Nostalgia: When Major Jeans in Cwmtillery closed

Here's the story which ran in the Argus at the time:

YESTERDAY'S closure of a Cwmtillery clothing firm hit a raw nerve with the 52 workers who were losing their jobs for the second time in two years.

Most of the factory workers who finished work at Ultra Fashions yesterday were made redundant in June 1986 from a similar clothing factory a few miles away in Bourneville.

At that time the company, Major Jeans, did not go into voluntary liquidation and after a lengthy battle through the courts the workers are only now receiving their statutory entitlements.

Mr Allan Garley, the area officer of the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers, told the Argus how the union had been forced to fight for the money.

He said: "The union had to put the company into liquidation; that means contests in court. The staff have only now received their money in lieu of notice. They must be pretty fed up with the clothing business."

He added that if Ultra Fashion went into voluntary liquidation it would be a relatively short period of time before the workers got the money to which they were entitled.

But he added: "If not, then are basically in the same boat as we were two years ago.

"My concern is for the workers. They just seem to be getting passed from pillar to post, from one employer to another."

Ultra Fashions Ltd was forced to close down when bailiffs from the Inland Revenue stripped the factory unit of its machinery.

The two-year-old firm owed £16,000 to the Inland Revenue and failed to raise that money before yesterday morning. They were only £3,000 short of the target after the 52 workers put in £4,000 of their own cash.

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