Vita Cortex workers want owners to show ‘serious intent’ in resolving dispute

VITA CORTEX workers – in occupation of the foam manufacturing plant in Cork for more than two weeks, including Christmas and the New Year – have responded positively to the call by Jobs and Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton for them and management to use the state’s industrial relations machinery to try and resolve the dispute.

The Vita Cortex workers said they will do so to try and secure their just redundancy entitlements if the company declares its willingness to come to the table with serious intent.

SIPTU Organiser Ann Egar said:

We welcome Richard Bruton’s statement of concern and SIPTU is perfectly willing to use the industrial relations machinery but the company needs to come to the table with serious intent.

The workers, including 27 SIPTU members, have been staging a sit-in at the plant on Kinsale Road for over two weeks after the company claimed that it could not afford to pay their redundancy entitlements. The workers have also called on the facility’s owners to be open and transparent about what assets and funds are available to meet their obligations.

Ann Egar added:

The company’s management should open its various company accounts for independent assessment. The workers are particularly concerned that changes made to the wider Vita Cortex company structure and movements in the ownership of assets among closely related and unrelated commercial entities over the last two years are forensically examined.

SIPTU and the workers are anxious to ensure there has not been any attempt to move assets and funds between related and unrelated commercial entities with the aim of frustrating company creditors and long serving employees from receiving monies to which they are legally entitled.

The workers, who have occupied the plant since its closure on 16 December, have said they will maintain the protest until the company makes definite provision to meet their outstanding redundancy payments.

Vita Cortex is owned by businessmen Jack Ronan and Seán McHenry, who announced in September that they intended to close the Cork plant stating that the operation’s assets had been frozen by NAMA. In December, NAMA refused to release funds to pay the workers outstanding redundancy entitlements, claiming that they are held in a related but legally separate company account.