White-collar Holden workers to go

Holden has finally made its move to shed excess white-collar workers. The reduction in staff across key areas of the business has been expected for some time. General Motors' recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy issues are believed to have slowed down the process, however it was revealed yesterday that Holden is offering voluntary redundancies across its white-collar workforce.

Holden has been adversely impacted by the loss of the Pontiac G8 export program and the closure of the four-cylinder engine plant at Fishermans Bend, as well as the downturn in domestic sales. The company's role as a development and design outpost for General Motors has also been called into question, at least during GM's initial period of restructure.

The redundancies have been a long time coming, however.

At the announcement of the SIDI V6 engines for the Commodore on August 4, the Carsales Network questioned incoming Holden MD, Alan Batey, whether white collar retrenchments were on the cards.
 
"No question we have to make sure we remain extremely competitive across every asset and facet of our business," Batey responded.
 
"The way we do that? It's again a journey; it's an evolution; it's looking at the way we do business. We're continually looking at where are the priorities; where do we need to put our resources...
 
"Our resources we have in Australia effectively work on two levels -- global level providing services to GM [and locally]... From a central office administration and support perspective, we need to make sure we continue to evolve that.
 
"Over time, I think that'll you see some changes but there will not be an announcement and a retrenchment program. We normally try and do that [naturally]...

"You've seen what we've done here [at the engine plant] when we moved out of Family II [four-cylinder engine production]. We've been able to do that with voluntary separation packages...
 
"We do not believe the state of the market as you see it today is an ongoing state. We believe the market will recover, which is why we've taken some of the steps we've taken in Elizabeth. We need to get that second car line in and that'll be in the back end of next year and that'll mean obviously we'll need [more] resources.
 
"There's no guarantees in life we have to make sure we make money and we structure our business accordingly. We've got a plan and we're absolutely going forward."

When quizzed today, Holden spokesman Scott Whiffin told the Carsales Network that nothing had changed.

"What we have announced is that we'll be offering voluntary packages within some of our functions, primarily the office based crews here at Fisherman's Bend," he explained.
 
"Some of these functions have remained more or less the same over the years, even as we've gone from two shifts to one over at Elizabeth, as export programs (like Pontiac) and engineering projects (like Camaro) have come and gone and as the domestic market has come off.
 
"No firm targets or timeframes [are] in place for this voluntary process -- we'll work it through with our people and the unions.

"Also we don't think any of this will be totally out of left field -- a number of [staff] have been asking about the availability of voluntary packages.

"As Alan said on August 4, this is about ensuring Holden has the right structure to be viable long-term. We want to protect the core of what Holden is -- a full-function organisation designing, engineering and building large and small cars."

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