Holden boss slams business reporting
Recent reports of payrises for staff at Elizabeth facility "inaccurate", says DevereuxHolden Chairman and Managing Director Mike Devereux has come out swinging in a sustained response to reports concerning a pay increase for staff at the Elizabeth, SA factory.
Speaking during the launch of the company's new dedicated LPG option for Commodore, Devereux (pictured) was blunt in his assessment of the reporting by the business press.
"A couple of things happened this week that frankly ticked me off," he told the assembled motoring media. "One of them was inaccurate reporting — not by people here, but... mainly by the business press — about our EBA [enterprise bargaining agreement] deal; and an assumption that one-time bonuses equal forever structural cost increases for workers. And that's just absolutely untrue.
"Our workers in Adelaide, during the GFC, took between a 25 and 43 per cent pay cut. We worked two crews on one shift. People would come into work one week; go sit [at] home the next week and make half pay — for 18 months. So before Christmas we gave a $1750 cash bonus; One thousand seven hundred and fifty bucks to our workforce in advance of them ratifying the EBA — which still has not been ratified."
Devereux said that the deal was for three per cent each year of a three-year deal, with the cash payment and two per cent variable compensation in the form of bonuses into the future.
"So if we kick ass, make money, build great cars — and do it productively — the workers get a little bit of a bonus. Doesn't go into their base pay... and frankly, that $1750 for what those workers went through over the last 18 months... I don't understand how anybody could have a problem with that."
Devereux finished up by describing as "illogical", the "spin that people put on news coming out of" Holden. The Holden chief said that he and Holden's Director of External Communications, Emily Perry, would be "tactically" singling out the publications he felt had misrepresented the situation in their respective coverage, which Devereux described as "dramatically different" from reports in the US highlighting the improving pay and conditions for workers in American factories.
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