SACKED STAFF
AFTER working at BHS for 11 years and becoming close friends with her colleagues, the closure of her store feels like a ‘divorce’ for Liz Lloyd.
‘It’s like our family has been broken up because of one greedy man who couldn’t care less about our future,’ she said.
Mrs Lloyd, 51, took a job at the BHS branch in South Shields on the minimum wage – currently £7.20 an hour – to help pay for her mortgage after raising her four children, working on the tills, in customer service and in the cafe.
But at the weekend she and her fellow workers were each given a £2,000 redundancy package and told: ‘This is your final shift.’
Mrs Lloyd found her last day of work at the store ‘very emotional, difficult to get through’. Yesterday angry customers chanted ‘thumbs down to Philip Green’ as she and her colleagues packed up stock and cleared away window displays. She said: ‘There are a lot of older women who were really proud to work at BHS and earn money ... [I’m] devastated that one person’s greed has spoilt that for us all.’ Mrs Lloyd has put off hunting for a new job as she waits for an operation after suffering from breast cancer.
Fellow former BHS worker Jean Costello, 54, is angry that her years of loyalty have been ‘destroyed’ by Sir Philip Green.
She said: ‘My son was 17 recently, and I scraped together £200 to pay for his driving lessons for a birthday present. I saved up with two pound coins.’
Comparing her situation to the Greens’ wealth, she said: ‘It’s ludicrous but I have pride and I’ve worked for my money...All I can say is karma is a wonderful thing.’ She added that her BHS co-workers helped her through ‘the darkest of times’, including when one of her sons died in 2007.
‘We have laughed together, we have cried together and we have supported one another,’ she said.
Her friend Tracey Hedley, 54, who has two grown-up daughters, said that without her police officer husband’s paycheck they would struggle to stay in their £250,000 house. She said: ‘I’m lucky that I have a husband to support me because some girls that have been made redundant haven’t.
‘It’s going to be a real struggle without my wage. It’s a huge amount of money we’ve got to learn to live without for now. It’s going to be impossible.
‘It’s dreadful the way Philip Green has handled it. He must have known a while ago what was going to happen...He kept his other businesses going but for his own reasons and to make a lot of money for himself.’