Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

After the peremptory closure of HMV Ireland, with more than 300 job losses, the workers correctly occupied some stores in Limerick, Cork and Dublin, demanding their rights in terms of pay, holiday pay, redundancy and the guarantee of social welfare entitlements. The Minister put his faith in the receiver to give these workers justice. Is the Minister not aware that the receiver, Deloitte, put these workers under disgraceful pressure last weekend, blackmailing them that the pay for the entire 300 workers would be withdrawn if they did not hand over the premises to the receiver forthwith without any guarantee on redundancy payments?

Even worse, the owners of the Old Darnley Lodge Hotel, Athboy, County Meath, told 15 full-time and 30 part-time workers on 16 January that the hotel would close in one hour. The owners have since absconded without any contact with the staff at all. This is a year after similar behaviour by the employers in La Senza lingerie chain. Is it not a sorry judgment on this Government's record on workers' rights that in the Ireland of 2013, employers can treat workers in this high-handed, cavalier and disgraceful fashion?

I ask the Minister to put in place new strategies. He says it is not viable to consider public ownership for major enterprises like this but it is viable to throw hundreds of workers on to the dole. These companies should be forced to open their books so workers can understand exactly where the €15 million HMV brought in last month went and can ask why it should not go to them.

The occupation is the most effective weapon for workers facing this disgraceful action but the law the Minister just mentioned allows the employers who have closed these businesses and treated their employees disgracefully to injunct them. Surely the power should be given to workers to injunct the bosses who have gone off with their wages and entitlements?

See this speech in context