It is interesting to see Toyotas approach to staff redundancies.

For to long now, some workers have played the system as they have had the safety net of unfair dismissal at their disposal.

Well, it would appear that Toyota has decided that rather than loose their best workers, they prefer the common sense approach of culling the duds, those who don't stack up, for several reasons, with attendance records and work attitudes being just a couple.

It will be very interesting to see what comes of a suggested fair work Australia investigation, one that will no doubt be closely watched by many companies and employees alike.

It will also place preasure on Julia Gillard, as her baby,FWA, has the Craig Thompson blood on their hands.

Culling the duds, it's something that should have happened decades ago, especially if we wish to increase productivity, something that must happen if businesses are to survive, as they are under extreme preasure with rising costs, even before the carbon tax is introduced.

Extra security was called to Toyota's plant at Altona west of Melbourne today as the company began sacking 350 of what it says are its worst-performing workers.

The carmaker foreshadowed the cuts in January, blaming the high Australian dollar for falling export sales.

Over the past three months it has assessed more than 3,000 workers at the plant, testing them on workplace behaviour and skills.

The 350 people with the lowest ratings are being forced to leave either today or tomorrow.

Toyota says it will try to help the sacked workers find new jobs.

The company has deployed extra security at the plant to oversee the workers as they leave.

Charles Allan, one of the first workers told to go, said staff were taken aside to be told the news as they arrived to start their shifts.

Afternoon shift at Toyota starts at 4:00pm. Scores of workers will be sacked on arrival and marched out.
ABC reporter Jeff Waters

"We just got into work this morning and they said, 'Oh you might get a tap on the shoulder', and then the group leader's come along and said, 'Oh yeah, you've got to go to another room', and I thought, yeah, this is it."

He says he is disappointed after working for Toyota for almost two decades.

"I've just got to go and look for another job," he said.

"Eighteen years doing the same thing. Up at 5.30am, come here of a morning, not get paid for overtime, do the right thing.

"But they don't look at that. You know I'd love to know how many hours I put in without getting overtime."

ABC reporter Jeff Waters is outside the plant and says there will be 262 forced and 88 voluntary redundancies.

"Afternoon shift at Toyota starts at 4:00pm. Scores of workers will be sacked on arrival and marched out," he said on Twitter.

Grounds?

One of the sacked workers, Fadi Hassan, says he and some others will ask Fair Work Australia to decide if the sacking is lawful.

"We want to know why we have been picked, why the people have been selected," he said.

"[If] people don't want to go or they have a good record, we want to know what's going on. On what grounds?"

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union's Dave Smith claims Toyota had the numbers it needed in voluntary redundancies.

"Toyota's a company that preaches the Toyota way, and a key central part of that is respect to people. They have just thrown that out the window today in the way they have behaved," he said.

Victorian Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews says the way the news was broken to the workers could have been handled better.

"To be then taken to an external location to be told you don't have a job, that is a very interesting way of doing things," he said.

"I absolutely feel for those workers. It's a difficult time and perhaps the way it's been handled has made those difficult times even harder."

He called on the Government to make sure the sacked workers are given assistance.

"The one thing Ted Baillieu can do today is he can commit to providing those workers with the retraining, the transition assistance that they will undoubtedly need," he said.

Which begs the question; is the willingness to do unpaid overtime a fair and reasonable gauge of a worker's worth or productivity?

More Toyota axings expected today
Updated: 06:54, Tuesday April 17, 2012
More Toyota axings expected today

More Toyota workers are expected to receive their dismissal notices at the Altona plant in Melbourne today.

The company began axing 350 jobs yesterday, in response to weak export sales impacted by the high Australian dollar.

But the first batch of sacked workers, who were marched from their workstations by security guards, have vowed to fight to get their jobs back.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) says 80 per cent of the 240 workers who were axed yesterday plan to appeal their redundancies at Fair Work Australia.

The remaining 110 workers will be told today.

The union is angry Toyota refused to enter a process of voluntary redundancies, saying about 170 workers had indicated they'd like to be considered for redundancy, but only 88 were included in the hit list.

Toyota, like any other business, is just that, a business and, those who run a business should be at libity to decide who stays and who goes.

Now as for the guy sacked after some 20 odd years service, without knowing the circumstances, I would assume many of those years have been afforded to him by the IR laws.

Many larger companies suffer from disloyalty from many of their staff and, until the attitude of you owe me a living changes, this may well be the first case of many, especially if FWA can't resole it.

Most workers, and unions for that matter, overlook the fact that wages, like any expense, must be paid from Profits and, if profits fall, jobs go.

Just wait till the carbon tax kicks in, cause you ain't seen nothin yet.

579 you people are unbelievable.

Have you ever heard of the Soviet Union, if not, perhaps you've heard of Greece?

Both of these countries continued to have on their payrolls heaps of "workers" in non jobs. This attempt to keep paying "workers" for whom they had no useful work lead to a total failure of their economies.

No one, company or government, can continue to pay people they can not employ in constructive productive work. Any attempt to do this merely leads to the collapse of the entity trying, with much worse outcomes for all concerned.

Would you please give some justification for your suggestion that a company should not be entitled to chose those they wish to offer continued employment in difficult circumstances. When bad government causes a loss of market for manufacturing industry, having to downsize, & waste capacity is bad enough.

In such circumstances it is surely the right of the employer to chose which of their employees they wish to retain. It is after all their investment paying the way, not some antiquated union.

Nothing could be fairer than rewarding with continued employment, those employees who offer the best return to their employer.

Of course a company should be allowed to choose its workers. Anyone
who has spent time on the floor of a large organisation like that,
would know exactly as to who is pulling their weight, who is screwing
the system as best as possible etc.

Just because one employee bleats that he did some overtime, does
not mean that he was pulling his weight.

In the end, all these guys will be paid handsome redunancy packages,
so they have little to complain about. Some will find another job
right away, that payout will be pure cream. Unlike small business
owners who commonly lose the house, when their job becomes unviable

Mr Jones said the 100 workers given notice today were each ferried across the road in a minivan to a reception centre, where they were handed a folder and told they no longer had a job.

"This is a primitive way to go about their business," Mr Jones told AAP.

"To treat them like cattle ... We think it's an appalling way for the company to behave."

AMWU spokesman Charlie Marmara said the sackings were a "clean-up" of union members.

He said the performance criteria used by Toyota to fire workers did not make sense, citing the sacking of an employee of 27 years who had only ever had two days off.

"He was always at work, never came late," he told ABC TV.

Toyota has denied anyone has been singled out or that its redundancy strategy is heavy handed, saying the use of selection criteria and security guards was agreed on with the union in the 10-week negotiating period.

Union officials say they did not agree to security guards being used and the company should have offered voluntary redundancies first.

Toyota spokeswoman Beck Angel said the sacked workers had been treated respectfully.

"We tried to treat our employees with the utmost respect. We've provided one-on-one meetings with all selected staff," she told AAP.

"No individuals were targets."

Ms Angel said the company chose compulsory rather than voluntary redundancies based on a selection criteria of skills, behaviour and knowledge.

"We felt that was the most fair and equitable way," she said.

579, there are good reasons why workers are marched off the premises,
once they are dismissed. Its not just blue collar, but very common
amongst everyone right up to the CEO.

Fact is that when people become angry, they often do silly things
and the first reaction is to take their anger out on what can
be very expensive machinery and other valuable assets.

So its a quite reasonable solution to the problem.

I don't know enough about any of these sackings to make grand statements, but I find it interesting that 'performance' seems to be measured in long service, lack of sick days and provision of overtime (without pay, as most of us who are employed seem to do). Neither of the workers' stories provided suggests that they were good at their jobs; neither indicates that they were safe practitioners; neither indicates that they displayed a positive attitude or, in their senior roles, contributed to a positive working environment. All we know is that they turned up day after day for decades.

Obviously it is sad when somebody loses a job. It's even sadder when a large number of people lose their jobs; and, in my opinion, it's even sadder than that when an era lasting two decades or more comes to an end. I suspect that some of these workers are so institutionalised that they will struggle to cope or find work elsewhere. I can't even imagine what they're going through. 27 years in one place and one job is longer than I can comprehend.

But, as I said at the beginning, I don't know these guys' stories in full. I doubt the union spokespeople do, either. It's sad, but entirely possible that it was necessary.

From many of the comments above, it seems the authors believe that anybody who loses their job through redundancy is automatically classified "a dud".

I went through that process after 30 years of service because of a short-term desire by management to con shareholders by fiddling with the employee/revenue ratio.

Two years later I was back on the payroll - along with many other former redundees - rehired to repair the corporate damage that initial decision caused.

Loyalty no longer has any value in the workplace (or the markeplace) and that works in both directions.

Wobbles, the word 'dud' was the word used by Toyota, not me.

I was simply repeating what THEY said.