2,300 City Link workers lose their jobs on New Year’s Eve
Over 2,300 City link workers were made redundant on New Year's Eve after it was announced the company was going belly up.
City Link's biggest shareholder Better Capital bought the company for the sum of £1 back in 2013. John Moulton, the founder and managing partner of Better Capital said:
Of course, I wish it would come on different days.
We did everything we could to make sure the announcement would be on Boxing Day, not Christmas Day. It [would have] still been horrible, but a little less horrible.
Moulton added that Better Capital spent around £20m trying to keep City Link alive. City Link will keep 371 staff until the backlog of undelivered Christmas parcels have been cleared. The Coventry-based company had endured years of crippling losses and did not prove an attractive enough prospect for any potential buyer.
Joint administrator Hunter Kelly, said:
At meetings across City Link’s UK sites on Monday December 29 and Tuesday December 30, employees were informed that there would be substantial redundancies as no new business was being taken on. Many of these employees were sent home and informed that they would shortly receive formal correspondence to confirm their work status.
The business secretary Vince Cable said measures would be taken to help the workers find new jobs. The general secretary of the RMT Union Mike Cash did not take the news well, commenting:
Pulling the plug on any efforts to save City Link is a disgraceful and cynical betrayal that will wreck the lives of our members, many of whom are owed thousands of pounds.