Car Sales – News around town.
Car Sales.
Carmaker Holden is in discussions with staff and unions about cutting costs at its South Australian plant.
In a statement, the company says it plans to make “labour-related cost reductions and productivity improvements” at the Elizabeth site.
The statement does not say what form the cost-cutting will take, but managing director Mike Devereux indicated that workers may be asked to forego some of their rights. Car sales with Holden is struggling.
Mr Devereux says the carmaker, Car Sales Holden which is owned by US company General Motors, cannot survive in Australia without cutting costs and that “all options are on the table”.
“In the US it is not just three car makers. It is not just the three American-owned car makers. In a lot of the cases they don’t have a heavily unionised work force,” he said.
The AMWU’s John Camillo says the union is prepared to look at revised conditions to secure jobs, but it will not accept pay cuts.
“Any productivity improvements we can do, we’re prepared to sit down and have a look at all those issues,” he said.
“They realise that Ford workers never had the opportunity of doing it – it’s tough times and the future looks bleak at the moment.”
“The workforce, mainly in the south of the US, have been willing to give away some of the rights they might expect otherwise in order to make sure there is employment in those parts of the world.
“This might be a part of the conversation that Holden might have with [government].”
Car Sales – Holden says staff will be required to vote on any changes to their conditions or entitlements.
“We will work closely with the unions and our people to develop a fair and reasonable proposal in line with other local manufacturers across all industries,” Mr Devereux said.
Car Sales – Holden announced in April that it wanted to cut 400 staff at the Elizabeth plant by July.
However, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) said yesterday that Holden would fall short of the target, with only 300 workers so far agreeing to take redundancies.
Car Sales -Holden also wants to cut 100 workers from its Victorian operations.
The company has stated that it wants to cut production from 400 to 335 cars per day, citing falling demand due to cheaper imports and the high Australian dollar.
The issue here is that overall, we have a fading resource sector. so we may be heading for a recession.
Nothing is replacing the slowing mining industry so the Australia economy is at a real risk.
