Penna £8m takeover of Barker group saves hundreds of jobs was one of the news articles on the ‘Personnel Today’ website on 2nd July. Barker’s in trouble and along comes Penna to save the day. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Sadly, there’s more to this story.
Barker had gone through some rounds of redundancies, the latest being towards the end of June when around 60 Barker employees were given their redundancy letters. A few days after the last round of redundancies, Barker went into administration and was immediately bought by Penna (all done via a pre-pack administration deal). By doing it this way, Penna was able to buy Barker’s valuable assets but not take on any of Barker’s liabilities. This has left about 140 redundant employees with no redundancy, notice or holiday pay. Hundreds more lost their pensions.
Had these ex-employees not aired their grievances online, no one would have been any the wiser about this deal. There have been allegations that these redundancies were requested by Penna as part of the deal but Penna has denied these allegations.
Penna has quite a situation on its hands. These ex-Barker employees don’t intend to go quietly and who can blame them? They have set up twitter and facebook pages and are telling their side of the story and are getting support from people who are not even in the recruitment or media industry.
Barker had been in operation for almost 200 years but poor management ran the company into the ground. And where are the senior managers responsible for this mess? Their jobs are were among those that were saved – they now work for Penna.
Penna is not legally obliged to honour any Barker debts accrued prior to the transfer but those ex-Barker employees deserve to get what they are owed. Gary Browning, Penna’s Chief Executive, has stated that as a gesture of good will, Penna is exploring the option of providing career support (like coaching, workshops, that kind of support) to these ex-Barker staff. That would be a nice offer if people could use career support to pay their bills but last time I checked, utility companies and mortgage providers only take payments by cash, cards or direct debit.
There’s more about this on the Ri5 website. The story starts here followed by the Gary Browning’s side of the story. (Registration may be required to view the articles)
