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Jobs loss company under scrutiny Wages pledge to jobs loss workers
(about 3 hours later)
Employment Minister Sir Reg Empey is to send officials into a County Antrim company where 200 people lost their jobs. The adminstrators called into the haulage company Reid Transport say they are confident workers will receive wages owed before Christmas.
Reid Transport in Cloughmills went into administration last week. Two hundred people lost their jobs when the Cloughmills firm went into administration last week.
Trade union, Unite, said many of the workers had been told they would not be compensated for their job loss. Department of Employment officials are at the headquarters of administrators, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, in Belfast.
Sir Reg said his department would study the company's records to see how many workers are entitled to redundancy payments from the government. They are examining the calculations made about how much each employee is entitled to receive.
"I cannot make promises that we cannot keep. I will have to study the books before I can ascertain the extent to which we will be able to help them," Sir Reg said. If the data can be processed quickly, the workers should receive outstanding wages, statutory holiday pay and redundancy settlements from the department's Redundancy Payments Branch.
"Anything that we can do, we will do." The workers had lifted their blockade at the company's gates on Friday afternoon, but it resumed because of confusion about when or if the money would be paid.
Unite has called on the Northern Ireland Executive to make emergency payments to the workers. Administrator Garth Calow has called for the blockade to end so that lorries can return to the yard at Cloughmills.
Sean Smyth from Unite said employees were still waiting for action. Some trucks have been abandoned at the roadside in England and not all have been accounted for.
Speaking from the factory gates on Monday morning, he said: "We have 30 plus employees standing here very disappointed. Directors of the company, Liam and Shaun Reid, have not been seen by the workers or the administrators.
"They were led to believe that Liam Reid would be coming this morning and that the agencies would be coming. So far, no-one has turned up. They are standing here in limbo, they don't know what is happening."