27 December 2014
RMT Press Office
A meeting between City Link union RMT and administrators Ernst and Young today has exposed a truly horrific catalogue of mismanagement at the top of the company dating back to November which leaves more than two thousand staff facing redundancy on new years eve with a skeleton staff kept on for a couple of weeks to wind down the operation.
At the meeting the union was told that:
* the company were working with insolvency advisors since November without telling the staff or their union.
* the company was technically declared insolvent on the 22nd December but deliberately withheld that information. A plot to hold the announcement to Boxing Day was only thwarted by the RMT acting on information from a whistle blower.
* more than 2000 staff will be made redundant on New Years eve. City Link and it's financial backers will have no liability for redundancy payments and the staff will have to apply to the government scheme. The remaining staff will be retained short term to wind down the company.
* individual sub contractors, owed thousands of pounds, are unlikely to see any of their money.
* there is no one in the frame to take over the company as a going concern but there may be a limited number of jobs available at other companies.
As a result of this latest devastating package of news RMT is demanding an immediate meeting with Vince Cable and his officials and a government supported rescue plan to save the company as a going concern.
Mick Cash, General Secretary, said;
"It is crystal clear from today's meeting that there has been a truly horrific catalogue of mismanagement at City Link and that staff and their union have been starved of basic information while a plot was hatched to publicly collapse the business on Boxing Day when in fact it was already declared insolvent. What a despicable and callous manipulation of thousands of workers and their livelihoods over Christmas as the venture capitalists cut and run leaving a trail of chaos and misery in their wake.
Vince Cable has said he will meet us in the New Year. Clearly that is too late and the business will have been smashed to pieces by then as the asset strippers hover like vultures over the corpse.
RMT is demanding a meeting with Vince Cable right now, not when it's too late. We want to put a plan together for a Government backed rescue that protects the business and the jobs it supports. If the government can nationalise the bankers then they can nationalise City Link which is clearly in the public interest. "
Ends
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