Yes, spot on. Well its all history now.
Only Toyota left.
And according to the article below, Toyota's days are pretty much numbered as well.
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Enterprise bargaining with union sealed fate
HOLDEN is going because it is easier to spend $600 million leaving Australia than it is to get out of its enterprise agreement with the union.
Returning workers to the award wage was the only hope. The taxpayer was subsidising each Holden worker to the tune of $50,000 a year, which is, by my calculation, still less than the amount the enterprise agreement adds to the cost of each employee.
PDF: Holden EBA 2011
Yes, to be clear, the employment cost of the Holden enterprise agreement is well more than $50,000 per employee a year. I defy anyone to say that enterprise bargaining with the union didn't sink Holden.
PDF: Toyota EBA Altona 2011
No one ever envisaged enterprise bargaining would produce a crisis of this proportion. Half of the Australian workforce has been bumping along for 20 years on the centralised wage-fixing model; yearly dollar amount increases have produced modest wage growth. The other half of the Australian workforce has been receiving percentage increases of about 4 per cent per annum, compounding, for 20 years.
We are on the cusp of a major crisis, enterprise bargaining wages are now just hitting the violent upswing point in the bell curve, stratospheric wage levels are ahead of us and many of our big companies are going to fall over.
Putting wages aside, productivity inhibitors in agreements cripple the ability of a company to respond to outside pressure. Unions, jaded by constant employer exaggeration about poor finances, are not facing reality. What we are seeing now with Holden and Toyota is only the beginning.
Now that Holden has announced its departure, we need to consider the Toyota situation, which will come to a head with a vote on its enterprise agreement tomorrow. In September 2011, thousands of Toyota workers went on a protracted strike to get a 12 per cent pay rise. The company caved in; a deal with a 13 per cent pay rise between then and March 2015 was given. Base rates for technical and trade workers are in the $65,000 to $97,000 range with generous allowances, loadings and penalties on top.
The Toyota enterprise agreement lists its "purpose" as "to achieve TMCA's success as a Global Company" yet no single business contract could guarantee its failure more. This document, as much as Holden's, reflects an extraordinary level of union control over daily workplace organisation.
When Toyota wants to hire someone, a union (employee) representative must sit in every single job interview as "an observer". Heaven knows what they exactly are looking out for. Perhaps they are scrutinising for union talent or maybe their presence is to convey that Toyota is a totally union-controlled company and union membership is compulsory. A table in the agreement sets out exactly how many union representatives the company has to have in every section of the workplace and 10 paid union training days a year is given to union reps.
Toyota is allowed to hire casuals only from "time to time" and not at all without union agreement, although agreement must not be "unreasonably withheld". Casuals can perform only the "agreed specified tasks" for the "agreed specified period" mandated by the union. "The maximum period for which a Casual Employee can work continuously on a full-time basis is one month" and any casual around for six months must be made a permanent employee.
Contract labour can be hired only after Toyota reaches "agreement with the relevant Union official and Employee (union) Representative". Contractors around for 12 months must be made permanent employees.
This means Toyota can never really have a hiring freeze but are continually bound to a destructive cycle of taking people on before eventually having to make them redundant. In any case, on a monthly basis, "details of all utilisation" of all "employment categories" must be "presented" to the union.
Over-staffing must be a big problem because the agreement mandates one team leader to look after "between 5-7 process workers". Supervisors, whose base rates range from $75,000 to $103,000, are forbidden from helping with workloads. Supervisors can "assist" workers only with their "verbal agreement" in certain circumstances, such as "assistance in performance of heavy/awkward lifting or stock relocation or in the performance of minor adjustments to equipment to overcome malfunctions" and "any manual task performed by a Supervisor" must not exceed "a very limited time period".
If Toyota needs to dismiss someone, an outrageous procedure of at least three years and three months continuous disciplinary action is required before dismissal can occur. This defies belief.
The procedure can technically be shortened by a dismissal if the employee commits misconduct, but any dismissal can be reversed by special arbitration powers Toyota gave the Fair Work Commission to reinstate employees upon union request.
So, Holden versus Toyota: which union enterprise agreement is worse and will the Toyota agreement destroy the company?
Both agreements caused me to repeatedly question my own sanity before briefly wondering whether there should be a special industrial relations prison created for grossly incompetent management types.
Even though Toyota say they can bear the workforce costs as long as flexibility concessions are made, unless the union agreement is dissolved by the Fair Work Commission the company is doomed.