Norwich SPCK closure goes on as union steps in
 The SPCK bookshop in Norwich remains closed over two weeks after it first shut its doors following the sacking of all its staff and today (February 21) the telephone lines have been barred.
The Forget-Me-Not Café, which is also based at the SPCK Centre, at St Michael at Plea, Redwell Street, is still open for customers, although trade has gone down since the bookshop closure.
Parish priest for the area, Canon John Minns, is supporting the café staff who are still working in difficult circumstances but said: “This is a sad day in the life of SPCK after 100 years in Norwich.”
Meanwhile, USDAW, the union which represents SPCK shop workers across the country, is fighting to help its members. Its general secretary, John Hannett, said: “This dispute is not resolved, and we expect new, drastically reduced and probably illegal contracts to be imposed on staff in the very near future.
“The main changes are: an increase in the length of the working week from 37.5 hours per week to 40, with no increase in pay; all part-time staff will become casual staff with no guaranteed hours every week; and staff will have no sick pay, where the current contract provides for eight weeks’ full pay followed by eight weeks’ half pay.
“Conversations with our members indicate that most staff will refuse to sign this new contract, and their employer has indicated that failure to agree to the new contract will lead to dismissal. This is a very worrying prospect for long-serving and dedicated employees. This dispute is causing a great deal of anxiety among the staff, and, as a union, we are very concerned that many of them will lose their jobs or be forced into jobs that offer fewer rights.”
Following coverage in Network Norwich, BBC’s Look East programme has also covered the dispute, with both former Norwich manager Jim Channell and co-owner Phil Brewer from St Stephen the Great, speaking to the BBC.
Phil Brewer told Look East: “When people say well it would be nice if we did this and it would be nice to do that, absolutely, it would be nice if everybody got up every day and didn’t have to work and, you know, didn’t have to worry about pay cheques etc, but the bottom line is that there has to be fiscal constraints to all decisions.” To see the full BBC feature, click here.
Concerning on-going coverage of this issue on Network Norwich, web editor Keith Morris said: “This issue is an important one for the Norwich Christian community. The information we carry is both accurate and comes direct from source and we believe it informs debate and helps prevent ill-informed speculation and inaccuracies about the issue.
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