Debenhams documentary shows workers fought harder than anyone bargained for

Debenhams documentary shows workers fought harder than anyone bargained for

 Carol Ann Bridgeman with her daughter, Charlotte. Carol worked at the Mahon Point store and took part in the sit-in protest. Picture: Larry Cummins

In early September 2020, Carol Ann Bridgeman faced a predicament: attend her youngest child’s first day at school or be part of the occupation of a shuttered department store.

“There was a lot of grief at home about it but I had made my decision. If I didn’t do it I would have regretted it more,” she says. The occupation was of Debenhams in Cork city centre, the sister store of her workplace for 15 years at the Mahon branch and, at the time, the subject of a liquidation that had turned Carol Ann’s life upside down.

From Ballyvolane in Cork, Carol Ann was one of approximately 1,000 Debenhams employees around the country informed by a curt and generic email in April 2020 that her job was gone. The store was gone, the franchise was gone, at least as far as Ireland was concerned. 

But — crucially — she wasn’t gone. Instead, alongside some of her colleagues, she was occupying the building.

“This is something that I wanted to be a part of,” she says now. “I had to weigh up my options.” 

Yet it wasn’t as easy a decision as all that. “This was my fourth child. I don’t think she would remember me not being there,” she continues, adding that she did a video call with her youngest as she was in her uniform, and that two of her adult children were able to accompany the primary school debutante on her way. “I had confidence knowing that there was someone there in my place."

Ex=Debenhams worker Carol Ann Bridgeman speaking at the Cost of Living protest march in  June 2022.

The reason she is casting her mind back to the turbulent days of 2020 and 2021 is because a new documentary charting the Debenhams collapse and associated industrial action is being premiered in Dublin this weekend.  

406 Days chronicles the length of time that pickets of Debenhams stores around the country ran and ran, telling the stories of those involved as it wended to a, sort-of, conclusion. 406 Days, produced by Fergus Dowd and directed by Joe Lee, has already scooped the ICCL Human Rights Award with the jury stating: “The women in this film could be our mums, our aunties, our grannies, our sisters. They are proud, hard-working women who gave decades of their lives to their work only to have that taken from them with no warning at the start of the covid pandemic.” 

The film will premiere at the Dublin International Film Festival today across three screens and will also be shown in Cork on March 13.

For those involved, it was a remarkable time. Carol Ann, 46, had been a shop steward in the Mahon Point store. “I loved it, I absolutely loved it,” she says. There was the buzz of the sales, the regular customers, the workmates, and the social side of it. According to Fergus Dowd, many Debenhams workers had previously been employed by Roches Stores, the flagship of Cork City retail. Even as more people shopped online, the tills were still ringing — until they weren’t.

Background

The timeline of the Debenhams collapse is convoluted and complex. As the documentary outlines, on April 9, 2019, the Celine Group, made up of three US hedge funds, alongside Barclays Bank and Bank of Ireland, took over Debenhams Group, injecting the company with a £200m floating charge loan. Both Irish subsidiary, Debenhams Ireland, and the Danish equivalent, Magasin Du Nord, also owned by Debenhams, were made co-guarantors of the loan. In January 2020, Debenhams did not renew all 36 trademarks here and on April 8, 2020, it was confirmed that Debenhams was pulling out of Ireland. According to Fergus Dowd, in any liquidation process in Irish company law, a floating charge can only come into effect within 12 months. 

“Twelve months to the day, all 1,000 Irish workers are sent a generic email at 11:55am on April 9, 2020 stating that Debenhams Ireland is to be liquidated and they are to contact social welfare or their local citizen’s advice centre.” It was also stated that employees would not receive the redundancy package previously agreed in 2016 negotiations.

For Carol Ann, “it was devastating. You would expect them to close one or two stores that were not making profit but not all 11. That did not make business sense". 

She says they had earlier received assurances that the Irish stores would not be impacted by the administration in the UK. Given her role with the trade union Mandate in previous negotiations, her phone lit up with messages from colleagues. 

Everyone was in shock, did not know if this was a joke, if this was for real.

The workers took direct action. Pickets and protests had been launched almost from the instant the workers were told their jobs had been lost. 

By the start of September 2020, the workers moved to occupy the buildings, at a time when covid restrictions meant many premises were effectively closed. 

 Protests outside Debenhams on Patrick Street, Cork.
Protests outside Debenhams on Patrick Street, Cork.

“We had decided we would be located within the canteen,” Carol Ann recalls. It had running water, electricity, kettles, and equipment, and even had a couch and a TV. Limiting the scope of the occupation meant it was easier to coordinate, even though security and gardaí made their presence felt. Getting a supply of food into buildings, dealing with the liquidator KPMG — it took a toll. A €1m offer to workers was rejected as insufficient. Some protesters at the Henry St store in Dublin were arrested, something Carol Ann describes as “heavy-handed’ and “horrible”.

Court summons

The Cork occupation ended after four days. They left to cheers and felt that something had been achieved. Carol Ann and others resumed pickets at Mahon Point, but another shock was in the post.

“I was at home one evening and next thing Suzanne Sherry, one of the girls from Henry St, posted up a newspaper article into the national WhatsApp group and I read it and I said ‘that’s me, oh my God’.

“Half an hour later there was a knock on the door — I was being served a court summons for the injunction.” 

Carol Ann was one of three Debenhams workers served. She alone ended up in the High Court. She had some optimism ahead of the court date, but in the event, it was a short, sharp day out. “I did not have as much opportunity to speak as I had hoped for and I felt so deflated afterwards that it did not get the workers anywhere, that it was not going to make a difference.”

 Carol Ann Bridgeman with her daughter, Charlotte.
 Carol Ann Bridgeman with her daughter, Charlotte.

The saga continued involving the Workplace Relations Commission, the trade union, the liquidators. Then came the move to break up the pickets, following on from an additional High Court injunction. The store in Blanchardstown was the first to go.

“It was heartbreaking, the only way I could describe it was heartbreaking,” Carol Ann says. The picket was broken up after midnight — “I was watching live feeds of it at home, powerless to do anything about it.” 

A proposal for a €3m training fund for the workers went to a ballot, and this time it was accepted. Carol Ann says people were “worn out” and many wanted to get on with their lives, but she was unhappy with the outcome. Meanwhile, the WRC process continues.

I cried when Mahon [the store] emptied and I cried again when the ballot was accepted. I was devastated.

 There was a nine-month wait for her redundancy, and an even longer wait for the contents from her workplace lockers: “I didn’t receive my redundancy payment until three weeks before Christmas,” she says. “It took almost two years to get my belongings out of my lockers.” 

'Asleep at the wheel'

Fergus Dowd had already written a book about the Debenhams situation when the idea of a documentary was floated. The book sold out two print runs and with Joe Lee directing, the documentary promises to further highlight the situation which unfolded at stores across the country.

Neither the book nor the documentary makes any suggestion of any illegality, but Fergus clearly believes what occurred was orchestrated and made use of what he and others see as loopholes or shortcomings in Irish law. He believes government departments were “asleep at the wheel” and that effectively the Irish Debenhams stores were sacrificed so the UK outlets could continue for a time longer. 

The Corporate Enforcement Authority says it does not comment on individual cases but added: “All liquidators’ reports received are carefully examined by reference to the facts and circumstances of each case. In particular, each case is examined with a view to establishing whether there have been breaches of company directors’ duties or other breaches of company law.”

The documentary outlines in some detail what occurred, but it is the human experiences that are most telling. “Waterford, for example, their lookout was a 90-year-old woman, she suffered with insomnia and the nursing home [where she lived] was directly across the road from loading bay,” Fergus says. 

She said to the shop steward, 'give me your number, I suffer from insomnia and I would like to be your lookout, if any trucks come in the middle of the night I will give you a ring.' That’s gold. It’s incredible.

“The story of how they got into Cork [the Cork store] — the ladder didn’t reach the top of the roof, there was another ladder lying in the moss, someone spotted it and said ‘we will use this
’” 

Findings from the documentary have been submitted to the Department of the Taoiseach by People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Richard Boyd Barrett.His party has a bill before the Oireachtas on the subject and both he and Fergus Dowd believe the Duffy Cahill Report — submitted to the Department of Enterprise in 2016 and described as “an expert examination of legal protections for workers with a particular focus on ways of ensuring limited liability and corporate restructuring are not used to avoid a company’s obligations to its employees” could, if it had been implemented, at least avoided some of the worst aspects of the Debenhams collapse.

Legislation

For both Fergus and Mr Boyd Barrett, new and improved legislation is required, with the latter raising the issue again in the Oireachtas this past week.

According to a spokesperson for the Department of Enterprise, it took several "unique actions" on foot of the Debenham’s closure including improvements to the quality and circulation of information to workers as creditors and the publication of a ‘Plan of Action on Collective Redundancies following Insolvency’ in June 2021.

"In addition, the Company Law Review Group (CLRG) made recommendations for potential amendments to the Companies Act 2014 to further enhance and strengthen the regulatory framework," they said adding that the Minister intends to bring forward proposals that will implement outstanding employment law and company law legislative commitments set out in the plan of action. 

For Fergus, the documentary stands as a testament to the workers. He says that when the film is shown “there will be tears, anger, laughter - a whole load of emotions.” 

Carol Ann agrees. Life has moved on. She is now undertaking a four-year degree course in Social Work at University College Cork, which will host the Cork screening of the film. Plus, she finally got the contents back from her lockers.

"I had to send several emails to fight to get my belongings back,” she says. “It wasn't what was in them, it was the principle of it.”

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