406 DAYS

406 DAYS tells the story of the 1,000 Irish Debenhams workers who were made redundant through a generic email on the 9th of April 2020, after Debenhams UK Retail Ltd shut all 11 Irish stores, including their flagship store on Henry St. Dublin 1. The workforce – 95% female – had been denied an earlier agreed redundancy package. They voted to go on official strike and blocked stock being removed from the 11 stores by the liquidator. The workers remained on the picket lines, through the Covid-19 pandemic, for 406 days – making this the longest industrial dispute in Irish labour history. The telling of the very human stories of courage, determination, and friendship that lay behind the conflict are told here for the first time in 406 DAYS – The Debenhams Picket Line. 406 DAYS is a contemporary story about inequality and a struggle for fairness by an extraordinary group of ordinary people. (Eclipse Pictures)