Just for those who may not be car enthusiasts or followers..........Ford Australia finally closed its car manufacturing factory in Broadmeadows, Melbourne today. A sad day for Ford enthusiasts and a sad day for manufacturing jobs in Oz overall. Will this be enough to put Victoria into its own little recesssion? More to come next year when Holden and Toyota also close???
Its never sad to see an uncompetitive business that failed to adapt stop receiving taxpayer funded bailouts and finally succumb.
Once Victoria demolishes a quarter of it's power generating capacity next year it won't be a viable state for any kind of large scale manufacturing anyway. As South Australia gradually becomes Southern Greece Victoria will soon join it on it's journey to de-industrialised third world Green happiness.
Certainly I agree with the sentiment that the taxpayer-funded bailout of non-competitive businesses is bad. However I am sad to see Australia losing its manufacturing capacity. Sometimes it is handy to be able to churn out large numbers of metal objects without having to rely on overseas supply. 'No Man is an Island' John Donne No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
O.k maybe it wont cause a recession but it will surely have some impact. At least 1,000 jobs will be lost if not more.
About as much impact as farting in a typhoon would be deemed as contributing to the destruction caused.
If anything it will stimulate the economy. All these workers who "lost" their jobs are getting massive redundancy payments the likes of which will never be seen again. Also they will get their training or education expenses fully paid for so they can retrain for a new career. Don't be fooled by media bullshit.
Like I said before This has been on the books for over 25 years The first big move was when GM got rid of 2 generations of engineers about 20 years ago YES we can & should be building our own vehicles BUT Not when subsidies are involved
Forgot to mention We still make trucks here for the S.E Asian Market Kenworth out in Bayswater & Fix it Again Tony still build Iveco's for the S.E Asian region There are at least 2-3 bus manufacturers here
From what my relative who works at Holden told me the average production line worker with 20 years of service will get a redundancy payout of about $100,000 tax free...
Average payout is around $85k with a lot upto $250k. Plenty of manufacturing industries have died in Vic over the decades (wool mills, paper mills, ropeworks etc), just another one succumbing to the transition. 600 people in Geelong (city of 200k) and 500 in Broadmeadows isn't going to cause much disruption in a state of 6m where manufacturing is only about 15% GSP. 1,000 jobs were lost when the APH smelter closed about 2 years... Nothing happened. Speaking of jobs, how's your latest one going?
The thing is the guys in the Ford/Holden/Toyota production plants will be the ones who get the big payouts and brought to the front of the queue for retraining. The component factories supplying these big car manufacturers are also going to have to shed a lot of jobs too, if not close altogether, but their guys will not get anywhere near the same treatment, as they are the hidden victims of the car industry closure.
I've never quite worked out why the concept of selling your job has been so accepted by people, considering the wastelands left behind. The first time I noticed it was in the Thatcher days of paying the miners to break ranks and sell their jobs, helping close down the mines as a political tactic. That was also, I think, the cutting edge of this as a globalisation tactic. I'm sure there a more efficient and effective means of transforming workforces in sunset industries (such as coal in UK). I just don't know what they are. It's a little bit of a sidebar, but I've always been affected by this Dylan song about the collapse of mining in the North Country of USA and the costs wreaked upon the communities there. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0XUfoLkG0o[/youtube]