Ex-Debenhams workers have won a £350,000 legal battle for failing to be informed of the chain’s collapse before it went public.
Debenhams shut all of its stores in January 2021 after admitting it had gone bankrupt, triggering 18,500 job cuts.
Employees at the time complained they were told their careers were ending over text messages and Zoom calls on the same day the business stopped trading.
Some say they were notified of their redundancies via “a scripted phone call from the store manager” or video call.
Law firm Thompsons began legal proceedings after Debenhams failed to give workers 30 days’ notice.
An employment tribunal has now ruled in the workers’ favour and instructed that around eight weeks’ work is paid to staff affected.
The large bill will be funded by taxpayers’ money, due to Debenhams no longer trading.
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“The Debenhams case is a typical, and sadly too common, example of a company failing in its duty to consult collectively with employees before making them redundant,” Thompsons employment team solicitor, Paul Kissen said.
The chain’s online arm was sold off to Boohoo in January for £55million, although all physical stores have now shut – at a loss of almost all jobs.
The liquidation made Debenhams one of the biggest high street casualties since Woolworths disappeared in 2009 - and the biggest retail loss of the pandemic.
Debenhams, first opened in Wigmore Street, London in 1778.
Two years before its collapse, the company announced its largest ever pre-tax loss of £491million and the closure of up to 50 stores putting 4,000 jobs at risk as it tried to manage is growing debt.
Debenhams fell into the hands of its lenders, a group of banks and hedge funds led by US firm Silver Point Capital and in April 2020 it went on the market.
At the time, the business had lost £323million in the six months to October - versus billions in its heyday.
This week, former staff at Debenhams stores in Ireland approved a compensation arrangement after launching a 400-day protest in calls for a fairer redundancy package.
The pay deal affects 2,000 former workers at 11 stores.
Without warning, Debenhams closed its 11 Irish stores in April last year amid the first Covid lockdown, resulting in the loss of around 2,000 jobs.
The ex-workers, who have received only their statutory entitlements from their social insurance, claimed they were laid off by email, with no notice and no redundancy after decades of service in many cases.
They claim the UK-based retailer broke the terms of a 2016 agreement to pay workers two weeks’ statutory redundancy plus two weeks ex-gratia, per year of service, in the event of redundancy.
