The Workers’ Party President Michael Finnegan has said that the present dispute at Thomas Cook in Dublin symbolises the wider class element of the current economic crisis and that employers have used the recession as an excuse to launch even more vicious and blatant attacks on workers.

Mr. Finnegan pledged the Workers’ Party’s full support for the Thomas Cook workers and said that the sit-in of workers at Grafton Street in the capital is fully justified.  “Workers never achieved anything though appeals for fair play by employers.  They have always been forced to go the hard way and fight for the rights or be trampled upon”, he said. 

The Workers’ Party President was also highly critical of the company’s resort of the courts instead of the normal industrial relations mechanisms.

“The sacking of workers at Thomas Cook at a time when the company is in profit and has been able to give massive payouts to its top executive is totally unacceptable and the workers deserve the support of the entire trade union movement and of every worker in this country.  Unless workers stand united together they will be defeated and further penalised for an economic crisis in which they had neither hand, act nor part”, said Michael Finnegan.