Conditions for workers in Dunnes Stores are worse now than they were in 1984, one of the former workers who took part in the strike against the sale of South African fruit and vegetables has claimed.
Karen Gearon was one of 11 workers – 10 women and one man – in Dunnes Stores on Henry Street who refused to handle South African produce in 1984 in protest at the apartheid regime. Suspended by the company, they went on a three-year strike outside the Henry Street branch of Dunnes Stores.
They were later joined by another male worker from the company’s Crumlin branch.
Speaking at a ceremony to officially unveil a plaque to the striking workers, Ms Gearon said, “At least the 1984 workers had permanent jobs – the current workers have zero-hour contracts.”
Ms Gearon said the government had effectively brought about an end to the strike in 1987 through its overall ban on the importation of South African fruit and vegetables. She said she believed the current Government was well placed to ban zero-hour contracts, the main source of the current industrial unrest at Dunnes Stores. “They could do it, they should do it,” she said.
Despite being something of industrial relations and human rights celebrities, Ms Gearon said the strikers did not find work easy after the strike ended in 1987. She herself was fired by Dunnes Stores a year later and some strikers emigrated.
