CONCERNS ARE MOUNTING among staff at retailer Iceland over their employment in Ireland as problems with deliveries and payroll have dogged the firm for weeks.

Their worries will be compounded by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) issuing a massive recall of all frozen food products of animal origin which have been imported into Iceland stores since 3 March.

However, it will explain why many of their stores had failed to receive a delivery of frozen food for many weeks. The Journal spoke with staff members who had been unclear as to why shipments had ceased. 

The FSAI confirmed that the Department of Agriculture has been detaining consignments of food destined for stores, issuing an import control notice to return them to Britain or destroy them.

The FSAI said the breaches of food legislation related to the recall were “very serious”, painting a picture of a firm not complying with regulations to the point of failing to provide any proper documentation for the frozen food it is importing. 

In recent weeks, The Journal also reported that staff had complained of erratic wage payments, which had seen some receiving a fraction of their ordinary pay packet, and others miss out on their wages altogether.

Staff in several different stores reported problems with deliveries, while workers also told The Journal that some of their holiday hours had been removed in recent days.

Some problems with erratic salary payments are also continuing, representatives of the workers said. 

However, a spokesperson for the owner of Iceland’s Irish franchise claimed that there have been “no changes in the terms and conditions of any of the employees” and that food deliveries still take place “as per agreed schedules”.

The differing accounts of what is happening at the company were met with concern by Sinn Féin’s workers rights’ and enterprise spokesperson Louise O’Reilly, who said she had heard complaints from a number of staff in recent months.

“There is no uniformity from store to store, no consistency,” the Dublin TD said.

“In some, people are getting paid and in others they aren’t. That is very worrying because it’s a chain store. It’s very unusual in the retail sector.”

There are 26 Irish stores across the Republic with an estimated 300 staff employed by the company here.

“Where the message from the workers directly contradicts the company, then there is a serious issue.”

O’Reilly said she understood some workers still weren’t getting paid their proper wages. 

Erratic wage payments

While claims have been made by a union official that some staff are still not being paid, with one down a “surplus of €1,000″, the company insisted that its workforce was being paid properly.

“All employees of the Iceland stores in the Republic of Ireland are being paid their wages in accordance with their agreed terms and conditions,” the company said.

“All Iceland stores in the Republic of Ireland are trading normally.”

The Independent Workers Union, which represents staff at a number of Iceland stores in Dublin and Cork, said it has now lodged cases for “50 to 60″ workers at the Workplace Relations Commission, ranging from shopfloor staff to junior managers.

Its organiser Jamie Murphy said the uncertainty is concerning.

“Obviously a big question which needs to be answered is what is the future of the Iceland stores here? These workers, even though they’re in the thick of it, they have no more of a clue than we do as to what’s going on.

“They do not know whether they have job security or not and we have asked the company on numerous occasions to offer confirmation of their job security, and we’ve gotten no response.”

Last month, four of Iceland’s stores in Dublin had served strike action due to the ongoing dispute – these were in Ballyfermot, Tallaght, Coolock and the Iceland shop in Northside Shopping Centre.

The IWU staged pickets outside some of these. 

While Murphy said the IWU has found there to have been “some form of regularity” with wages at the stores since then, he claimed it is still “not consistent across the board”.

Many workers, he added, are “still are owed pay back from March or April”.

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Speaking yesterday, Murphy said that some workers have now “found their holiday hours have been cut and they’ve been given no explanation as to why”.

One staff member who spoke to this publication on condition of anonymity said they and several other workers discovered last week that holiday hours they had built up no longer existed.

In many cases, they had gone the other way and now the staff have been informed they have to make time back.

Some lost a handful of holiday hours, but others lost dozens and one worker is understood to have lost around 70 hours due back. When they checked, they found they were on minus 120 hours.

Attempts by some workers to contact the company’s office and speak with administration staff have not been successful this week.

“The normal response is to be told ‘Sorry we’ll look into that’, but to be met with silence is not normal or professional,” one staff member who spoke to us said.

“We haven’t had a frozen delivery in three weeks,” another staff member said. “Is it the beginning of the end? We don’t know.”

This worker added that it felt as the company was being “run into the ground” in recent months.

Minister

Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise Neale Richmond met with the new owners and operators of the Iceland stores in Ireland on Tuesday of this week, a spokesperson for his department said.

Speaking early last month in the Dáil, Richmond told O’Reilly that he had been waiting “to have a full exchange” with the new owner.

The department did not confirm what was discussed at Tuesday’s meeting.

O’Reilly said it was important that Richmond keeps lines of communication open with the company.

“The minister now needs to do a follow up meeting because of the refusal of management to engage, it means the workers are left worried about their own future. In the absence of consistency from management it’s hard not to be worried,” the Dublin Fingal TD said.

Owner

The new owner of the Ireland franchise for Iceland was announced in February as Project Point Technologies, whose director is Naeem Maniar, an Irish-based Indian businessman.

Maniar previously owned Iceland’s Ireland franchise until an examiner was appointed by the High Court in 2015.

The Journal sent an email query to an address associated with Maniar this week. While we did not receive a response from that address, a separate response – addressing some of our questions – was received within 24 hours from a company called Metron Stores, which said it was responding on behalf of the Iceland Irish franchise.

It disputed claims by staff about food deliveries.

Metron Stores said that “as part of best practice, operational matters at store level are subject to compliance checks under the franchise agreement” with the parent company.

“All Iceland stores in the Republic of Ireland continue to receive delivery of goods as per their agreed schedules,” Metron Stores said.

It is now clear that the recall – and subsequent detention of consignments – came about after border post control officials, in collaboration with Revenue Customs, identified undeclared frozen food of animal origin with no accompanying documentation for goods being imported by Metron Stores Limited, trading as Iceland Ireland, into Ireland.

The FSAI has informed the European Commission and food standards agencies in the UK are sharing relevant information to support the investigation.