In a despicable final act to staff of the unemployment centre in cork city, the Cork Council of Trade Unions went in on Friday and changed the locks. The centre has been running for the last 5 months on a voluntary basis after FAS pulled the funding before Christmas. In that time, the staff turned volunteers kept the centre open for the 50,000 unemployed population of Cork. Despite claim from the CCTU (whose name is over the door) of having no authority over the building an official of the CCTU went with a locksmith and busted in the door to change the locks.
The CCTU have been the tenants of the building on North Main St but it is owned by the city council. They had not given any notice of lock changing to the council. They also went in without the codes for the alarm. These codes are only known by the manager of the centre Willie FitzPatrick. Willie had this to say “I got a call from the alarm company at 6pm on Friday evening to say the alarm was going off and I need to go switch it off. When I got there, the cops where there demanding I turn off the alarm. My key wouldn’t work. Called a locksmith and they said the key was not broken; the lock had in fact been changed. We then found out it was someone from the CCTU who burst in the door, changed the lock and walked away with the alarm still going off”
He went on to say that the person who changed it was ordered over the phone to come down and open the door. The alarm was reset and the person was instructed by the police to be at the centre on Monday morning. “We were told to be at the centre on Monday morning at 11” FitzPatrick continues “we were here, the CCTU were not. I have the codes and I’m not giving it to them until we are done with the centre. We put up a notice that the centre was closed to the public last Friday and now we have personal things to clear out as well as clean the centre. That’s all we wanna do.”
It’s been nearly 100 years since the massive Dublin lockout. It’s shocking and disgraceful that the union leaders are locking staff out. Also going the one step further to abandon the unemployed trade unionists in Cork proves a dark day in the trade union movement as a whole. The trade unions must be taken back to prevent similar events happening in the future. The friends of the centre group will be outside the centre Tomorrow (Wednesday) from 9:30am in the hope of gaining access and clearing out. They ask that anyone who supports them come out and show that support at the centre on North Main St. No boss should get away with locking staff out not even union bosses.