Vita Cortex sit-in about respect, says Kenny

VITA CORTEX workers are really looking for respect and their comments were “not the usual one about money”, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has told the Dáil in a row over legislation about the protection of workers’ rights.

Mr Kenny said he had met the workers at the Cork plant, who are on the 139th day of a sit-in at the former foam manufacturing plant, in protest over the company’s failure to pay redundancy. He said “the workers told me that what they really requested was respect for the long years of committed and diligent service they gave to the firm”. Their “comment to me was not the usual one about money. In their case it is about respect. They deserve that.”

But he rejected as “simplistic” a Bill from Sinn Féin to protect workers’ rights. He was responding to party leader Gerry Adams, who called on the Government to back the party’s legislation to protect workers “who are having their rights trampled upon”. Mr Adams said that as well as respect, workers “also deserve the legal protection of the State and they do not have that”.

Mr Kenny said the Government had looked at the Protection of Employees (Amendment) Bill and rejected it as “a simplistic solution to this problem”. The legislation was introduced as a private member’s Bill last night in the Dáil. Mr Adams said the legislation would “close the loopholes some employers have used to ride roughshod over the rights of workers”. He highlighted a number of companies where “workers are having their rights trampled upon”, including the HW Wilson publishing firm, Lagan Brick, Vodafone, Diageo and Irish Cement.

The Taoiseach said the Government “is anxious to use all the facilities of the State’s machinery to resolve these problems”. There had been intervention in the Vita Cortex case and “some recommendations have been made there”. It was important that these facilities “be seen to work and to bring about successful conclusions”, Mr Kenny said. On Friday, however, the company said the proposals by mediation officials did not form the basis for a resolution and they ignored “the company’s confirmed inability to pay redundancy”.

Sinn Féin jobs spokesman Peadar Toibin, who introduced the Bill, said a “wall of redundancies” was hitting the State and a large number of businesses “are unwilling to fulfil their responsibilities” to employees.

They had to engage in prolonged sit-ins just to get the rights they were entitled to. The Meath West TD said the Bill would address some of the shortcomings redundant workers were facing, it was within the stated position of all parties in the Dáil and would resolve issues around entitlements, periods of notice and timely resolution of payments.

The Bill seeks to extend the period of notice in collective redundancies from 30 days to 60 days where companies have up to 99 employees, and to 90 days where there are 100 or more employees. This was consistent with the North and other EU jurisdictions, he said.

But Minister of State for Jobs Sean Sherlock said Britain was “actively evaluating” the relevance of the continued application of the 90-day provision. He said the existing 30-day notification and consultation period “have served the State well for more than 30 years and neither employer nor employee have ever sought their amendment”. Mr Sherlock also said that in intractable cases “where sudden wind-ups have occurred as the result of court orders”, no consultation period whatever was involved, whether 30 or 90 days, and extending the consultation to 90 days would be of extremely limited used.