DATELINE staff will not be having a happy Easter. And they have accused management of being disloyal and dishonest for refusing to pay them compensation for the closure of the local office.

Some are now threatening further action.

They recently gave the directors of Britain’s biggest dating agency an ultimatum – pay them the redundancy money they say they were promised, or else.

The dating agency is closing its local operation at the end of the month and moving the work to Cheshire. Late last week, Dateline denied guaranteeing redundancy pay for staff who have worked for more than two years but the workforce is refusing to give in.

Local staff wrote to the company’s directors last Friday urging a response within seven days to denials that they were promised money. A letter from Martin Bienvenu, the agency’s local company secretary, on behalf of Dateline International and its parent company, OneSaturday, has now informed some of them that they are not entitled to any redundancy pay.

‘Please be assured that we do appreciate the hard work that you have put in over the years,’ it stated.

Under the terms of the Employment Protection (Guernsey) Law 1998, an employee is dismissed by reason of redundancy ‘if the dismissal is attributable wholly or mainly to the fact that his employerﾅ intends to cease to carry on that business in the place where the employee was so employed’, the letter told them.

Dateline said the business had sufficient funds to settle all outstanding bills with creditors and to pay employees their due salaries upon closure.

Staff were told that they will be paid until the day of closure, 30 April, the end of their notice period, provided that they continue to work until that date.

The letter confirmed that other members of staff who had been Dateline employees for more than two years had previously received three months’ wages when they were made redundant.

‘However, these payments were made in entirely different circumstances where a few people were selected for redundancy and this policy does not apply in the event that the office is closed and the work is relocated,’ it stated.

Mr Bienvenu said that he would not be able to comment further until Tuesday, when all staff would have received their letters.

The close-knit team have said they will stick together.

‘We are getting closer and closer to the time the office has to close and it’s getting more and more upsetting,’ said Louise Robins, who works full-time in customer services.

Mrs Robins was far from happy when she received her response from management and she said other staff were ‘disgusted’ at the refusal.

‘They [the directors] have shown no loyalty to us – I feel like walking out, but I can’t because I won’t get paid,’ she said.

Former customer services supervisor Audrey Kirk, who has refused to go back to work since the closure was announced last week, is now also planning to take further action.

Staff said that former company director Guy Morris, who was recently awarded £12,500 in compensation for unfair dismissal, was backing them.

An industrial tribunal upheld his complaint that he had to walk out on his employer because of unreasonable threats and bullying from management.

Guernsey has no statutory redundancy pay legislation.