Unions urge Toyota workers to reject reforms as industry fights for survival
|
Version 0 of 1. Car industry unions have called for Toyota Australia workers to reject a package of workplace changes that the company’s management says is crucial to winning approval to make a new model Camry in Melbourne and for continued exports to the Middle East. Toyota’s 2,500 assembly workers are due to vote on Friday on the package of measures designed to boost productivity and cut costs. Opposition from the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union's leadership and shop stewards will make it much harder to win approval. The union stance is revealed in a notice sent to members, which says the AMWU's vehicle division does not support changes detailed in a management explanatory memorandum on 4 December. The national secretary of the vehicle division, Dave Smith, said on Monday that the union leadership believed the package was "purely about the company attacking unions and their workers", rather than improving productivity and efficiency, or cutting costs. Smith said he had told several Toyota Australian directors the union was prepared to discuss "ways we can support" the company. "But that has to be a discussion where the parties see each other as equals,” he said. "It gets back to the relationship issue with Toyota and how we can improve the relationship." The car maker says that it needs to cut the cost of each locally produced car by $3,800 in coming years to compete with Toyota plants in other countries, On Monday, a Toyota spokeswoman repeated the company's argument that "urgent changes" were needed if the car maker was to remain at the negotiating table for future investments. "We are doing everything that we can to secure the future for our employees and their families. The changes are designed to remove outdated and uncompetitive work practices and allowances that make it difficult for us to compete with other Toyota plants." Toyota Australia's relations with car unions have been strained in recent years over forced job cuts and public criticism of work practices and attitudes by its president, Max Yasuda. Car unions wanted the company to negotiate any changes with a big group of shop stewards and delegates. But Toyota has insisted that it would only with a smaller group and has tried communicating directly with individual workers. From the union side, the decision to formally oppose the management package risks sending a negative signal about the Australian operations to the Japanese parent company, Toyota Motor Corporation. It comes as the broader Australian car industry is fighting for its survival beyond 2016, when Ford will cease manufacturing locally. A small group of Toyota shop stewards and employees has taken federal court action in an attempt to stop the vote proceedings, in a move which has not yet been officially supported by the union. The judgment is due be handed down before the scheduled vote by Toyota employees on Friday. The jockeying at Toyota comes as the Abbott government is under intense pressure over whether it will offer further industry assistance to keep GM Holden's Adelaide assembly plant open beyond 2016. The ABC has quoted unnamed senior government ministers as saying a decision has already been made to shut Holden, but the industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, has said the company has assured him that no decision has been made. Labor’s former industry minister Kim Carr has argued that Holden was willing to accept an ALP proposal which was considered in June and July this year and involved the car industry receiving $300m in taxpayer funding per year for a decade after 2015. Holden would have received about half of that sum, some $150m a year. ACTU secretary Dave Oliver is seeking an urgent meeting with Tony Abbott about Holden. The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, hopes to meet the prime minister on Thursday, when Abbott returns from attending the memorial service in South Africa for Nelson Mandela. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the US parent of Holden, General Motors, intends to close two Holden plants in Australia. The car maker has its assembly plant in Adelaide, along with an engine plant and corporate headquarters in Melbourne, which employs a total of about 3,660 workers. The WSJ said that GM would separately slash production in South Korea by as much as 20% by 2016, although part of the South Korea output would be used to feed the Australian market. The measures are in addition a decision last week decision to end Chevrolet sales in Europe in two years. Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |