TOYOTA TO SACK 350 WORKERS

[ramblingboy42]

Well I dont know what's going on here.....we as taxpayers have given Toyota Australia a huge amount of money in the form of grants over the last ten years. John Howard started it and recently the current govt saw fit to grant Toyota a futher amount. So we give Toyota , an incredibly massive, wealthy company, grants to research their hybrid vehicle development so that they can send their technology overseas to make huge profits and they **** in the face of the very hand that feeds them by sacking employees because they cant sell enough of the ****ing mundane hybrid Camrys that we are funding.
:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: am I angry? :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: maybe....
Dennis

[It'sNotWorthComplaining!]

There will be more to come, manufacturing is a dying industry in Australia. Europe will go into recession, nothing really to look forward to these days, unless your a miner selling to China and India
I wonder out of the 350 jobs how many were executive positions? or do they sack workers then pay themselves big bonuses.

[Mick_Marsh]

Interesting.
The government are letting our manufacturing go overseas touting "We are the clever country". I heard on the radio on the weekend. In the thirty "clever countries" in the world we are rated fifteenth. India and China are above us.
Why are they cleverer than us? I think it's because they've got our manufacturing.

[bee utey]

Until Australian workers are willing to work for the same conditions and pay as third world peasants, industry will leave our shores. Only the bottom line matters to these drongos.

[Sleepy]

Govt. subsidies go back further Dennis. I can recall Joan Kirner (Vic premier late 80's early 90's) giving them a big bag of cash to open the Altona facility.

Very sad to see people retrenched. :(

[ramblingboy42]

It would be interesting to find out just how much money we have given Toyota over the years. Wonder where one would look?

[rick130]

It would be interesting to find out just how much money we have given Toyota over the years. Wonder where one would look?

The big end of town gets massive support in tax concessions, subsidies, special awards, tax offsets, special zonings, cheap real estate, etc etc as well as outright grants, and all the big companies have their collective hands up.
Remember Kodak ?

What do you think the Federal Industries Minister was doing in Detroit a few weeks back ?
GM and Ford were screwing more concessions/money out of the Feds.

Even the big multi-national fast food chains have their own special award where they pay less/no penalties to their casuals for weekends, etc, yet a privately owned café or takeaway food place has to pay normal award/overtime loadings.

WTF is so special about Macca's, KFC and Pizza Hut that they get financial assistance over a small, local business that puts money back into a local community rather than the big guys that ultimately channel profits OS ?

That sort of thing ****es me off. :mad:

[Lotz-A-Landies]

.....
Why are they cleverer than us? I think it's because they've got our manufacturing.Our workers aren't prepared to work for peanuts, we have OH&S laws, compulsory employer funded super and mandatory long service leave. Then they are cleaverer, because they get subsidised to go to our universities.

[incisor]

heard on the abc this morning that AU subsidizes the car industry to the tune of about 1/10th of what the US government does :p

20 years ago there was a 54% tariff on cars.. now there is 5%

free trade agreements with the likes of thailand and korea so they pay next to nothing compared to what used to be the case

they bang on about free trade but ......

[richard4u2]

Well I dont know what's going on here.....we as taxpayers have given Toyota Australia a huge amount of money in the form of grants over the last ten years. John Howard started it and recently the current govt saw fit to grant Toyota a futher amount. So we give Toyota , an incredibly massive, wealthy company, grants to research their hybrid vehicle development so that they can send their technology overseas to make huge profits and they **** in the face of the very hand that feeds them by sacking employees because they cant sell enough of the ****ing mundane hybrid Camrys that we are funding.
:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: am I angry? :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: maybe....
Dennis
yes they are given money to produce a product that can be made by australians so they can in turn buy a house a car pay taxation and support local busness peoples & bring up a family etc etc

[PhilipA]

Could I just add a bit here?

The car plans were never really about the car companies , they were and are all about the component suppliers.

IMHO and having been a senior exec of Ford and at importer BMW, the car companies could not really care about whether they build in Australia or not, and in fact would prefer not to , if they have a competitive offshore product. Ford , GM and Toyota have "sunk assets" in their plants but these are probably written off by now.

I was also interviewed for the Austrade position of car components coordinator and I didn't get the job even with my background, when I told the rep of the components association that they should be setting up in Thailand, as that was where the action was going to be, much to his outrage.
Now that he local content plans have gone the components industry is dying anyway.

The government has played a stupid hand in all this. The car assembly industry would be in much better shape if the government had taxed commodity exports to reduce the appreciation of the AUD to prevent the "enclave" economy forming where mining does really well but massacres the rest of the economy. They should also have taxed the hell out of imports as Thailand and many other nations do, but then we wouldn't have had cheap cars.

BUT really it is inevitable , and this stems from the Hilmer Report in 1993 that freed up the economy and eliminated subsidies to a great extent.

So don't blame the car companies. they were just following Government policy.
Regards Philip A

[PAT303]

Personally I think the Oz car industry should go belly up.The problem is they are nothing but short sighted fools who had a good deal going but stuffed it up,they could have had T/D powered vehicles 10 years ago long before the Europeans captured the market but nooo,lets build petrol vehicles that no body wants and poor quality ones at that.The ute market in Oz is worth more than thier total year output but have they made a ute,nope,that would be to easy,better to make petrol vehicles that nobody wants,thats more cleverer.I have had about 5 bomberdoors,a falcon,and a couple of Camrys/orions and all were total rubbish,the last orion we had used to change settings on the controls because the dash shook around so much as you drove along,I can't imagine having one on NSW roads.Let the lot die a quick death and spend the hundreds of millions in the science department that is making world beating equipment that goes oversea's through lack of funding. Pat

[TerryO]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious and offending some, if more people decided to buy new locally made vehicles then chances are they wouldn't be sacking people right now.

It won't just be the local car industry that suffers because of the high dollar in the not to distant future, more and more sales and manufacturing jobs will be lost as more and more people personally import goods from OS via the net.

We can't have it both ways, cheap imports and strong local industry.

So how many people on here have bought a locally built Land Rover lately?

cheers,
Terry

[rick130]

Could I just add a bit here?

The car plans were never really about the car companies , they were and are all about the component suppliers.

IMHO and having been a senior exec of Ford and at importer BMW, the car companies could not really care about whether they build in Australia or not, and in fact would prefer not to , if they have a competitive offshore product. Ford , GM and Toyota have "sunk assets" in their plants but these are probably written off by now.

I was also interviewed for the Austrade position of car components coordinator and I didn't get the job even with my background, when I told the rep of the components association that they should be setting up in Thailand, as that was where the action was going to be, much to his outrage.
Now that he local content plans have gone the components industry is dying anyway.

The government has played a stupid hand in all this. The car assembly industry would be in much better shape if the government had taxed commodity exports to reduce the appreciation of the AUD to prevent the "enclave" economy forming where mining does really well but massacres the rest of the economy. They should also have taxed the hell out of imports as Thailand and many other nations do, but then we wouldn't have had cheap cars.

BUT really it is inevitable , and this stems from the Hilmer Report in 1993 that freed up the economy and eliminated subsidies to a great extent.

So don't blame the car companies. they were just following Government policy.
Regards Philip A

Good reply.

[PAT303]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious and offending some, if more people decided to buy new locally made vehicles then chances are they wouldn't be sacking people right now.

It won't just be the local car industry that suffers because of the high dollar in the not to distant future, more and more sales and manufacturing jobs will be lost as more and more people personally import goods from OS via the net.

We can't have it both ways, cheap imports and strong local industry.

So how many people on here have bought a locally built Land Rover lately?

cheers,
Terry

If they still assembled defenders in Oz I would have bought two to date. Pat