‘They just looked at us as retail workers – mammies and nannies – they didn’t expect this’

In the early days of the Covid pandemic, when Ireland was reeling and fearful, the staff of Debenhams branches received an email to say the stores were closing and their jobs were gone. None of the employees was addressed by name. It was a cold, indifferent imparting of information. The workers were in shock. Many had worked in the premises since it had been Roches Stores and felt an almost familial attachment to their place of employment.

Quickly they began to mobilise a picket action through WhatsApp groups to prevent the stock being removed from the flagship stores in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Limerick. While Ireland’s streets emptied, they began what would become the longest industrial relations protest in the history of the State, lasting 406 days and nights. They occupied the buildings, they repeatedly defied and lay down in front of arriving trucks to gather the stock.

Because their protest took place in the midst of an extraordinary global emergency, it didn’t have the impact it might have done at other times. The public was too frazzled and frightened and, ultimately, fed up with lockdown, to give it their full attention. But what took place was a unique stand-off led by staff who had poured years of their energy and good faith into those stores. This was a movement organised and actioned primarily by women who would never have imagined themselves in this scenario.

“We just learned how strong we were,” says Jane Crowe, a former shop steward who worked in the Henry Street shop.

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“As women we didn’t think we had that fight in us and the company certainly didn’t think we had that fight. Because in work when they tell you to do something, you do it no problem. So, it took them by surprise. And when we took KPMG [the receivers] by protesting outside their offices, they were flabbergasted too that a bunch of retail workers – it’s not as if we were academics that would have the way of the world about us. They just looked at us as retail workers – mammies and nannies that went home from work and cooked the dinner and dusted on a Saturday. They didn’t expect any of this from us. And to be honest we didn’t expect it from ourselves either.”

When film maker Joe Lee was approached by producer Fergus Dowd with the idea of a documentary late last year, he was struck by how little he knew of what had happened beyond the reports he had caught on the evening news. There was a sharp irony in the timing of the Debenhams dispute in that the pandemic shone a light on the vital role of shop workers, who continued to stock the shelves and serve the public.

“It was fascinating to me to go into the anatomy of what this dispute was about and what the women were experiencing on the picket line,” says Lee.

“What was really amazing was the extraordinary-ness of ordinary people. They were just thrown into this situation. None of them were firebrands. It was kind of new to all of them. I found that really refreshing. There were all these contradictions. They became politicised through their experience. The thing that struck me was how they were treated with such condescension by so many people: a sense that oh, they are ordinary people; they won’t understand liquidations or the political machinations. And a part of that was that they were women. And women who work in retail. And that was fundamental to their experience of the whole thing.”

Debenhams moved into Ireland in 1996 and bought the leasehold for nine of the 11 Roches Stores a decade later. Their abrupt departure, in early April 2020, left the shops vacant.

The film made by Lee and Dowd - 406 Days - is framed around the narrative of the workers. It features haunting imagery of the hollowed out interiors of the shops, with the unlit banner names of the perfumeries and fashion brands serving as gravestones to what had been hives of consumerism.

Shops such as Debenhams are designed to give the public a uniform experience: each one looks and feels the same. But for the staff, that is not the case. The shop becomes “their” place. They get to know its nooks and crannies.

Maeve O’Leary worked in the Cork store for 24 years. A part of her still associated the shop with Roches.

“And it was the majority of ex-Roches staff did the picketing. It felt as if you were going to meet your friends every day. I was there [in Roches] 14 years. And every single day you have someone come in and say, ‘Oh we miss Roches Stores’. It was a family. It really was. The friends we met through the years. We did everything together. Got married. Had children. It was a big part of my life. I absolutely loved it.”

O’Leary was a key organiser in the Cork picket. Even after she started new employment in October of 2020, she worked four days a week and picketed for three. That often meant night shifts: sitting in cars in the silent, bleak loading bays to make sure the trucks didn’t come. There was minimal engagement with the company and their request for a basic compensation package was not granted. O’Leary’s interviews for the documentary brought her back to the location where she and others stood waiting and protesting.

“To be honest, that day in the loading bay brought back so many memories. It was awfully hard. It was great the documentary was being made. But walking into the dispatch area and into the building and there was no electricity, it was cold, there was mould on the walls. And it was very, very sad. I spent 24 years of my life in there. And it was gone. That was last March. So it was very hard to go in there.” This was the essential point of the protest. Beyond the money was the sense that the contribution – the years of hospitable service, the warmth towards customers, the willingness to work through pay freezes out of loyalty to the company – could simply be erased with an email.

“I think you do get a real sense of the dignity of work and how it is tied in with the dignity of the person,” says Lee.

“These jobs meant so much to the people in terms of their identity and they came up against this contrived or tactical insolvency. And there was no consideration at all given to what these jobs meant to people. And they felt cheated out of the redundancy they were entitled to. Debenhams was loaded with €200 million worth of debt on April 9th, 2020 and that is what triggered it. And that debt had nothing to do with any trading in their retail chain in Ireland. It had to do with a loan somewhere else. What the women are saying at the end is that they would like to see some legislation coming in to stop this happening again.”

[ Debenhams redundancies ‘predetermined’, union official claims ]

[ Ex-Debenhams workers end 406-day dispute and accept €3m training fund ]

A spokesman for Debenhams previously explained the situation to The Irish Times like this: “Debenhams Ireland made losses of over €40 million in 2018 and 2019, requiring substantial support from Debenhams UK. As a result of Debenhams UK going into administration, it could no longer support the Irish business, which left the directors with no option but to appoint a liquidator. Debenhams fully recognise the impact this decision had on its employees and partners in Ireland, and sympathise greatly with those affected, but regrettably there was no alternative.” KPMG declined to comment.

406 Days is ultimately a tribute to perseverance. As the months dragged on, the numbers of picketers dwindled to a core group of mostly longer-serving staff who could not abandon what was a point of principle. A court injunction led to the arrival of gardaí to remove the staff from the various branches. The film includes vivid camera footage of the staff as they are carried from the loading bay.

“It was like your heart was in your mouth,” says Crowe.

“You are thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is the guards; I’m defying the guards. I wasn’t brought up to do this. I was brought up to respect the guards’. But at the same time, we were fighting for our rights and everybody else’s right. So, we chained the gates and we sat on the ground. They brought four garda for every person so that was daunting.”

In the end, when the workers’ call for basic compensation was denied, they accepted an upgraded offer of a €3 million retraining fund from the Government. Less than €250,000 has been drawn down to date and the scheme ends later this year: any balance will revert to the State. A Bill, tabled by TD Mick Barry, to amend the Companies Act so that workers become the first priority in the distribution of money from the liquidation of a business, is under consideration in the Oireachtas. It has been dubbed the Debenhams Bill.

406 Days premieres at the Dublin International Film Festival on March 4th