Budget Travel Company News

Scandanavian Firm Plans To Axe Irish Jobs Without Pay Offs

20 October 2009: A Scandanavian owned travel firm has been accused of acting "like modern day Vikings" after it announced plans to sack one in three of its workforce without any compensation at all.

Budget Travel pulled out of talks with the TSSA travel union after refusing to make redundancy payments to 25 of the 75 staff it was sacking with the closure of 14 of its 31 shops in the Republic.

The company, owned by the Swedish based Primera Group, said the staff would receive no pay offs because they had worked for them for less than two years.

"These people are acting like modern day Vikings," said Manual Cortes, union assistant general secretary.

"We had enough trouble when the Vikings arrived in Dublin more than one thousand years ago. Now we have modern Vikings in the shape of Primera who think they can plunder our profits in the good times and just dump on Irish staff in the bad times."

The company is refusing to go back to the Labour Relations Commission after backtracking on an earlier pledge to pay more than the state minimum of two weeks for every year of service in redundancy payments.

The union had asked for a minimum payment of 6,000 euros for all staff with less than two years service. Now they stand to receive nothing when the 14 shops close at the end of October.

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