TOYOTA’S Altona manufacturing plant has not ruled out further redundancies over the next 12 months.
On Monday, the company began sacking one in 10 of its 3500 workers, letting go of 100. And yesterday, about 70 more were made redundant.
Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union assistant state secretary Leigh Diehm said about 90 per cent of the redundancies would be challenged at Fair Work Australia.
Toyota spokeswoman Beck Angel said the decision to make 350 redundancies was not taken lightly. She said that on Thursday, the company and AMWU completed negotiations over “the workplace adjustment”.
“We are pleased with the outcome for our employees and will be moving ahead with our plans,” Ms Angel said. “The reality is our production levels have reduced due to a number of reasons, including the high Australian dollar, and the workforce is too big for the number of cars that need to be built.”
And this could be just the start. “There are never any guarantees,” Ms Angel said. “What we can say is that if market conditions remain stable and we meet our current forecast, there will be no plans for further workplace adjustments.” Workers, who had waited 13 weeks to find out whether they will be sacked, were notified on Monday and yesterday, as about 30 security guards assembled in and around the entrance to escort sacked staff from the premises.
Workers who were to be fired were escorted from their workstations on the production line to their lockers, where they were handed a checked bag in which to deposit their belongings.
Charles ‘Chook’ Allan was among the first to be told he had lost his job. He and about 50 co-workers had been assembled at 7am and told of their sacking by a company representative. The 43-year-old, who worked at the Altona plant for 18 years, said he was still in shock.
“It’s been a tough week not knowing and not sleeping well. But this morning I just had this funny feeling that I was going.”
He said the presence of the security guards at the plant was unnecessary and demeaning. “I’ve worked there for 18 years. What am I going to do? Scratch a car? Give me a break.”
Altona MP Jill Hennessey called on the state government to develop a jobs plan to protect manufacturing jobs and help redundant workers find new jobs in “a very tough jobs market”.
-With The Age
