By Paul Oboohov
SYDNEY — Ford Australia management on February 9 announced the September closure of its Homebush car assembly plant. This will destroy 430 jobs and leave NSW with no vehicle manufacturer, following the closure of Leyland in the 1970s and General Motors Holden's Pagewood plant in the early 1980s.
The Ford Homebush plant has been in operation since 1936 and, until the latest recession, had a work force of 856. Job losses began in 1990 as a result of both falling demand for cars and falling market share as the old, labour-intensive plant lost out to newer, more automated competitors.
Rumours about the plant closing had been rife for years. There was even some applause for John Ogden, the company president, when he announced the closure to the assembled workers at the start of the morning shift. The workers were aware of no plans for any new model at the plant, and wanted to know what the score was.
Ford is to find a few of the workers other jobs within its operations elsewhere, and the company and unions are to run "retraining" and "outplacement" programs for others, as well as negotiating a redundancy package. However, Ogden admitted that most workers would have to look elsewhere.
The federal Labor government's Passenger Motor Vehicle Labour Adjustment Plan means the workers will not have to wait the normal qualifying period for the Jobsearch allowance (the dole) and some retraining.
However, Gary Hingle, the assistant divisional secretary of the NSW Vehicle Division of the Automotive, Food, Metals and Engineering Union (AFMEU) pointed out that there are no guarantees of jobs from these processes. There are some prospects elsewhere in the car industry, as Ford's loss is its competitors' gain, and other car manufacturers are investing large sums, including Toyota, which is building a new "greenfield" site at Altona in Melbourne.
A hallmark of greenfield sites is hand-picked employees, with militants and union activists weeded out in the selection process.
Hingle admitted that the AFMEU had known of the probable fate of the Homebush plant for some time. John Button, the former Hawke government industry minister, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald about his role in the plant's demise and the car industry plan named after him, said that he'd discussed the closure of the plant as far back as 1989.
Thus the labour movement knew of the impending closure years ago, despite the NSW Labour Council protesting that the first it had heard of it was a management announcement on radio. Hingle even went on to say that with the federal government dropping tariffs, the closure was "probably ... the right thing to do, but the consequences of them doing the right thing is 430 jobs out at Homebush".
But what about the alternative uses the resources of the plant could be put to in meeting community needs? In Sydney several local councils are looking at light rail (tram) solutions to public transport. The resources could also be used to provide materials for other sectors of the community, from the sheet metal and engineering facilities available.
To safeguard employment and productive facilities, if a private firm is throwing in the towel and discarding these assets, the federal government has a responsibility to nationalise and put them to some productive community use. A good example of this is the Lucas Aerospace plant in Britain, where the company wished to ditch manufacturing military equipment. The workers came up with a successful plan to convert and manufacture for needs in the community.
However, many in the labour movement and especially the federal Labor government are in awe of the private sector's narrow economic rationalist imperatives.