The Guardian 13 February, 2008
Greedy Mitsubishi dumps 930 workers
Bob Briton
As The Guardian goes to press, officials and shop stewards from the Federation of Vehicle Industry Unions are meeting in Adelaide to nut out their demands for redundancy packages for the 930 Mitsubishi workers left jobless by the announcement of the closure of the Tonsley Park plant last week. At the end of March, the plant will fall silent. Twenty-seven years of vehicle building by Mitsubishi in Australia will come to a close. It will go the way of Nissan and Leyland. Could Ford be next?
Everyone knows manufacturing in Australia is in trouble and workers are witnessing just how little commitment there is in the corporate boardroom and in government to securing their futures.
Of course, SA Premier Mike Rann has talked tough in the media about the history of lies told to him by executives in Tokyo; about an "enemy within" that undermined local production with leaked reports of difficulties. He insists that the company repay the $35 million that the state government donated to help develop the ill-fated 380 model. Presumably, they are free to pocket the rest of the corporate welfare dispensed in recent times by state and federal governments.
Kevin Rudd called on Mitsubishi to "act responsibly" as it hurriedly exits Australian manufacturing. Federal Industry Minister Kim Carr has ordered a review of the local car industry but has already concluded that tariffs are only a "small part" of the competitive disadvantage experienced by local production.
He says there could be new defence contracts on the horizon but clearly not enough to absorb the sacked Mitsubishi workers. Defence (war) industries are extremely capital intensive. They provide government guaranteed profits to corporations and represent a total loss to the taxpayer. They are not big employers.
Not another Lonsdale!
The Western Australian and Queensland governments have said the Mitsubishi workers would be welcome in their states to look for work in the booming mining sector. This would break up families; take people away from their communities; disrupt their kids’ education.
Workers would need to be re-skilled. What sort of assistance and compensation is on offer to find suitable alternative employment and possibly make a move interstate? Mitsubishi Motors Australia President Rob McEniry says the redundancy packages will be "best practice" — the same as were palmed off on workers at the company’s engine plant at Lonsdale, which closed in 2004.
This attitude is not welcomed by Mitsubishi workers at Tonsley Park. They consider the process that followed the Lonsdale plant a failure. Many former Lonsdale workers are still without jobs. Most did not find work in manufacturing and a sizable proportion is now working for less pay. Some bought into small businesses, including franchises, and lost their packages.
Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union State Secretary John Camillo wants independent financial advisers appointed as part of the state and federal governments’ assistance package. Workers do not want the Jobs Network involved in the process.
They want the Federal Government to reinstate the $3,000 per head retraining vouchers for career transition and financial advice. In 1999, Mitsubishi allocated $1,500 for these purposes to redundant workers. As part of the package, the union wants five weeks’ notice with 4.5 weeks pay for every year’s service with a ceiling of 100 weeks and one week’s pay for every year’s service as a loyalty payment. They expect a tussle with the company to get it. "Hopefully by the end of next week we’ll be in a situation where we have a final document that we can put to a mass meeting of all the workers of Mitsubishi for their endorsement", John Camillo said.
To shore up employment in Adelaide’s southern suburbs, the federal government is chipping in $35 million, the SA government $10 million and Mitsubishi another $5 million. Ten million of this kitty will be for "intensive assistance" for the sacked workers while the other $40 million will be for the SA "innovation and investment fund".
The effects of this investment cannot come soon enough as knock-on job losses mount. Component supplier Continental Siemens VDO will shut at or around the end of March, the same time as Mitsubishi. Fifteen jobs are to go. In the end, 280 other jobs are expected to follow on the Mitsubishi closure.
Lack of vision
Mitsubishi’s problems should come as no surprise. Local vehicle building has been struggling as tariff protection winds down. As the tariff wall comes down, the big car multinationals will look around for a better deal. They have insisted on making big cars at the same time people are being forced into smaller ones by spiralling petrol prices.
The failure of the 380 model being produced at the plant and the closure of Mitsubishi should be a reminder to workers that profit-driven corporations can get it horribly wrong: now the workers who created those profits have had their livelihoods taken away. Australian governments have not shown vision with regard to manufacturing in Australia and have danced to the big manufacturers’ tune.
Now would be an ideal time to put the hands back on the wheel of the economy, nationalise plants like the soon-to-be abandoned Mitsubishi and convert it to producing something appropriate to our times and to social needs.
Australia’s recent history is full of tales of lost opportunity and deference to the interests of transnational corporations.
If governments don’t act to save local manufacturing, we shouldn’t be surprised if one day the workers simply occupy the factories as has happened in Argentina and elsewhere. It’s not good enough to say that these workers will be helped to find jobs in growth areas like mining. A country like ours needs a modern manufacturing sector and the skills that manufacturing workers — like the redundant Mitsubishi employees — have acquired.