A year on from City Link collapse RMT warns

A year on from the Christmas collapse of giant delivery outfit City Link, a scandal which dumped three thousand staff and contractors out of work on Christmas Day 2014, transport union RMT has warned that the UK’s slack corporate laws mean that the same fate could befall other groups of workers at any time.

RMT was tipped off on Christmas Eve 2014 that City Link had gone bust but company bosses denied it, choosing instead to get the final deliveries out up to the close of business that night before cynically confirming the collapse on Christmas Day in the full knowledge that drivers were delivering parcels that they would never be paid for.

In the run up, the owners of City Link, bandit capitalist outfit Better Capital, had protected their own position by converting their equity into loans – giving them first call on the company assets elbowing out the owner-drivers who worked their guts out and leaving them at the back of the queue. Minimal redundancy payments were picked up by the taxpayer.

Despite pressure from RMT, and members of the union’s Parliamentary Group, Parliament has refused to tighten the laws leaving venture capitalists to operate under the same law of the jungle, leaving millions of workers resting on the same knife edge as the City Link staff without any security whatsoever and only the most minimal of rights.

A poorly-constructed prosecution of some of the City Link bosses failed this autumn and those who were at the helm are off making hay this Christmas while the former City Link staff continue to live hand to mouth.

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said:

“It’s scandalous that, despite the City Link collapse 12 months ago, the same law of the jungle operates with the employment and corporate rule book loaded in favour of the bandit capitalists. Millions of workers exist on the same knife edge as the City Link staff and could be tipped into the same crisis at any time while those who call the shots are free to cut and run at will.
“Christmas Eve last year RMT blew the whistle on the City Link insolvency but the company cynically denied the truth to milk every last penny from owner-drivers who ended up getting nothing. They were then dealt their fate on Christmas Day. RMT continues to fight for laws and regulation that shifts the balance away from the bad bosses and towards the workers out there who rightly demand workplace justice.”