Taxpayers will have to pay more than £3m in unpaid wages to former employees of York-based Jarvis Rail after the firm collapsed last year.
Trade unions for the 1,200 workers argued at an industrial tribunal that the company should have given 90 days’ notice of compulsory redundancy.
The claim is eight weeks at the maximum £380 per week under employment law.
The workers were made redundant when talks between Network Rail and the administrators finished in April 2010.
More than 350 jobs were lost in York, 300 in Doncaster and 80 in Leeds.
As Jarvis Rail no longer exists, the government has to meet the bill.
Imagine that! Three million pounds is almost half a banker’s bonus, which “the taxpayer” is also “footing the bill for” in the case of all the nationalised and subsidised banks… And it’s almost 3/1000th of the cost of those 14 new Chinook helicopters the Ministry of Defence has today announced it’s going to buy. But even though this too is “a bill footed by the taxpayer”, the BBC does manage to report that piece of news much more matter of factly, without cheap populist language. Apparantly wasting a billion pounds on war equipment is okay with the BBC, but helping some 700 or so families whose wage earners got sacked through no fault of their own is beyond the pale.