Arcadia retail workers redundancy
Deputy Donnelly raised fears that Arcadia workers, like Debenhams staff, would not receive promised redundancy payments and warned of severe job losses. The Tánaiste said retail is being reshaped by online shopping and automation, and that broader economic change was driving the closures.
As the Tánaiste will be aware, we have Debenhams workers outside shops while inside shops we have Arcadia Group workers who face the exact same situation in January. These workers received a WhatsApp message from the Arcadia Group that was directed to British workers. They did not receive a message addressed to them.
Like the Debenhams workers, they have an agreement for a four-week redundancy payment scheme and have been told this will not be honoured. They have six weeks of trading ahead and tens of millions of euro will be collected by the Arcadia Group and yet the workers have already been told they will only get the statutory redundancy.
Today, we learned that Debenhams was sold to a vulture group for €600 million, and yet it collected €1.2 billion in profit before closing down and leaving the workers with nothing. The system we have at the moment is being cheerled by the Government, which is unfortunate.
Comment on this
Anything the Debenhams workers have asked for, the Arcadia Group workers are now asking for. We were warned; we were told and we knew this was going to happen.
Comment on this
It is happening. January and February will be a bloodbath for people who are working in that-----
Comment on this
Retail is changing. It is simplistic to put these things down to matters of company law or which fund bought what business. The truth is that retail is changing. People have moved online. Last week in Ireland, more money was spent online than physically. As a result, retail is going to transform before our eyes. It was happening anyway. There was inevitability that we would see more people shopping online. That means the number of people who work in high street stores will fall. No ideology or political party will change that reality. It has been happening before our eyes for many years now and has been accelerated by the pandemic. This is happening regardless of the ownership structure of companies.
Under our law, if made redundant, people have a statutory right, a legal entitlement, to two weeks per year of service, up to a certain limit. Anything agreed beyond that can only be honoured if the money is there to fund it. I cannot say in this situation whether the money will be there to fund it but, generally, when a company goes bust, it leaves many debts and many people are owed money. In most cases, people only get a proportion of what they are owed.