This article by Mícheál Ó Súsleabh first appeared in Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.
THE recent announcement of Pepco Group to sell its ‘Poundland’ chain of bargain shops to an investment firm for one pound should come as no surprise to members of the Independent Workers Union.
It closely mirrors the Iceland dispute, where the owners of the Iceland chain of frozen-goods retailers sold their Irish business to Naeem Maniar, owner of the Homesavers franchise of home goods stores, for a nominal price.
The events that followed – workers being left unpaid, showing up while rostered to find their workplace closed, and threatened over union activity – are all part of the classic playbook that capitalists use to rig the system when their businesses go under.
While the IWU did their best to represent the workers and bring media attention to the exploitative and lawless practices which were occurring, the company ultimately achieved its goal – it washed its hands of its responsibilities and liabilities, foisting it upon the Irish State to foot the bill in the form of statutory redundancies.
This is not the first time this dance has played out, and it certainly won’t be the last.
One doesn’t have to look far back in the history of industrial relations in Ireland to find the same set piece playing out time and time again.
The exit of Clerys Department store in 2012, with 1400 employees laid off unceremoniously, led to the publication of the Nash Report in 2015 pointing out systemic failures in Ireland’s system of receivership. Despite this, and the dramatic exit of Debenhams from the Irish market in 2020, no lessons have been learned and no effort has been made to enforce existing company law or fundamentally change the relationship between private businesses and society.
We often hear those scions of society in business tell us that they “take all the risk” and so justly deserves the rewards.
The less romantic reality of this mythos of the risk-taking entrepreneur is that companies are protected by a network of legalities like trusts and holding companies so that when they fail, society bears the cost.
This is no accident – it is the way things are supposed to work in a capitalist society.
Examinership was initially attempted for both Iceland and Debenhams. It is a legal procedure with a peculiar but telling historical origin as a unique feature of Irish law equivalent to the British process of administration.
In 1990, with the Goodman beef empire collapsing due to defaults by Iraqi customers in the midst of the Gulf War, Charles Haughey recalled the Dáil from summer recess to pass a new Act.
Thus, examinership was born. Company law in Ireland is structured to protect the selected few from the consequences of poor business decisions rather than serve any special purpose of advancing the public good.
When the Irish Congress of Trade Unions met last month, they discussed a motion calling for the minimum statutory entitlement for employee redundancy payments to be raised.
This is a just and necessary demand. But we must also add, that the current system, where the State pays for the machinations of wealthy business owners, is fundamentally wrong.
Why should they be allowed to walk off into the sunset with their ill-gotten gains, laughing all the way to the bank?
European legislation on transfer of undertakings have proven to be effectively unenforced in Ireland and is little comfort to the many workers at Dealz (Poundland’s Irish operation) who are now faced with an uncertain future.
The answer remains, as ever, worker self-organisation and assertion of their own economic power through trade unions and political activity.
It was recently covered by The Phoenix Magazine how Tesco had seized control of Brentwood Coffee kiosks, owned by Naeem Maniar, across Ireland, over failure to pay rents covered by their lease agreement.
If Tesco can expropriate the assets of failed businesses, why can’t the State?