Rhrosty it is cheaper having them on the dole.

We were paying up to $50,000 each, taxpayer money to pay process workers up near $100,000 a year.

Process workers, just one step above street sweepers, how can an industry work with that stupidity.

They used blackmail tactics to get those ridiculous wages, lead by union bosses now all too often in parliaments around the country. It is the companies most damaged by strikes that end up with these wages, & then fail. Why would anyone invest in Oz?

AS far as I am concerned they should be thrown to the wolves, they are certainly not worth the redundancy packages mentioned, when it is their crap in their nest that sent it rotten.

Take a look at the advertisement on this page of the Great Wall dual cab at $20,990 compared to the Holden dual cab at least 12,000 dearer.
A work utility if it lasts 6 years it has done its life.

....I can suggest one project that could use part of a car factory.

Bazz, at some point in time our governments are going to have to employ people and create jobs for them, the writing is on the wall.

So to have an option, such as a car manufacturing plant would be a good start.
As for railways, the reason most don't use it for freight is costs.

The cost of shipping to, unloading from rail, then delivering to customer is more expensive than just sending a B- double or flat bed semi.

Then you have the intrenched poor productivity if the government owned rail system, which is on par with our ports.

Yes Josephus, it's called supply V demand, as many of the conditions enjoyed today are as a result of negotiations where the employers hands were tied due to demand.

The trouble is, as in Toyotas case, the unions won't negotiate back down, so we have to do things the hard way.

As for the Great Wall, may I suggest you talk to someone who actually owns one, and works it hard.

You may be surprised, as the main cause of frustration for owners is down time.

As a contractor performing a major project, reliability is the key word, and it's hard to be reliable with an unreliable tool.

As my late dad used to always say, buy the cars the cabbies use. Same goes for outboard motors, buy the motor the pros use.

Value for money does not start and end with the purchase.

Here you go lads,

"Toyota has raised its annual net profit forecast by more than 10 percent. It is now looking at the equivalent of 6.6 billion euros for the year.
That is based on strong sales, particularly in its biggest market the United States, as it shipped a record number of vehicles last year. A fall in the value of the yen against other currencies is also helping. Among Japan’s big three automakers Toyota, Nissan and Honda, analysts see Toyota as the most likely to benefit from a weakening yen because it has the highest ratio of production in Japan, more than half of which it exports. But the world’s best-selling carmaker said it would not build any new factories over the next three years despite the pickup in its fortunes. “It’s easy to confuse volume expansion with true growth as a company,” Senior Managing Officer Takahiko Ijichi told reporters. “We’re getting rid of that way of doing business,” he added.”
http://www.euronews.com/2013/02/05/toyota-looks-to-profit-boost/

So the problem is really currency based. I suppose with the Australian dollar being a floating currency the opportunity for controlling it comes from other levers. The now defunct mining tax would have helped but hey, that is now history.

What is interesting is that Toyota's strength now seems to lie in the fact it kept much of its manufacturing in Japan. Its workers are not paid 2nd world rates like the Chinese or Thai rates rather first world.

That does not mean they have not flirted with dropping wages and conditions by employing a more casualised workforce.

In 2004 the ration of non-regular to regular employees at Toyota factories was at 12.5%. By 2006 this had risen to 29.1%. It immediately led to quality issues, the “move to individualised payment led to a series of difficulties, including a diminution in the team ethos, heightened conflict between older and younger employees, and greater cross-functional tension as company-wide objectives were supplanted by departmental performance targets.”

By 2010 the ratio had quite dramatically returned to 12.2%.

Cont...

Cont...

As one Toyota plant manager explained;

“‘I’d like to increase the ratio of regular workers because this would make it possible to provide more quality products.  It is needed to get a higher percentage of regular workers… [but] the decision is made at the top of the headquarters. Gradually, headquarters has recognized the necessity to increase the ratio of regular workers so now this plant is trying to employ good temporary workers who might become regular workers. But it is difficult to find good temporary workers’.”

To me one of the keys to the successes in Japan and Germany seems to be company based rather than universal union representation.

“Company unions, the third pillar of Japan’s post-war employment system, remain important in understanding developments; all five components suppliers had company unions. Toyota’s trade union negotiates both the amount of bonus and the regular salary on an annual basis. Every January the union requests increases in each item in the Table and there is a wage determination process in March through the spring wage negotiation. As in other plants, any changes in the payment system at Toyota require negotiation between management and union.

I think Paul Howes was right to raise this as an issue he was willing to explore, and to have the PM dismiss it out of hand smacks of a fixation on outdated and non-constructive union bashing.
http://iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/global-business/continuity-and-change-in-japans-automotive-industry

Adding to Abbott's dismissal out of hand of Howe's germ of an idea we have Hockey's verballing of Toyota and comments made by our PM et al re supposed overly-generous workplace conditions at SPC and in the auto-industry (except management's, of course) as the root cause of demise, and opening royal commissions into unions for political purposes.

The HR Nicholls Society is alive and well. We will never lift ourselves higher with this winner take all approach of liar ideologues. It's funny, tho', how ideology can be compromised for, say, a Taswegian chocolate factory. Must have been a melting moment.