BELFAST BRIEFING:A WEEK without wages for some people is unimaginable. For the thousands without a job, it is sadly becoming a way of life. But for Paul Doherty, when he didn't receive wages last week for the first time in 30 years, it felt like a betrayal.
Doherty is one of 32 men who got caught up in the fallout after the firm he worked for in Derry lost a contract to a rival company.
He had worked for McGurk Moore, a maintenance and services provider, for three decades. One of the firm’s main businesses is providing services to housing associations in the North.
Three months ago it learned that it had lost a long-established services contract with the North West Housing Association to another Derry company.
The association, which is in the process of changing its name to Apex Housing Association, is registered as an industrial and provident society. Its decision to switch a services contract to Omega Mechanical Services catapulted more than 30 people into a terrifying state of limbo.
On the first Friday in October, McGurk Moore told all employees who had worked on the North West Housing Association contract they no longer had a job.
According to Liam Gallagher from the Derry Trades Council they were told by the firm to go to its rival Omega because they did not work for McGurk Moore any more. Gallagher said the company washed its hands of its former employees because it believed they had become Omega’s responsibility once it won the contract.
McGurk Moore said it was advised that, under UK legislation known as the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations, or Tupe, the men who had worked on the housing association contract should automatically transfer to the new firm.
The company said it had no alternative but to “downsize” when faced with the loss of the contract. “We didn’t want to make the men redundant, we tried on two fronts to help them; through Tupe and also a legal fight against the termination of the contract,” McGurk Moore said.
But the fact remains that when the former McGurk Moore employees turned up for work at Omega the Monday morning after the shock announcement, they were turned away.
Doherty, a plumber, said he and his colleagues could not believe they could “just be left in the wilderness” by two firms which did not want to know them.
“I worked for 30 years for McGurk Moore and I didn’t get so much as a goodbye or good luck from them; I felt I had been betrayed. We’re in limbo – without the unions we would have just been left with no one to turn to.
“I have got a wife and three children. With no wages we can’t do anything and nobody seemed to think they had an obligation to help us,” Doherty said.
He is waiting to see if negotiations between unions and Omega Mechanical Services will deliver a solution.
Derry Trades Council is quietly optimistic that the majority of former workers will be taken on by Omega to work on the new housing association contract. Gallagher hopes the majority of men will have a job. But in a city like Derry, which has the highest level of unemployment in the North, hope is often the first casualty in an economic downturn.
People like Paul Doherty know that if he does not see his job transferred to Omega there will be few alternatives for him.
“The building trade here is finished, I won’t get another job. There would be nothing else but to sit at home, twiddling your thumbs worrying about the bills,” he says.
Derry workers are not alone in facing fresh economic challenges although their plight is definitely made worse by the threat from dissident Republicans.
Latest economic research from Ulster Bank shows business activity in the North fell for the 10th month in a row in September while new orders also slumped.
The Ulster Bank Northern Ireland PMI report details how private sector employment also declined for the 31st month in a row.
Richard Ramsey, chief economist with the bank, said the latest report paints a familiar picture and that the economy is in a much “weaker state” than anywhere else in the UK.
Cold comfort for McGurk Moore’s former employees.
