FORMER Debenhams staff who led a mammoth 406-day picket at axed stores in the south were in Belfast on Wednesday to hand over a copy of a book detailing their struggle to the library at Queen's University.

The book, which was written by Fergus Dowd and Sue O'Connell, features stories of the struggles faced by the predominantly female workforce as they manned the picket lines during some of the worst days of the pandemic. The strike ended in May 2021 when agreement was reached on a €3m training fund. 

Speaking to belfastmedia.com, Fergus said that when he learned of the struggle the workers were facing he thought it was scandalous. 

"I was sitting in my kitchen, working from home, and I couldn't go more than two kilometres from my house and these women were getting up at quarter past five in the morning to go and man a picket line for six or 12 hours," he said.

"They had given so much service to this company and learned of their fate in an email. That is how much respect they were given."

Fergus said that when he spoke to the women, he was deeply moved by their stories.

"One lady, Linda Carroll, her grandfather was shot on Bloody Sunday in 1920 and he had won two Leinster Championships with Dublin. She was in her 60s and getting up every morning to stand on the picket line. There was a gentleman in Limerick whose father was the former Lord Mayor and he was sitting in a hut for 406 days.

"Carol Quinn and her colleagues had spent 30 years working in the Square in Tallaght and they had to fight to get a bunch of flowers to mark the 30 years since the shopping centre opened, which occurred during the strikes. 

"When you put all of the stories together, I was really just the scribe for these women. We were meeting over Zoom and I listened to their stories and wrote them down.

"Debenhams as a company predates the French Revolution so the history of the company itself was unbelievable. 

"We were able to take that history and show how it was ruined by hedge funds who had taken over the company in 2019. 

"What these women had to go through, standing in front of trucks and in loading bays through all kinds of weather, was inspirational."

Jane Crowe and Carol Anne Bridgeman were shop stewards for the union representing the Debenhams workers and they detailed some of the trouble that the women went through during the strike.

"It was 406 days," Jane said. "It was hard and some days you would do a six-hour shift on a cold, damp loading bay. Sometimes you were doing a 12-hour shift if someone couldn't make it and we were literally there to block the trucks and to keep all of the stock in the stores because we were looking at that as our redundancy and we needed to make sure that it wouldn't be shipped off to the UK and sold there."

At the time, the staff were entitled to the Pandemic Unemployment Payment, which aided them financially.

Carol Anne added that the workers had to do everything themselves as their union hadn't been prepared for such long-term action.

"We had to organise and orchestrate everything ourselves with the help of family and friends," she said. "Without them, the pickets wouldn't have happened because although the staff were on the pickets, we were joined by our family and friends and it became our lives for 406 days.

"A lot of the staff went through hardship. There was a lot of trauma, we lost colleagues during the 406 days and a lot of the older people experienced traumatic things while on the picket line. No-one should have to go through that again."

The staff believe that what happened to them is a prime example of why retail staff need to be unionised to ensure that they are protected and that in the event of a retail company going bust there is organisation behind them to help in the fight to get the support they need. 

Carol Anne continued: "More definitely needs to be done. Workers need more support from their unions and our legislation in Ireland is so outdated and backward that it gives us no coverage and no protection."

The workers are calling for the Oireachtas to support the current 'Debenhams Bill' which has been proposed by Socialist Party TD Mick Barry. 

The Bill aims to put workers ahead of the queue when a business is liquidated so that they receive due payments ahead of creditors and so that collective agreements between workers and their employers are recognised as a debt in law in a liquidation situation.