Issue 92:
Debenhams special
June 2020
the bulletin of
Irish Debenhams workers have protested against
their job losses and are now picketing stores to stop
assets being removed, which, like their Irish online
business, Debenhams claims for its parent company.
Iain Dalton, Usdaw Broad Left
Chair
As a warning of the coming reces-
sion we are now entering, Deben-
hams went into administration in
April last year, with 22 stores clos-
ing and all but 39 of the remaining
stores having rent reductions. Fast
forward a year, and Debenhams is
back in administration again, with
more store closures looming.
First the company disgracefully
announced the closure of it’s Irish
business, comprising of 11 stores
– whilst transferring its profitable
Irish online business to the UK par-
ent company as well as all of the
leases and assets in the store. The
workforce were to receive no re-
dundancy pay from the company.
As we’ve reported, workers in the
stores, members of Mandate, the
main Irish retail workers trade un-
ion, held protests outside stores,
the Dail (Irish parliament) and
since an attempt to remove assets
from store in Cork, have been hold-
ing pickets outside stores to stop
block this.
But meanwhile, here in Britain
where a greater number of stores
are due to close, 17 now in total,
with a few more still hanging in the
balance, there has been no such
campaign from Usdaw. During
this crisis the union’s only public
action has been to issue a press
usdawactivist.wordpress.com ■ usdawactivist@gmail.com ■ Facebook: ‘Usdaw Activist’ ■ Twitter: @UsdawActivist
theActivist
WORKERS
MADE TO PAY
FOR COVID-19
CRISIS –
NATIONALISE TO
SAVE JOBS
release calling Usdaw “the trade
union for Debenhams staff” and
call on Debenhams to recognize
Usdaw. Given the brutal way they
have treated Mandate members in
Ireland, where Mandate was rec-
ognised, it’s utopian to think they’ll
listen to Usdaw doing less!
Since then the company has an-
nounced more than 1,000 jobs
within the company are to go as it
starts to re-open it’s doors on 15th
June, both in head office and in
services in store such as cafés that
won’t be opening under social dis-
tancing guidelines. The company
is refusing to continue furloughing
them and making them redundant
with immediate effect without any
notice or consultation period.
Understandably, such workers,
who didn’t know their jobs were at
risk until being told they were re-
dundant are outraged. The restau-
rant manager of the Debenhams
store at The Moor in Sheffield told
local newspaper The Star ““We all
just feel really let down… some
of my staff have worked there for
more than 20 years… Debenhams
is still getting help from the Gov-
ernment. I don’t understand why
they need to let us go right now
when they could have kept us on
for another month and we’d still
get furlough pay.”
20 jobs are to go at that store in
Sheffield, another 20 reported in
members in
Norwich, 40 in Plymouth and the
list continues across the country.
But this is just one of a number of
companies entering into adminis-
tration at the moment, the latest
additions to the list have been
footwear company Aldo and linge-
rie company Victoria’s Secret.
Unless a concerted campaign to
defend jobs in the retail sector
is waged, then Debenhams may
end up being the first of many big
retail chains who stay in business
by making workers pay. That’s
why Usdaw supporters in the Na-
tional Shop Stewards Network
have called for a day of action
of protests outside Debenhams
stores on 15th June.
We’ll be expressing our solidarity
with Mandate members in Ireland
fighting for their jobs, as well as
calling for Debenhams to be na-
tionalised to save jobs. Usdaw
should be urgently raising the
question of public ownership to
save jobs, as outlined in the 2017
ADM proposition adopted after
the collapse of BHS.
Join the protests:
London, Oxford St - 9am, Plym-
outh, New George St - 8.30am,
Leeds, Briggate - 10.30am,
visit ‘National Shop Stewards
Network’ and ‘Usdaw Activist’
facebook pages for more lo-
cations
Join the union and help us
organise for
•Full pay for all workers self-isolat-
ing or laid off from day one - no to
forcing staff to use holidays
•35 hour working week with no loss
of pay
•£15 an hour minimum wage and
hazard pay
•Increase staffing levels in store to
carry out any necessary cleaning &
hygiene duties, bring back in house
outsourced cleaners. Full time con-
tracts to all those who want them
•Scrap the 2 year qualifying period -
Full employment rights from day one
• Scrap performance targets
•Time and a half for all overtime
worked over contracted hours
•Reinstate lost paid breaks and
premium payments, double pay on
Sundays and time and a half on
Saturdays. No extension of Sunday
trading
•Trade union control over changing
staff duties, hiring and firing, and
opening time changes
•No lifting of any social distancing
measures without agreement from
elected local health and safety com-
mittees/reps
•Open the books to trade union in-
spection if companies say they can’t
afford these measures
•Democratically elected committees
of workers and consumers to control
prices and rationing policies at all
levels
Join Usdaw - usdaw.org.uk/join
Join the fightback
JOIN THE
SOCIALISTS
Visit socialistparty.org.uk/join
or call
020 8988 8777
or text your
name and
postcode to
07761 818 206
to find out more
about joining us today
 theActivist
WHAT SORT OF PUBLIC OWNERSHIP IN RETAIL?
Less than a year ago, Tory govern-
ment ministers, and their echoes
in the right-wing press, were call-
ing Corbyn every insult under the
sun as he raised the question of
bringing some sectors of the econ-
omy into public ownership.
But the Coronavirus crisis and the
deep recession we are entering
into has caused them to consider
the same policies they described
as ‘chaos’ back then. Their hal-
lowed market – based on compe-
tition between companies to pro-
duce the biggest profits - has been
shown to be the real cause of
chaos for the rest of society once
again, happy to sacrifice workers
jobs and living standards just to
prop up the 0.01% at the top.
Such is the depth of this crisis,
that the dysfunction of whole sec-
tors of industry could cause wider
problems for the capitalists them-
selves. We’ve already seen the
government intervene to effective-
ly take over responsibility for the
railways, and there’s widespread
talk of the Treasury preparing to
bail-out and take stakes in key
sectors of the economy, including
air travel, the steel industry and
more.
So it is hardly surprising that this
issue has been raised in retail, as
workers ask if governments can
bail out other industries, why not
retail? This has been a demand
raised by Debenhams workers in
Ireland on placards on their dem-
onstrations – and in 2017, fol-
lowing the collapse the previous
year of BHS, Usdaw’s ADM voted
to support a proposition that pub-
usdawactivist.wordpress.com ■ usdawactivist@gmail.com ■ Facebook: ‘Usdaw Activist’ ■ Twitter: @UsdawActivist
the bulletin of
lic ownership to save jobs should
be raised in a similar situation,
though the union’s leadership
have failed to enact this.
Such is the depth of the crisis, with
many retail companies likely to go
to the wall without intervention in
the sector, that even quite large
retailers could end up affected as
deflation means price squeezes
and increased competition, de-
spite most of the big supermarkets
gaining a cushion at present by
the surge in demand experienced
at the beginning of the crisis.
What type of public ownership is
a crucial question. To simply carry
on running Debenhams stores or
any other struggling retail com-
pany as the exact same kind of
business in the long-term is not
likely to be tenable in the long-run,
even with rent reductions agreed
by landlords, tax-breaks and other
relief. Therefore a new business
plan for such companies need to
be drawn up.
But who should do this? Usdaw’s
retail industrial strategy raised the
idea of workers representatives on
boards of directors, but this could
leave the worker representatives
in a minority as prisoners of a
strategy drawn up by representa-
tives of the capitalist class whose
response to any future difficulties
would be to again turn to asset
stripping methods like the present
owners are.
Whilst correctly calling for public
ownership of Debenhams – the
accompanying slogan of “Put the
Workers at the Heart of Manage-
ment” adopted in a social media
members in
banner by the Socialist Party (Ire-
land), part of the International
Socialist Alternative, who broke in
2019 from the politics and ideas
defended by the Activist, does not
clearly delineate itself from the
mistaken approach adopted by the
Usdaw leadership, indeed much of
the trade union movement on this
issue. This is especially important
given that state owned companies
in Ireland have around 1/3 of their
boards made up by worker-direc-
tors.
Several articles written on Deben-
hams by their former TD (MP) Ruth
Coppinger go a bit further, but still
have an unclear position. These
at least mention the need for con-
trol to not just by appointees, but
“democratic” with an article from
May 3rd calling for a publicly owned
company to be “democratically run
by the workers themselves”.
We agree that instead of remaining
under the direction of the capital-
ist class, the company should be
run by the working class. But we
are also clear that this shouldn’t
be in a syndicalist fashion run just
by elected representatives of the
workers of that company them-
selves, but also drawing from the
wider working class represented
through their trade unions, which
could input into other products and
services which could be provided
through any such publicly owned
JJ Usdaw President backs Irish Debenhams workers
I want to offer my full solidarity and
support to Debenhams workers in
Ireland, and your trade union, Man-
date, in their battle against Deben-
hams liquidating your jobs.
Your socially distanced protests
and stopping the companies as-
sets being stripped have been an
inspiration of how workers can
make a collective stand against
companies who want to throw us
on the scrap heap.
With millions of pounds in stocks
and fixtures and a viable online
business in Ireland, Debenhams
should be brought into public own-
ership to save jobs. If they can
retail companies.
But the most rational way to organ-
ise a publicly owned retail company,
is not as an isolated organisation,
but as part of a planned production
and distribution of at least the key
essentials in society, which would
necessitate not just bringing into
public ownership under democratic
workers control the key retail com-
panies, but the dominant manufac-
turing and distribution companies
too, alongside the banks, transport
and utilities.
The need for co-ordination and
planning has been demonstrated
in retail during this crisis by the
suspension of retail competition
laws to allow companies to col-
laborate in distribution to try to
maintain supplies. But rather than
elements of planning being used
in such a way to continue to prop
up the profits of the bosses in their
mutual interests, a socialist plan
would go beyond just the question
of trying to reduce clogging in the
supply chain of a limited, but prof-
itable supply, and instead seek to
make decisions about investment
and production to increase supply
to reach needs. Such a socialist
plan would be the foundation for
a society that could put the needs
of people first, rather than growing
the profits of the bosses at our ex-
pense.
bail out bank bosses who caused
the 2007-08 crash, why not retail
workers who have done nothing but
working hard for years.
The whole trade union move-
ment must rally round your strug-
gle. With many retail jobs threat-
ened in both Ireland and the UK,
your struggle ending in success
can hopefully make companies
and governments think twice
before putting our jobs in peril.
Yours in solidarity,
Amy Murphy, Usdaw National Presi-
dent