Workers Occupy factory in Dundee

From the Socialist Party website - www.socialistparty.org.uk

Interview with Matthew - Young worker in the occupation

An occupation is taking place at Prisme Packaging in Dundee. It started at 5pm on Wednesday 4th March after the twelve employees were told their contracts were being immediately terminated without redundancy pay.

"On Monday we came into work as normal and the Managing Director came in and gave his letter of resignation. So we phoned the company secretary who was actually on holiday. We were told to speak to a guy called Alan Dand. On Tuesday he called us and an administrator came to look at the accounts. Then the company told us that they didn't have enough assets to pay for the administrator and said "Looks like we're just going to shut the door".

We were told that the director and a legal representative were coming to tell us our rights but in fact the legal representative was for the director and wouldn't tell us anything.

They won't even tell us who owns the company! We demanded that we be given a letter how much we were entitled to in redundancy payments, our P45's and statutory redundancy forms.
When we received the letter it stated how much our statutory redundancy payments were and that we were entitled to wages, pay in lieu of notice and accrued holiday pay. Then the next sentence of the letter said "Unfortunately, we do not have any money to make these payments to you.".

They said there were other routes we could take to get our redundancy payments but all they have suggested is speaking to the Citizens Advice Bureau.

After receiving these letters we were told to leave and come back at half nine in the morning but we decided we're not leaving until we receive what we're entitled to. We're not giving them the opportunity to lock the doors while we're out so we end up with nothing."