After protesting for 300 days it’s now time to pay the workers from Debenhams
YESTERDAY Debenhams workers marked 300 days fighting for their 2+2 – two weeks statutory redundancy plus two weeks per year of service.
Micheal Martin is claiming the State has done right by them by paying €13million in statutory redundancy.
He claims it is not able to go any further and can’t meet the workers demand for two additional weeks per year.
It’s a bit surprising then that one of his TDS, Willie O’dea, has called for a supplementary fund to be established to meet the workers’ demands.
This is one of a number of ways this dispute could be settled.
Firstly, and at a minimum, the €3million recently proposed training fund for Debenhams workers should be converted to cash as a down payment for them.
Secondly, the social fund, or some supplementary fund as Deputy O’dea suggests, could be used to pay the workers.
The €13million statutory redundancy comes out of the Social Insurance Fund.
This is funded by workers’ and employers’ PRSI payments which many employees think is just another form of taxation.
But this fund is not for financing education or other public services. It specifically finances in-work
benefits, including pensions, or provides protection for workers when they get sick or when their employer can’t pay their statutory redundancy pay.
I estimate the Debenhams pay bill was around €29million in 2019, with the workers contributing just over €1million in PRSI.
Another €2million was paid in employers’ PRSI. And that was just for one year.
Some of these workers have been working for more than 20 years. The cost of their statutory redundancy is well covered.
Given this and the extraordinary measures that have been taken across the economy, surely we should consider a fund to allow for the payments of additional redundancy entitlements?
This could be funded by a Covid solidarity wealth contribution. Oxfam’s Inequality Virus report shows the fortunes of Irish billionaires increased by €3.3billion since the pandemic started.
Finally, Micheal Martin and KPMG have been saying that legally nothing can be done to meet the workers’ demands through the liquidation process. But consider the case of the workers threat
People Before Profit TD for Dun Laoghaire and a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Budgetary Oversight
ened with redundancy in the Irish Banking Resolution Corporation in 2013. They also had an agreement for 2+2.
Then Finance Minister Michael Noonan said: “It would be legally problematic to ask the liquidator KPMG to divert assets from creditors to employees.”
He claimed he could not ask the special liquidators to
interfere with standard rules to the detriment of creditors and preferment of employees. This sounds awfully familiar as it has been repeated again and again through the Debenhams dispute.
But on April 25, 2014, we learned that a deal was struck.
A statement from the special liquidators of IBRC confirmed that an agreement had been reached which will see “a sum of money set aside to facilitate termination payments to certain IBRC employees”. The sum was understood to be €5.5million and was
paid “with the approval liquidator”.
And who was the liquidator? The same KPMG who have consistently maintained to Debenhams workers that such an arrangement was not possible.
So, after all, it looks like it is possible to pay workers ahead of other creditors. In light of this there seems no reason why the State can’t waive its demands on the liquidator and allow these resources to be used to pay the workers their just demands.
of the
It’s possible to pay workers ahead of other creditors