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Nwicker60
25-Jan-12, 16:18
"Wonder of Woolies" not apparent to former workers who missed out

WOOLWORTHS workers excluded from a multi-million pound compensation package got some support, today, from Highland MSP Dave Thomson who has pledged to help them in their fight to get a fair deal.
Mr Thomson is critical of the settlement which will give 100 former Scottish staff up to 60 days pay. Their union Usdaw won the compensation at an employment tribunal. However, the compensation does not apply to 300 employees who worked in smaller branches where there were fewer than 20 redundances. That applied to most of the stores in Scotland.
Under a legal loophole the 20- stores staff don’t constitute mass redundancies. Because Woolies was in administration at the time of the redundancies -2008- responsibility for the compensation payments rests with the taxpayer through the Government’s Redundancy Payments Office.
Mr Thomson, who represents Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, said that exempting the small stores staff “does not make sense” as Woolies was a sizeable company.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland today, he said: “I am quite sure that the legislation was never meant to operate in this way. It was designed to protect small businesses and Woolies is not a small business and individual stores cannot be dealt with separately. It has to be looked as a whole organisation." The 1000 employees in Scotland deserve compensation the same as all the other former employees.”
While acting primarily for those in his own constituency, Mr Thomson’s case would be strengthened, the more workers that joins his fight to try to reverse the compensation. Those in Wick and Thurso have made plain their anger and disappointed at having been excluded from the pay-out.
Mr Thomson's e-mail address is Dave.Thomson.msp@scottish.parliament.uk