterday morning where the workers called on the State to urgently implement the recommendations of the Duffy-Cahill report.

The Duffy-Cahill report was drafted at the request of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in 2016, following the liquidation of Clery’s, the famous department store on O’Connell Street in Dublin, as a result of which its workers were unfairly dismissed, and treated callously by the owners. The report recommends the adoption of binding measures to ensure redundancy payments are made to workers, in the event of insolvency.

The Government has not yet moved to implement the measures.

On a more positive note, the Fianna Fáil TD and Minister for State for Trade Promotion, Robert Troy, has told Debenhams strikers that he has raised the importance of legislating for the recommendations in the report with Minister for Employment Affairs and Retail Businesses, Damien English.

“There was a clear understanding that the matter needed to be reviewed as a priority,” Deputy Troy wrote in a text message which was seen by Hot Press.

“It was agreed that a stakeholder forum would be established within the next three weeks.”

SUPPORT WORKERS

Meanwhile, some Green Party politicians are calling on the party to support the growing wave of industrial action against Debenhams.

Speaking to Hot Press, Cork-based Green Party Councillor Lorna Bogue expressed her disappointment.

“What we don’t need is just another politician – in a long line of Government politicians – who go down for a photo opportunity with no intention of providing assistance to people in their time of need,” Cllr Bogue said, with reference to the Green Party TD Marc Ó Cathasaigh.

She said that support for the sake of self-promotion is an “old-school type of politics” – which will not deceive Debenhams workers.

She said it was time for the State to act – and to pass legislation that would support workers, in the event of liquidation.

CLASS DIVISIONS EXPOSED

In many ways, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the country’s class divisions, as lower-income citizens feel the brunt of the adverse effects of the ongoing health emergency. The Debenhams workers are among those who have been hardest hit.

Overall, workers, asylum seekers, migrants and people who live and work in crowded settings have suffered disproportionately.

Many workers lost their jobs, with unemployment rates climbing to 16.5 per cent during the national lockdown in April.

It was in that same month when – in an act of corporate greed and expediency – Debenhams fired nearly 2,000 of its Irish employees without pay.

The dismissal took the form of what workers have described as a “generic” email that was “cold and callous.”
The company had said that it was closing all its eleven stores in the Republic, with no intention of reopening them in the future.

Employees of Debenhams were made redundant just a few days after the company's CEO had reassured them that Irish jobs were safe.

Yesterday morning, the fate of up to 80 workers at St Mary’s Nursing Home – as well as 18 blind residents of the campus’s disability centre on Merrion Road – was sealed, after a High Court judge issued a winding-up order for the company, St Mary's Centre (Telford).

The order of Roman Catholic nuns, the Sisters of Charity, own the land and the premises and are the company’s sole shareholders. Their treatment of the workers has also been described as "heartless' by the People Before Profit TD, Richard Boyd Barrett.

Meanwhile, as a cold wind shook their signs and placards, Waterford city's Debenhams picketers danced to a song played in solidarity from a local radio station. This battle is not over yet.