Mandate trade union bidding to get “everything we can” for Argos workers they represent in Carlow and Kilkenny

Mandate trade union says they will try and get more favourable redundancy rates for staff losing their jobs when the two local branches of Argos shut.

Almost 30 workers will be out of work by this summer after it was confirmed yesterday that the Carlow shop would follow Kilkenny in closing as the company pulls out of Ireland.

South East Divisional Organiser with the union Mandate, Kilkenny woman Karen Wall, says they want an improvement on the current offer of six weeks pay per year of service; “We have an agreed package with the company because we would have had a number of redundancies over the years as the leases ended so we have a four plus two package but given the scale of this we will still be sitting down with the company and trying to get everything we can out of them for our members”.

She says that Kilkenny staff will be included in any new deal despite the closure of their shop being confirmed last year, noting “We have a relationship with this company, it’s a collective redundancy, we’ll all be going into talks with the company to get the best possible outcome for our members and that will include the store in Kilkenny, that announcment was made just at the end of last year with that store due to close at the end of March”.

And Ms Wall adds “I would imagine that we’d have been meeting very quickly because we have a lot of concerned and worried members so we will meet very quickly with the company and they have acknowledged that they will be sitting down with us”.