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STAFF AT GAME stores around Ireland are continuing their sit-ins as management meet with representatives from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) today.
James Daly, District Development Manager and Store Manager at Mahon Point, thanked everyone who had supported the stores but told TheJournal.ie that staff are still waiting for official communication from Game about their redundancies.
The staff are effectively left ‘in limbo’ as they wait for confirmation about what is going to happen, Daly said. In total, 121 staff members in the Republic of Ireland have been affected by the closure of Game stores in the country. They have set up a Facebook page and Twitter account to keep people updated on their situation, through which they have received a huge outpouring of support.
PwC released a statement last night saying that employees who were being made redundant would be paid their wages for the month of March this week. But Daly said the staff themselves had not been told this officially.
“We had a meeting on Tuesday at which everyone was resolute in continuing our fight,” said Daly.
Things really haven’t moved on an awful lot since then. We’re hoping to meet with PwC this morning and as of yet we still havent got any official confirmation that they have been appointed as the administrator for ROI yet. They have now started doing press here but they have not communicated anything to us formally. The media last night told me about some of their statements.
Eleven Game stores continued their sit-ins last night. Yesterday staff from Vita Cortex and La Senza visited stores in Cork and Dublin respectively, bringing with them food and other items and pledging their support to the Game staff.
“The shocking thing at this stage is this letter of engagement from PwC UK to PwC Ireland we are still waiting on,” sayd Daly. “We have got huge support from the Dáil and we have had a lot of TDs and senators come out on our behalf.”
“The support has been immense,” continued Daly. “It is gearing us up but at the same time this seems to be a very protracted week. They want to be done and dusted and gone out of Dublin as soon as possible. We are happy to facilitate that but we have not had any official communciation with them.”
Management from Game met with PwC representatives at 10am this morning, and staff hope that they will be told they are officially taking over the administration of the company in Ireland.
We were all made redundant on Monday and we still have not received any Irish forms in order to make a claim of redundancy. Some staff have gone to dole offices but because we don’t have any forms they have been turned away.
“This is going to happen again, this is the point we want to get out to people. We are not the first and we are certainly not going to be the last,” said Daly, adding “we have to make a stand”.
This cannot go on. There are going to be too many companies who will do this.
We haven’t even sat down and had official dialogue. You’d have thought in this day and age that should have happened. The support has been amazing. We’d like to say thanks to people for their custom over the years and their support.
Added Daly:
It’s really nice but at the same time it makes you upset as well. We’ve all felt emotional about the whole thing as well. At the end of the day we are normal people and we are just thrown into something like this.
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It’s a disgrace that they tell the Irish staff they have no money to pay them when half the English stores are still trading
I’m probably going to get shot down for this but this is exactly why we need unions regardless of how corrupt we all assume they are!
Dont take any crap and fight it all the way
Let’s not forget guys, you still have all that company stock……..
Wii should help
I hope La Senza dropped over some nice underwear to the game staff cause they’re being screwed!
I hope they get a deal out of this
have your say