Ford Aus workers facing stand down...

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For those that are interested............

18-07-2006.

Ford Australia is facing stand-downs at its Broadmeadows plant from Friday if the strike over entitlements at auto components manufacturer Huon Corporation is not resolved by the close of business on Thursday. Huon Corporation's administrators, meanwhile, have launched a Supreme Court action aimed at recovering some of the company's assets.

Ford spokesperson Sinead McAlary told Workplace Express this afternoon the company was in constant contact with the administrators and was hopeful the dispute would be resolved. It if wasn't, however, she said Ford was looking at stand-downs at Broadmeadows, where some 2,500 workers were employed, from Friday.

If the strike continued into next week, stand-downs at the company's Geelong engine, casting and stamping plants - where another 2,500 employees worked - were likely.

Huon Corporation, which late last year purchased car component factories Empire Rubber in Bendigo, FRN in Frankston and Mills Elastomers in Dandenong from Nylex, went into voluntary administration nearly three weeks ago.

Last Friday, administrators SimsPartners announced that 122 employees (108 from Bendigo and 14 from Dandenong) were to be made redundant without being paid their entitlements - prompting a walk-off and picket (which the NUW - the principal union at Bendigo and Frankston - is calling a "community protest") on Friday by the 600 workers from all three sites.

Victorian NUW secretary Antony Thow this afternoon told Workplace Express that the Supreme Court action would in part be seeking to recover the titles to the three pieces of land on which the factories are located - worth $10m.

Thow maintained that Huon director John Schulz had taken $10m from the company to purchase the land separately from the factories, with the titles then going into family trusts.

Thow said the total workforce at the three sites had a combined $30 million in entitlements. He said the redundancy round announced last week involved entitlements of $5m.

He said that while Schulz had promised that all workers would receive 100c in the dollar of their entitlements, "at the moment there is no money in the bank", and Schulz should hand back assets to pay employees what was rightfully theirs. He praised the administrators for taking the Supreme Court action - set down for Friday - to recover assets.

Employees made redundant from the Huon Corporation factories - some of whom have been there for 30 years - won't be entitled to GEERS payouts (which in any case cap redundancy at eight weeks) because the company is in administration, not liquidation.

i>Workplace Express understands that no s496 return-to-work certificate has at this stage been sought for any of the sites by the administrators (or by Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews).

Holden, meanwhile, said this afternoon that the fact that it was in start-up phase for production of its new VE sedans (it has just shifted production from its VZ models) meant it was making a lot fewer cars than usual, and while the dispute was being monitored the company at this stage was not facing stand-downs.

Toyota also said that the dispute was having no impact on it yet. A spokesperson told Workplace Express that it would continue to keep Huon as a supplier as long as it could keep supplying - but its priorities were keeping its plant open and its workforce employed for production of its new Camry.