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.