‘Miller’s will do utmost to save jobs’

Press, 4 May 1978, Page 1

‘Miller’s will do utmost to save jobs’

Miller’s, Ltd, will do its utmost to protect present employees in spite of the Tuam Street building’s sale, the company’s statutory manager (Mr W. N. Scotts) has assured the City Council. Even when the council starts converting the building’s upper three storeys, that would present no problem for staff on the bottom levels, he said. Mr Scotts, in a March 16 letter to the council, said that his official responsibility was to manage the company in the best interests of its unsecured creditors. But, he said, “I am sensible also of a wider responsibility, and that is to do my utmost to ensure survival, and with it protection for the 550 people within the company, and for the even larger number outside the company who would be touched by these matters. “It may not be possible to achieve this in total.” The ability of Miller’s to remain as a tenant until August, 1979, would safeguard prospects for continued trading at another location. “It will give Miller’s sufficient time to explore the opportunities for reloca-

tion of the business,” Mr Scotts said, “and this would have been necessary in any case because of the fact that the building was just too big for either the present, or a likely future, level of retail activity.” The sale would be “beneficial to unsecured creditors in that it will < nable repayment of part of the frozen debts,” he said. That ability to partly satisfy creditors at the end of a six-month moratorium was crucial to the company’s survival, and the only way to get the money was to sell one of the company’s big fixed assets. Up to now, there had been no luck in selling the large woollen mill building on 1.65 ha (four acres) in Pages Road. “Because this letter is an approach to a local body, I realise that it could be construed as asking council to ‘bail out’ a company that had got into difficulties,” Mr Scotts said in his March letter. “This is not the case. If this approach does come to fruition, it will rest upon the basis of mutual advantage.” That is what councillors said last evening — the deal would benefit ratepayers. the City Council, and Miller’s.