The Sisters of Charity don’t care about people. Though their motto is ‘The love of Christ urges us on’ – it should be ‘The love of Cash urges us on.’
Sisters of Charity (SOC) operated three care facilities in Dublin. All three Caritas, St Mary’s (Telford) and St Monicas went into liquidation this year. Like Debenhams, SOC established shell companies (with SOC members on the boards) and liquidated them reneging on contracts to pay loyal workers. They lost their jobs… and their redundancies.
Of course, Sisters of Charity remains one of the wealthiest orders in Ireland and have unpaid debts with responsibilities in church abuse scandals.
The Workplace Relations Commission considered a compromise in the case of the redundancies for these loyal staff. The WRC officially recommended at least a 2+1 should be paid. (two weeks statutory + one week additional for every year of service). That’s half what was in the contracts. The Sisters of Charity refused.
The residents and the patients were quietly ‘relocated’ just prior to liquidations. The visually-impaired community have only months left in St Mary’s.
Community members, family and workers formed the Save St Mary’s campaign to challenge it in the courts. Over 40 protests happened during COVID: at the facilities, the Dáil (Convention Centre) and the gates of the SOC’s walled Sandymount estate. They managed to win delays, but no reprieve.
On 9 December, after court dates, campaigning, protests, and negotiations, the unions wrote to workers confirming SOC intends to never pay, but that they now offer a donation:
3k per worker. Not a tenth of what most are due. There is fury.
Instead of fairness, the Sisters of Charity are just giving a ‘gift’ of €8.00 …per month of service!… for the loyalty of over 20 years, and two days to decide!!
It’s a profit for them, and the workers are being thrown in the bin
