Winner of the 2023 Dublin Film Critics Circle Award for Best Irish Documentary, 406 DAYS is produced by Fergus Dowd and directed by Joe Lee. It tells the story of 1,000 Irish Debenhams workers who were made redundant through a generic email on April 9 2020 after Debenhams UK Retail Ltd closed all 11 Irish stores, including their flagship store on Henry St. Dublin 1.
The workforce, 95% female, had been denied an earlier agreed redundancy package.
They voted to go on official strike and blocked stock being removed from the 11 stores by the liquidator. The workers remained on the picket lines throughout the Covid 19 pandemic for 406 days, making it the longest industrial dispute in Irish labour history. It finally ended in May 2021 through a compromise government-sponsored proposal based on a retraining fund.
In Ireland, KPMG made more than €6m from the liquidation process. To date, only €519k of the €3m training fund has been taken up - that is only 17% of the fund. Out of the 2,000 workers, only 243 people used the scheme.
It is likely that more than €2.9m will be returned to the state in October 2023 when the fund ends.
The very human stories of courage, determination, and friendship that lay behind the conflict are told here for the first time in 406 DAYS -The Debenhams Picket Line.
The documentary will open at Pálás Cinema on May 26.
Tickets available from palas.ie