Holden sacks 270 staff at Elizabeth

Holden has offered 270 staff voluntary redundancy at the company's Elizabeth manufacturing plant in South Australia, but as many as 80 have refused the offer, according to a report from the ABC.

This has left the company no choice but to make redundant those staff who refused to walk. The redundancies took place yesterday with immediate effect, and none of the 270 staff will return to the plant, which is shut down today.

John Camillo, state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), was quoted by the ABC as saying that yesterday was a difficult day at the factory and he was concerned for those who had been forced to take redundancy.

"We'll be following those people very carefully over the next few weeks, and their families, to help them out as much as we can," Camillo told the ABC.

"We need now to make sure that we can find these young people employment elsewhere and that is very, very tough at the moment."

The forced redundancies are unprecedented in the 50-year history of the factory, but Holden had indicated last month that 270 workers would be asked to take redundancy before the end of May. Too few accepted the offer of voluntary redundancy.

From next week, the daily production rate at Elizabeth will be reduced from 290 to 240 cars a day. Elizabeth builds both the Commodore and its derivatives (including Ute and Caprice), and the Cruze small car, which has been the subject of a recall just this week.

Despite the fact that sales of Commodore are down nearly 1800 units for the year to date (8780 as at the end of April, versus 10,551 for the same period in 2014), the locally-built large car remains Holden's most popular model. Holden has made no official announcement concerning the retrenchments, but it signals the first of many in the lead-up to the plant closure – and the end of Holden's local manufacturing programme – in 2017.