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Shop Direct closes in Burnley
TEARS were shed as workers paid their final farewells to a long-standing Burnley company.
Shop Direct – one of the town's biggest employers – closed its doors on Wednesday with the loss of 420 jobs, although many of those have been offered positions at the company's Preston site. The catalogue call centre operation in Kingsway closed due to a rise in internet shopping.
Well-known for many years as GUS (Great Universal Stores), the company was re-branded as Reality in 2001. Two years later Reality was bought by retail giants the Barclay family, which already owned Littlewoods.
Despite the closure, workers leaving the site for the final time had only positive things to say. They said they had been offered generous redundancy packages, jobs elsewhere and workshops for CV writing and interview technique. Others were offered fuel bonus payments, variant on where they lived, to compensate for the move to Preston. Staff enjoyed a Jacob's Join on the final day and last night there was a farewell party at Turf Moor.
See Tuesday's Express for more on the closure.
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