Donegal Deputy Thomas Pringle says that he is unsure if a new proposed Redundancies Bill will properly protect workers.
New Government legislation aims to add further protections for workers who are laid off in mass, collective redundancies from big firms – but Deputy Pringle says it remains to be seen if the proposals are enough.
Speaking in the Dail this week, Deputy Pringle said that “One interesting thing in this parliament is that companies have personality status and companies are ‘the be all and end all’, as far as legislation is concerned, but workers are sadly left behind, and unfortunately that seems to be continuing on.”
The deputy said he understood much in the bill arose from such high-profile redundancy cases as Clerys and Debenhams, when workers “had to fight to get some recognition of the fact that they were an integral part of the companies being wound up and the companies should have an extra responsibility for them above what is prescribed in law at the minute.”
Deputy Pringle said: “The bill does require at least 30 days’ notice of any collective redundancies and will give employees better advanced notice of the winding up of a company. And it also places the onus on the receiver to continue that 30 days as well and that will help workers to protect their rights and give them the ability to get organised and fight it as well.
“There is a lot of emphasis in the legislation in relation to penalties for failure to provide notice. I wonder if anyone – companies, or directors, or even insolvency practitioners – have ever been fined in cases where they have not carried out their duties and I would be interested to hear if they actually had in situations like that.
“We hear an awful lot of talk about sanctions put into legislation, but I wonder have they ever been used. And if a sanction is not being used, or is not going to be used, well then it’s no use as a sanction, I believe,” he said.
The deputy said: “Dealing with employees as creditors in legislation is welcome and requiring them to be given information is vitally important. But what will that mean for workers, I’m not sure yet. And that’s going to be the crux of this legislation and how this legislation is going to work.
“And it’s a problem that we continuously have, we have to wait and see now a couple of years to see if this works, and if we decide that it doesn’t work it will be another 10 or 15 years before there will be legislation dealt with again to correct things and that’s a problem,” he said.
Deputy Pringle welcomed provisions giving the courts the power to order a related company to contribute to the debts of a company being wound up and asked: “I wonder how that would have impacted on the Debenhams situation, for example, where the UK parent was continuing to trade through a website that was available in Ireland”.
The deputy said: “We need to see what actually will happen in practice.
“It seems from the Bills Digest that this bill will have a limited effect in helping employees. The department seems to be modelling it on the New Zealand approach but that still doesn’t seem to meet the needs of employees and that’s the reality,” he said.
