They Milked the Boom and Now They Milk the Recession Mandate has commissioned important independent research to establish whether or not some retail companies are using the recession to drive down business costs primarily through the reduction in workers terms and conditions. The full results of the research will be available shortly but Mandate News can offer you an exclusive insight into what is happening in the retail sector at the moment. Whilst it is undeniable that the economic downturn has had an adverse impact on some companies within the Irish retail sector the extent of the impact has not been uniform across all retail traders. In fact some companies still enjoy good trading conditions, healthy profits and moreover an insatiable desire to maintain these profits, sometimes at the expense of their own loyal employees. Over recent months Mandate has witnessed an aggressive and determined attempt by many profitable companies to drive down pay and undermine the terms and conditions of low paid workers. This deliberate strategy is strategically positioned by these companies and in many instances framed against the current economic climate. The report found that many highly profitable companies who enjoy healthy trading conditions continue to seek significant payroll reductions under the guise of ‘economic necessity’. It is clear that many profitable companies MANDATE NEWS / Spring 2010
are deliberately using the recession to try to force through a longheld ambition to destroy long-fought for employment standards, reduce wages of employees and ultimately increase already healthy profits. In short, they are “Milking the Recession”.
Mandate Fighting Back As a prologue to the report, Mandate has openly stated that it will make no apologies for resisting profitable employers trying to milk the recession by cutting wages and conditions, by reducing hours and by attempting to force through phoney redundancies so as to increase their profits. John Douglas, General Secretary of Mandate said, “As a responsible trade union, Mandate has and will engage with employers who are genuinely suffering economic difficulties. We will enter into long-term agreements with employers which protect jobs, provide a decent income and value workers as genuine stakeholders in the enterprise with a shared future. “However, these genuine cases of economic difficulty are special cases and should not be used as a battering ram to beat down the conditions of other workers. Make no mistake, Mandate will hold employers to account for trying to milk the recession and drive down the standards of living of ordinary decent workers and their families. We will not risk jobs in the process and you can rest assured that wherever action is taken, it will be taken because of an employers attempt to increase their profits at the expense of our members.”
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