FURIOUS FORMER Nortel employees in Northern Ireland have launched a campaign for compensation totalling thousands of pounds against the stricken telecommunications giant.
Nortel, which went into administration in the UK at the beginning of this year, cut 87 jobs at its Monkstown plant in the North in March. The group’s 34-acre facility is the headquarters of Nortel’s EMEA supply chain operations
The sacked workers claim Nortel’s administrators, Ernst Young, had a moral obligation to employees to hold proper consultations about the redundancies.
The trade union Unite believes sacked Nortel workers in the North should be entitled to redundancy payments.
Unite claims the sacked workers were treated badly by Nortel and its administrators because of the nature in which they were dismissed, and because they were not offered any redundancy packages.
The union said workers, some of whom had 30 years’ service at the Monkstown plant, did not receive a penny in compensation, while senior Nortel executives were recently awarded $23 million in bonuses.
The sacked Northern Ireland workers and their union leaders vented their frustration with the company and its administrators yesterday in a highly vocal protest at Nortel’s factory gates in Monkstown and later at Ernst Young’s city centre offices in Belfast.
It is the latest in a series of co-ordinated UK-wide protests against Nortel and its administrators.
Earlier this week former Nortel employees also lobbied the British parliament in London and held protests outside Ernst Young’s offices.
Nortel administrators say they acted within the law at all times in relation to the dismissal of Nortel’s workers in the North.
“The company is in an insolvency process and this needs to be taken into account when evaluating the redundancy actions taken on March 30th, 2009.
“The administrators work within the framework of the insolvency legislation and give due regard to the UK employment laws,” they said.
Ernst Young added that no consultation took place with Nortel employees over the redundancies because “it was not reasonably practicable to do so”.
“The joint administrators have settled all arrears of pay to the redundant employees in full, and expect to settle holiday pay preferential claims in due course.
“Redundancy and pay in lieu of notice claims are unsecured and these claims will be treated equally with the claims of all other unsecured creditors,” they said.
