This morning Iceland Workers from Talbot Street, Ballyfermot, Northside and Portlaoise were at the Four Courts in Dublin to stand with each other as Donna Grimes the reluctant spokesworker of the 55 day-long occupation of Talbot Street Iceland. She read out a prepared statement which People Before Profit publishes in full below.
It should be noted that before consenting to allow the Donna to read this into the court record, the judge sought the consent of the counsels representing the business owner and the examiner. They consented and she read the statement which concluded with the following requests :
Judge, on behalf of the biggest human stakeholders in this entire process and those who continue to occupy the Talbot St store, we ask for justice.
We ask for orders to be issued compelling the company, which, with its cash reserve exceeding 300,000 euro, can afford to settle all outstanding wage ssues and unfair dismissals.
We ask for justice for the ordinary workers who have been the victims of a most sinister and devious series of events.
Judge, will you give us justice? (full statement below)
Statement by Iceland Workers on Examiner’s Report to the Courts
Despite the clear and justifiable request for a speedy resolution for weekly paid workers and his sympathy ‘especially for the uncertainty’, the judge said no to any the request for action. ‘I have no jurisdiction’. He’s right. The decision to help the workers without a legal basis would have led to an appeal by the other creditors and the business. It’s not his role.
He also noted that this was not the time to make this request and that when the entire process was complete a workers would have a time to use their voice and to have their vote just like the other creditors: landlords, Revenue, the suppliers with their multiple income streams and other stakeholders.
There are several problems with the judge’s assessment that everything will work out in the end the way it should and that the court will give everyone their due equally:
1) Workers need faster courts than the other creditors
Workers lives are under constant pressure: monthly or weekly rent, childcare, food, bills, credit cards. Incomes are fixed or, worse, precarious due to variable hours. We rarely get a bonus or tips that make any difference, certainly not in retail. We can’t have ‘a good year’ ie one where we make lots of profits when it’s busy. The only thing we get on a busy day is more tired.
The profit from when a business gets busy goes to the boss, but the losses hit workers (even harder) when businesses slump or go bust. We get fired (100% loss). Bosses put their losses on workers. Workers take the hit and it hits us harder. Our need for rent, food, childcare and utilities don’t disappear into ‘examinership’. We can’t set up a shell company and put all our families’ needs and late rent and hunger there. And really, we also can’t really work multiple jobs to any serious level of income like any businessman might be able to do by opening another premises or new venture.
We need justice to be faster. The process needs to be over in a month for workers. Creditors have multiple income streams. Iceland Workers only had this one. So of course most people have moved on in doing so they voted with their feet: workers have no confidence in a capitalist court.
2) Workers need democratic representation which we can’t access practically in capitalist courts
Most capitalist and state creditors had legal representation in court today. Each had a view of the examiner’s report on the business. The workers, hundreds of them current and former, were represented by just the IWU (SIPTU represents some workers but were not present for the workers in court today). Donna’s statement was the only voice for workers. She was only allowed to speak with the on-the-spot consent of her former employers (who have denied her the basic dignity of paying her). 14 workers were also in court. Like each of the individual landlord, they are owed money. But the workers did not have their own separate solicitor elbowing in for space to speak. Why? Money.
Workers are fighting collectively for their individual rights to their accrued sick pay, holiday pay, and earned wages. The biggest individual worker debt held by Iceland is less than 3000 euro. That’s less than any month’s rent to any of the landlords in any of the Iceland locations. A getting a solicitor for yourself would cost you more than than it is worth. Workers are practical. Hiring solicitors doesn’t make practical sense. Without one the court doesn’t really hear you, so for workers the courts don’t function in any practical sense.
And how many voices will be heard on the final day in court? Probably one representative voice (from the union) as there was today. That’s not representative of the hundreds of families affected by the closures of now 13 stores. The courts don’t function democratically. Each creditor is actually prioritised by the amount of money owed- not how much it means to them or what amount of time or effort was put in. Each of these workers worked through covid, risking themselves, each other and their families. Why? For their wages. Now the company has disregarded paying them properly. They stopped communicating honestly, in some cases they’ve just ignored them. Workers who physically put themselves on the line for Iceland deserve better. Most creditors – even those owed 10 to 20 times the workers collectively – had no obligation to ever leave their safe offices during Covid restrictions. Phone calls and emails: the payments just rolled in. They never even had to put on a mask. But a capitalist court will prioritise them because they deal in larger volumes of money.
3) Workers didn’t have a say in making capitalist courts (and we could have done a fairer job)
If working people had been in charge of making the court process, workers could have prioritised working people or made the courts equal for them. But we didn’t. This is easy to see when workers and capitalists are in the same room (like they were today).
-Look at the laws around business going into examinership and the appointment of examiners. The larger creditors and landlords are prioritised, while workers (less likely to have alternative income streams) are put at the bottom without their consent. Keeping the business going is the priority, not keeping the jobs or even speedy compensation for lost jobs.
-Look at the magical thinking that sees workers ‘equal’ when their voice is diminished from 100s to 1 through a structure that is not democratic and gives a voice to every capitalist and silences the majority of workers.
-Look at the the wilful disregard for a worker with 23 months of loyal employment. In a capitalist court, that’s not enough for a worker to deserve even the lowest legal statutory redundancy payment (24 months is two year threshold. Under current employment law you can’t be eligible for redundancy if you haven’t been working for two years).
This anti-worker design to the capitalist courts leaves a bigger pot of money for the corporate and state creditors to draw from. It allows the process to legally disregard the needs of younger and lower-income people who work to live. It prioritises (very often very) profitable companies who invest for further profit- an optional activity with little existential risk.
Workers: little choice and lots of risk
Workers don’t have a choice. We have to work. If we don’t work, we face the existential risk of homelessness. Our ‘choice’ is where we work. But it’s the bosses who choice to employ (use) us or not. We have real limits too: child and elder care, rising rents and increasing costs for food utilities and transport. Most advertised jobs won’t pay rent. We have little choice in the system.
The business person gets more money because they as the capitalist risks their investment. But they take less of a risk in situations like this than we do as workers. Iceland’s debtors are more protected in terms of numbers and sunk investment than Iceland’s workers. If a supplier had been giving credit or letting property for 23 months they’d get a fair shake in court. Workers with 23 months are legally not even considered in a capitalist court. It’s not a design flaw: it’s meant to work this way in a capitalist court. That’s why a day in capitalist court is disappointing. It’s not a place where workers can really win.
But workers still need solutions now! There are so many cases similar to Iceland: snap closures, mass layoffs, (Accenture, Tara Mines, Argos, Debenhams). There will be more. In every case workers deserve a quick payment of all outstanding wages, payments and any other accrued earnings and real acknowledgment of all the time worked. And we should always fight to enhance statutory redundancies to include all workers but we do that best out of courts.
Conclusion
Relying on the capitalist courts for justice is not working: Workers at Iceland won’t get their due through the courts or the Workplace Relations Commission– certainly not in time. That time is already past.
If we saw the courts as good ways to solve workers’ issues we wouldn’t need fighting unions. We wouldn’t need a left government. We wouldn’t need to build People Before Profit. We wouldn’t need a whole system change for workers to get their due. But we do need them all, because for one reason capitalist courts don’t work for workers. There are so many more reasons.
We need a system change in Ireland because calls for reform (like the Debenhams’ Bill) are simply refused by 2023’s continuation 100 years of right wing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (and whoever goes in with them) governments. They all believe workers are not equal and should remain at the bottom of a system that has given us the capitalist court.
Strikes and occupations, fighting trade unions and worker organisation: these are the best defences we have as workers as we build socialist Ireland. Each fight strengthens our abilities to fight back. That’s why we back the Iceland Workers occupation 100% and encourage all members of People Before Profit and all trade union to show their support for the Iceland workers today.
Hats off to the workers and the IWU for keeping up the fight.