Time and Tiny wait for no man as 1,500 workers left in the lurch |
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Published
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Thu, 28 Jul 2005 07:05
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LONDON: Granville Technology Group, the parent company of the Time and Tiny PC's has gone into administration. The firm abruptly closed its 80 retail shops.
Customers were informed that the firm had been closed for a stock take, while employees were told that the shops were being shut for one or two days on account of some problems in credit card transactions. Naturally, the 1,500 strong workforce has been stunned by the news of Granville's insolvency and are left wondering if they would be paid or not.
Andrew Hosking, Martin Ellis and Les Ross of Grant Thornton who are the joint administrators of the group said in a statement, "The group has fallen victim to the continued price deflation in the personal computer market. These redundancies were therefore inevitable." Workers are however very angry that the firm only informed them of its financial position on Wednesday. The company had not filed any report since June 2003 when it announced a profit of £2 million. Granville was reportedly suffering a loss of £2 million each month from the start of this year.
Granville is headquartered in Simonstone, near Burnley where almost all of its 1,600 employees were based. It has now emerged that only around a 100 of these would retain their jobs. Meanwhile, unions are outraged by the unilateral action taken by Granville and have sought clarifications.
The GMB union is looking for some explanations regarding the directors' role in the whole mess, "The GMB is angry that the management have let the company run down to this point without saying anything," Graham Coxon, a GMB organizer commented. He added that the union would engage the administrators in urgent talks "to see if there are any viable options to save jobs and to get proper compensation for those who have lost jobs."
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