Emma Kelly, Ratoath; Carol Meade, Cork Street and Louise Murray, Blanchardstown during a protest outside Clerys in support of workers who lost their jobs. Picture: Gareth Chaney Collins
NOW that the night of recession is lifting, what kind of country does the dawn bring? Things are certainly brightening up. Unemployment is down. Tax receipts are up. The latest economic report, issued last week by the Central Bank, says the only real threat to the economy could come from external factors.
After nearly eight black years, the dawn is opening up on a new country. But is it the one we were promised?
Last Tuesday’s programme on the late Brian Lenihan brought back the darkest hours. His rallying cry for a “patriotic call to arms” as he delivered the first of a series of savage budgets in 2008 was a foretaste of what was to come.
Saving the banks was highly controversial and, undoubtedly, a very conservative decision at a time when radical action may have been more beneficial. But the government of the day was emerging dazed from the country they thought they had shaped in their own image.
In reality, they were as likely to take a radical route as Daniel O’Donnell is to bring out a death metal album.
Brian Cowen and his ministers were wandering in a strange and alien land.
Those least equipped to withstand cutbacks bore the brunt of austerity. Those who had benefited most from the demented property bubble fared a lot better.
Nearly everybody had to endure a drop in living standards, but the 300,000 who lost their jobs were hit hardest.
What was surprising was how little serious resistance was offered to the austerity programme. It wasn’t until widespread frustration coalesced on the water charge issue last year that serious resistance was offered. Notably, in that case, it brought about changes to the proposed new regime. One thing is beyond doubt. We were promised that it all represented the birth pangs for a new society in which past mistakes would not be repeated and the common good, rather than the special interests which shaped the old country, would be paramount.
Nothing dismisses such notions more than what has unfolded in the sale of Clerys department store in Dublin. Employees and small business owners were treated with contempt by big business, as if they were pawns to be moved and discarded in a game of chess.
The business, including the building, was sold by owners, Boston-based Gordon Brothers, at 2.30am yesterday week. The company had bought the business in 2012, and is understood to have made a 100% return on its investment. The 460 employees, nearly two thirds of which worked for concessions in the store, were told at lunchtime Friday that the business was sold to a consortium which is headed up by Dublin businesswoman Deirdre Foley. That evening, a meeting was called. The 50 or so concession holders were told to lodge the day’s takings with the company before attending the meeting.
The concessions are basically small firms who are given a space to sell their wares in the store for a fee. They had an arrangement whereby they lodged their takings with Clerys daily. The store then held the money in trust, deducted its fee, and returned the remainder of the money at the end of the month. The latest monthly repayments were due on Monday last.
Thus, by yesterday week, Clerys held practically the maximum amount of cash from tenants, exactly at the time the concessions and their workers were told to clear the hell out of the building as the business was being put into liquidation because it didn’t feature in the new owner’s plans.
Is it a coincidence that the closure was effected at a time when the store had hoovered up as much money as possible from its tenants, most of which is supposed to be held in trust. Do you believe in coincidences like that? The small businesses haven’t seen their money yet. A sum estimated at in excess of €2m is floating around somewhere in the possession of one of these vulture companies working their property plays.
Perhaps the experience of the bank bail-out, and full payment to bondholders who gambled on the property bubble, has led these masters of the universe to conclude that Joe Citizen in Ireland is a nice touch for a few bob.
Perhaps these vultures are confident that the Government is not just legally in a bind over the issue, but scared stiff of calling it like it is because Enda Kenny’s main focus is the branding of Ireland as the best small country in which to do business. Perhaps the promises on which austerity was endured were all as empty as the waffle shovelled out to voters at election time.
Apart from the small businesses and their employees that got burned, the store’s own staff were treated with callous disregard. Some of these people had worked all their adult lives in the iconic store. Many had rolled up their sleeves in 2012 when flooding damaged the building and helped with the repair work, under the false impression that they were employed by a paternalistic employer.
Now, just a few years later, they were just told to vamoose, without as much as a thank you note for services rendered for years or decades. No longer were they treated as human beings, but mere pawns who had outlived their usefulness.
Clerys isn’t the only manifestation of this post-recession dawn. The ongoing issue at Dunnes Stores over low-hour contracts, in which workers don’t know from week to week what they will earn, is another black cloud.
Government figures have wrung their hands over the matter, but what exactly will be done? The employers group Ibec has made plain it will resist any attempts to bring changes to a regime that treats workers as little more than pawns.
Just last week, Ibec director Danny McCoy told a conference that the era of the paternalistic employer is over.
“It is time to reset the narrative that flexible hours or part-time working is poorly paid, undesirable or precarious work,” he told the International Labour Conference in Geneva.
“Many workers actively choose to work in sectors where flexible hours are available in order to achieve the work-life equilibrium they require or desire.”
To some workers that might sound like a clarion call to improve pay, and if logic follows, include a premium for those who will no longer benefit from the status of an employee as it was understood heretofore.
Except, McCoy’s organisation told the Low Pay Commission last Wednesday that the current economic circumstances did not justify an increase in the minimum wage at this time.
So the deal is to pay workers less to work in an insecure environment, where bigger forces will decide at the drop of a hat whether they are of any further use even in those reduced circumstances.
Was it for this that Lenihan made his patriotic call to arms?
Michael Clifford
No comments:
Post a Comment