Union announces forty-eight hour strike action to be held in coming days as workforce escalates industrial action 

Glen Dimplex management refuse to move to end in-work poverty despite group profits of more than €38 million

November 8th: Production workers who manufacture ‘Quantum’ intelligent storage heaters for Glen Dimplex in Portadown will be forced to take another strike action after pay talks at the Labour Relations Agency broke down without making any progress. Unite Regional Coordinating Officer Susan Fitzgerald confirmed that the union would be confirming a second strike action this time for forty-eight hours at the Portadown site.

“The Glen Dimplex bosses entered LRA-mediated talks with the clear intention of offering nothing meaningful to their workers, who continue to earn a bare £8.48 an hour; despite the fact that this company last year made €38 million in profits and provided a payment of almost €13 million to their owners through a holding company. 

“The failure of management to meet the modest demand of their workforce for a minimum £8.75 an hour, the bare minimum for workers’ subsistence as determined by the independent, UK-based Living Wage Foundation, has now forced the union to call a second strike action for pay justice. The timing of the next action will be agreed with shop stewards but it is already agreed that this should escalate the previous twenty-four hour stoppage to a forty-eight hour strike action. 

“These are skilled and experienced production workers who manufacture high end storage heaters but they receive less than casual workers in fast food outlets. This is completely unacceptable. 

“Unite is calling on the trade movement as a whole to get behind the Glen Dimplex workers and to show their stand for pay decency is one we all share. We must send the owner of this company, who according to the press is a billionaire, the message that in-work poverty will not be tolerated in Northern Ireland. It is unconscionable that a billionaire would force working people, with families, to take strike action in the mouth of Christmas in an effort to lift themselves out of in-work poverty. We need the community in the Portadown area to rally behind these workers who are on the frontline of the fight to secure pay decency for all in that area. 

“Tonight we have organised a meeting with local politicians to ask them what they are going to do in support of these workers’ legitimate pay expectations. The meeting will be held at the Seagoe Hotel in Portadown at 6.30pm, our members at the site will be present and will make their voices heard”, Ms Fitzgerald said.