Sacked With No Notice after 26 Years
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CASE STUDY
Sacked with no notice after 26 years
A dozen retrenched port workers have told of their dismay at being given 15 minutes to leave their work site after up to 26 years of service. Twelve men, who have worked for between 17 and 26 years at Vopak Terminals Sydney in Port Botney, were told by management yesterday that their services were no longer required for operational reasons. The men say they will be replaced by casual staffs. They say they were given 15 minutes to clean out their lockers before they were marched off the site without being able to have showers first. ‘Everyone was pretty stunned’. It just came out of the blue’, said Warren Copper, an operator with 17 years experience at the chemical and petroleum products terminal. Mr. Copper, 49, who has a mortgage and two young children, said he felt ‘sick in the guts’. He and the other 11 retrenched workers had sought through the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to begin a bargaining period to arrange a collective union agreement. They say Vopak Terminals Sydney wanted them to sign Australian Workplace Agreements and challenged their application to begin a bargaining period. Last Friday, the ruled that a ballot be held about the matter next Monday. But yesterday the company handed the workers letters notifying them that their services were no longer required due to operational reasons. Vopak Terminals Sydney managing director Ron Dickson said the workers had been made redundant because of a company restructure brought about by a change in customer base and a drop in profit. He said the company had been negotiating with workers on a collective agreement for more than a year until talks broke down. ‘They have not been sacked because they refused to sign individual agreements,’ he said today. Mr Dickson said new workers would not be casual. He said that staff would now be sought through a labor hire company and the redundant workers could apply for positions through that firm. ‘The type of business we are in is cyclical.’ He said. ‘We need flexibility to work on that basis. Ultimately it will be a self directed workforce based on activity levels’. Mr. Dickson said safety at the Port Botany site was paramount and new staff would go through training programs when they started work and throughout their time at the company. ‘Safety is very critical at the site’ he said. ‘It’s something we focus on continuously and everyone is geared to achieving a high level of safety’. He said workers had all been given redundancies worth between $96,000 and $136,000. He said had workers agreed to sign Australian Workplace Agreements, only three of four staff would have needed to be retrenched. National Union of Workers NSW Branch spokesman Mark Brown said Vopak have opposed a collective agreement from the start. ‘They knew that they would not get their way if it went to a ballot so they have taken advantage of the new Industrial Relations laws and sacked the Union members’. This is a simple cost cutting exercise. This is a multinational that axed the jobs of highly skilled workers. All in the name of short term profits. John Davis, 56, who has been with the company for 17 years, said he was annoyed by the way he had been told to leave the work site and was trying to come to terms with looking for a new job to pay his rent of $325 a week. ‘I would have to go back to school to learn everything I have missed in the last 17 years’ said Mr. Davis, a former licensed electrical mechanic. ‘I don’t think my job prospects are good as I would like them to be,’ Asked how he felt about yesterday’s announcement, Paul Blake, 60, who had worked as a leading hand on the site for the past 26 years, said: How would you feel?’ ‘I was planning to finish off soon but not this way’. ‘It’s different if you finish on your own terms’.
Questions
- What are the key controversial Industrial Relations issues being highlighted in the above case study?(5 Marks)
- Do you support the actions taken by the organization Vopak Terminals Sydney against its employees? If you were the Manager of Vopak Terminals what would you have done to deal with this situation? Explain in detail. (5 Marks)
- With reference to Employment Relations Promulgation (ERP) 2007 is there any case for the 12 employees? What would you suggest to them as an IR student had the above case happened in Fiji? Explain using examples. (5 Marks)
- As a good employer, what strategies would you come up with to help your employees who have been made redundant? Explain in detail using examples. (5 Marks)
- What is your understanding on this statement ‘It’s different if you finish on your own terms”. Explain in detail using appropriate examples. (5 Marks)