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A billionaire's workers are to strike for another 48 hours after talks over a 27p pay rise broke down.

Glen Dimplex Portadown staff earn £8.48 an hour building quantum intelligent storage heaters for Martin Naughton’s firm.

Yesterday, union representatives sat down with company management to ask that his 120 workers are paid a living wage of £8.75. The talks failed to deliver.

Unite Regional Coordinating Officer Susan Fitzgerald said: “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 €38million in profits and provided a payment of almost €13million 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 24 hour stoppage to a 48 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 union 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 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.”

Award winning Dundalk philanthropist Martin Naughton placed 2,124 on the Forbes billionaires list in 2018. His son Fergal now leads the company, but he remains a director.

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