Rail union slams KiwiRail Hillside jobs cull

Thursday 14 July 2011

The Rail and Maritime Transport Union condemns KiwiRail’s decision to slash up to 44 jobs at its Hillside engineering plant.

KiwiRail released its final decision today to 170 staff at the South Dunedin plant.

The move is a direct result of buying rolling stock offshore, RMTU South Island Organiser John Kerr said.

‘We’ve been in consultation with KiwiRail for over a month over this and despite saying our input has been “invaluable” the Company has not changed its plan to slash jobs by one jot,’

‘Management say this purge will make Hillside more competitive, yet can’t say how that will occur beyond a litany of platitudes about flexibility.’

‘Ironically, it was us who brought up the productivity topic with them during the consultation process, yet their so called solution is to slash and burn; they can’t even say precisely how many jobs will go from the different divisions of the factory, all they do is give indicative numbers, said John Kerr.

‘KiwiRail is calling for volunteers to take redundancy, they’ll get some but not enough to fulfil their quota. They say they’ll select the balance for compulsory redundancy using a set of criteria that only allows a worker to score 10% for their core skill, for example welding, and the remaining 90% is on subjectively measured attributes like team work and initiative.’

‘This doesn’t inspire confidence in the people making the decisions.’

‘We can’t find anyone who thinks this is a good idea apart from KiwiRail management and the Government. The Company has succeeded in uniting everyone from environmental activists, the local council, the Chamber of Commerce and community campaigners against them.’

‘The impact of these job losses goes beyond the 40 plus people who will be redundant at Hillside, the flow on effects to the wider economy are huge – dozens of businesses and hundreds of jobs will be endangered as the jobs cuts bite,’ said John Kerr

ENDS

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