Workers sitting in when they've been let go...

DrumSteve

Two recent examples here:

Vita Cortex in Cork

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0110/1224310052523.html

UNION MEMBERS throughout the country are being urged to attend a public rally outside Leinster House later this week in support of Vita Cortex workers in Cork who have been engaged in a sit-in over their redundancy payments for more than three weeks.

Siptu members are expected to join the protest on Thursday as the Dáil resumes following the Christmas recess. Two buses will bring the former Vita Cortex workers and their families to Dublin. The workers started their sit-in on December 16th at the plant in Ballyphehane, Cork.

Vita Cortex workers have received the backing of Cork hurling coach Jimmy Barry Murphy who has visited the plant. Chernobyl Children’s Project International founder Adi Roche has also delivered a hamper to the workers.

The workers attracted nearly 1,000 new fans on their Facebook page over the weekend following their Late Late Show appearance.

Employees want a €1.2 million redundancy package – 2.9 weeks per year of service for each worker – which they believe Vita Cortex has the capacity to pay.

Henry O’Reilly, who has worked at Vita Cortex for over 40 years, says employees have been humbled by the international support they have received via Facebook and Twitter.

“We have people from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand saying ‘don’t give in, you need to stand firm’.”

Siptu president Jack O’Connor is confident there will be a huge turnout at the peaceful protest which is planned for 1pm on Thursday outside Leinster House.

“There are tens of thousands of union members around the country who empathise with them and who are most anxious that they will emerge with a reasonable outcome.”

Cork South Central Fianna Fáil TD Michael McGrath insists the Department of Social Protection needs to conduct a rigorous assessment of the claim by Vita Cortex that it is unable to pay.

“The latest set of publicly available abridged accounts for Vita Cortex (Ind) Limited shows that the company made a profit of €366,000 during the 16 months to the end of April 2010.

The accounts also show that the company was owed €1.6 million by its debtors at the time, including €712,000 due from Web Circle Limited – a company of which Mr Ronan was a director and his family owned a sizeable share – for “management charges”.

“The question should be answered as to whether these management charges have since been paid to Vita Cortex (Ind) Limited by Web Circle Limited.”

Meanwhile, the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) has indicated it is “ready, willing and on standby” to assist if requested by either party in the dispute.

And La Senza in Dublin:

http://breakingnews.ie/ireland/la-senza-workers-stage-liffey-valley-sit-in-535314.html

Workers at lingerie firm La Senza are staging a sit-in at the company's store in Liffey Valley in Dublin, after the firm went into administration yesterday.

The lingerie company operates 15 shops in Ireland and employs more than 100 people here.

Workers who now face redundancy say they fear they will not be paid for overtime in December and are concerned about their redundancy entitlements.

One former La Senza employee told Cork's RedFM that staff from branches all over the country were joining the sit-in at Liffey Valley.

"I'll be heading up to Dublin myself. We might as well centralise it - we feel we'll get more attention that way," she said.

Read more: http://breakingnews.ie/ireland/la-senza-workers-stage-liffey-valley-sit-in-535314.html#ixzz1j4VU5iMv

So what do boardsies think? Should they sit in and get their money or try go through the courts to get what they are owed and leave the premises? IMO I say fair play to them doing this and I hope they get every cent they are owed. Completely out of order to expect (in the second case especially) them to work all over christmas then not pay them anything.

I eagerly await your ladies undergarment based puns.

mathie

DrumSteve wrote: »

I eagerly await your ladies undergarment based puns.

They will be senzational.

DrumSteve

mathie wrote: »

They will be senzational.

I thought this topic would have more support myself.

For Forks Sake

DrumSteve wrote: »

I eagerly await your ladies undergarment based puns.

pants thread is pants

Dravokivich

Sucks to be them, but what do they think they'll achieve by this?

smash

Workers at lingerie firm La Senza are staging a sit-in at the company's store in Liffey Valley in Dublin, after the firm went into administration yesterday.

Sexy slumber party.....

RichieC

Dravokivich wrote: »

Sucks to be them, but what do they think they'll achieve by this?

They are quite explicit about what they hope to achieve..

juan.kerr

I suppose it saves on home heating and gets them out from under thewir partners feet.

They are entitled to statuatory redundancy, if they were getting that then I would have to question whether it was legitimate. There is no 'entitlement' to a large redundancy payment - that is at the employers discretion.

I read of one case where redundancy was agreed but a small subset started a sit in afterwards because they wanted more.

DrumSteve

Dravokivich wrote: »

Sucks to be them, but what do they think they'll achieve by this?

Hopefully their wages.

I can understand the sit in in Vita Cortex, however I don't think La Senza would own the LV site so I doubt they would be bothered by this.

listermint

Im going to put it out there and ask.

Why did these ladies do overtime and work all those extra hours over christmas when La Senza were closing their doors in January this has been known for a long time. I would have done the bear minimum up until pay day and then get on the job hunt.

Dravokivich

RichieC wrote: »

They are quite explicit about what they hope to achieve..

Hope, where as the reality of it is they'll only get what's available to go to them. "Sitting in," isn't going to change that.

Turtyturd

Couldn't they just do the normal thing and take stock up to/over the value of what they are owed?

mathie

listermint wrote: »

Im going to put it out there and ask.

Why did these ladies do overtime and work all those extra hours over christmas when La Senza were closing their doors in January this has been known for a long time. I would have done the bear minimum up until pay day and then get on the job hunt.

Quite a grizzly attitude.

mikemac1

If you're angry with your employer don't get angry, just steal stock

stevenmu

I hope they're not claiming job seeker's allowance while doing this.

Sleepy

On the assumption that they'd get their fair pay for it? If I was being made redundant from an hourly rate paying retail position in a months time but had the opportunity for extra hours before my redundancy I'd certainly be working all hours I could get rostered for (and probably cursing the unions working hours per week rules) in order to put as much aside as possible to live on until I got another job... seems like common sense to me.

While I can certainly sympathise with the likes of the Vita Cortex sit-in, the Budget travel one a few years ago when they were looking for 5/6 weeks per year or something like that was just plain union-supported greed.

I've been made redundant, I got my statutory entitlements and was allowed to keep my work laptop "to job-hunt with". That was plenty fair and kept us afloat the three months or so until I had another job. If I'd been getting 3 times my statutory entitlements it'd have been the equivalent of half a year's net salary!

Kidchameleon

DrumSteve wrote: »

I eagerly await your ladies undergarment based puns.

Its no time to be joking when a company has gone BUST and people are out of a job

listermint

mathie wrote: »

Quite a grizzly attitude.

Well not really, the shaggers were going to drop everyone like a hot snot once all the goods were gone after christmas. This was clear from the whole of the last quarter. Why would you work your boll*x off for them?

Do the minimum get paid go home. The jobs were never going to be there after January.

gifted

I reckon the unions will go all out on these issues, there fecked in the public sector so this is there opportunity to prove that they have some power left so it should be interesting to see how things unfold....for the record, i hope everyone gets what they are legally entitled too

donalg1

Sitting there doing nothing is surely the reason they were let go in the first place.

mikemac1

Sleepy wrote: »

(and probably cursing the unions working hours per week rules)

EU directive, trade unions didn't introduce it

Sleepy wrote: »

the Budget travel one a few years ago when they were looking for 5/6 weeks per year or something like that was just plain union-supported greed.

And the company ignored their union

You're making unions seem a lot stronger then they actually there. They're realy pretty weak, remember any all out strikes recently?

Degsy

mikemac1 wrote: »

remember any all out strikes recently?

Yup..two years ago...it was only one day though.

Ectoplasm

listermint wrote: »

Do the minimum get paid go home. The jobs were never going to be there after January.

The bit in bold is the important part. The staff were assured that they would be paid for both their basic and their overtime - oh and overtime in a lot of these cases is part-time workers working beyond their contracted hours, a pretty normal situation in the retail sector in the run up to Christmas. Many of these 'overtime' hours were worked before the announcement that the stores would be closing too. In general, the communication between 'management' and the staff has been abysmal from withholding information to flat out lying to the employees.

If the company don't cough up, these staff get to apply to a government fund for those outstanding wages, but apparently that can take up to 12 months to get sorted. So the staff suffer and the average taxpayer suffers (because the money in that fund doesn't come from the magic money tree unfortunately ) but the company, the ones who fcuked up get to walk away.

They may or may not achieve their aims, which is to get the company to pay them their wages - a pretty basic demand really - but I think it's a good thing that they didn't just hang their heads and accept this, because this is not acceptable behaviour.

Gmol

I thinks it's thong

SeaFields

I hadnt heard til now that La Senza had gone tits up.


:pac:

JaneLane

stevenmu wrote: »

I hope they're not claiming job seeker's allowance while doing this.

They can't claim it as they were given no documentation, aka - no P45.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0110/breaking50.html

Cork boy 55

21:00 hrs

Its that time of the evening!
whats going on at la senza now, any camera footage?
Have the workers spilled into something more comfortable? :cool:
I am available for moral support if their are issues during the night. :pac:

Cork boy 55

Marxism 2.0 is getting sexy.

billybudd

hope they get what they are entitled too, i really hope these sh=t bag companies go and that some sharp employees take over the vacant shops etc and we get some cool local boutique clothing shops springing up run by people with passion and lets make Dublin a paradise for local talent to shine.

mathie

listermint wrote: »

Well not really, the shaggers were going to drop everyone like a hot snot once all the goods were gone after christmas. This was clear from the whole of the last quarter. Why would you work your boll*x off for them?

Do the minimum get paid go home. The jobs were never going to be there after January.

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh!

scholar007

It all seems to be about "sitting in" or "occupying" something at the moment - All passive stuff (unlike the Greeks)

Mervyn Crawford

Viiolent street protests per se are no threat in themselves to the ruling class.

Combining as a workforce and taking over the workplace is potentially of much more significance.

We do afterall live in a world that IS divided into two main hostile camps - the owners of the property (and the state) - the capitalist class; and those that work for the property owners - the working class.

When a section of the wage-earners break with the legal restrictions (of the capitalists) and seize their property, they are implicitly rejecting the legal right of the capitalists to own the property. Implicitly they are stating that this system is unjust, unequal and inefficient ( if it was efficient the gross poverty and want would not exist).

This class action of sections of workers is in direct opposition to the so-called leaders of the working class - the unions and the mulifarious 'Left' parties who at every turn try to trap workers in Grand Old Duke of York protest 'action'.

Furthermore, Irish workers have had centuries of violent street action, and individual terror. And we are still not free of want.

Ref Senza, Vita Cortex, Lagan Brick:

Taken together, the three disputes show that workers are turning to class struggle methods and are seeking to unite against the unrelenting destruction of jobs, social conditions and living standards. The disputes have drawn support directly from other sections of workers in Ireland and internationally. They also reflect a deepening distrust of the union bureaucracy, whose monopoly over communication between workers has decisively been broken by the use of social media. But this has to be translated into a political break with the trade unions and a turn by the working class towards independent industrial and political struggle.