The Guardian 4 July, 2007
Cold winter
for dumped furniture workers
This winter, still far from over, has been the bleakest on record with a series of factory closures in South Australia according to the union representing Australian furniture workers. CFMEU Furniture Secretary Dave Kirner said two SA industry icons, White’s Furniture and Bower’s Furniture are closing with the loss of 30 jobs.
“On top of the two closures, Freedom Furniture’s manufacturing arm retrenched 10 workers on Wednesday June 27 and some 20 labour-hire casuals have been let go in the commercial sector due to slow downs in construction of Melbourne apartment dwellings”, he said.
“People are at risk of losing their houses as they go from retrenchment to retrenchment and receive no redundancy pay as permanent work is now harder to get under WorkChoices’ abolition of casual conversion to full-time.”
Mr Kirner said IKEA stocks imported products almost exclusively and had impacted on local retailers and manufacturers alike.
“I think the IKEA impact is starting to bite the SA local furniture industry at the retail and manufacturing level. IKEA is making competition intense and most of their goods are manufactured offshore.
“In total this is around 60 jobs in the last month in domestic furniture manufacture and retail. We are concerned that the trend may continue. The only positive note so far is that the union has negotiated redundancy packages and have been able to place some workers into other jobs.
“WorkChoices must bear some of the blame as it has abolished casual conversion to permanent and these workers do not get redundancy pay.”
The State and Federal governments need to review the state of the industry and establish relief plans as Australian workers are bearing the brunt of global trade in furniture commodities and surges in foreign imports, Mr Kirner pointed out.