IT WAS hot and sticky in Grafton Street yesterday afternoon. One year after their strike over pay and conditions the Dunnes Stores workers were once again in the spotlight.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the strike, and the worker's representatives marked it with the help of some celebrities, while handing out "I'm still backing the Dunnes workers" postcards to passers by, which were to be sent, in disappointment, to the company.
TV camera teams guided celebrities away from the over powering noise of jack hammers in Grafton Street to the quiet cool of neighbouring Chatham Street.
There they were able to show solidarity without having to contend with the inclement conditions. "The fact is they're exploiting workers," said Ronnie Drew.
It seemed, in fact, that most of the workers were at work at the time. Most of Grafton Street's crowd blithely carried on, grasping the proffered post cards, mostly without looking at them.
Both SIPTU and Mandate issued statements railing against Dunnes' failure to create the 200 full time jobs it had promised last year. They claimed no more than II jobs had been created.
However, a spokesman for Dunnes said the company did not dispute the figures but said a claim that 45 people had been made redundant was "a total distortion of the facts".
The redundancies had been voluntary, while the creation of 132 new full time jobs had now been sanctioned, he said.