Holden announces jobs losses

HOLDEN has blamed tough competition for its locally made cars as ther reason behind its decision to scale back production at its Elizabeth plant in South Australia, resulting in the loss of about 30 jobs within a month.

In a statement issued to GoAuto, Holden said that the impact will be limited to contract workers and no full-time staff will be affected.

“Fragmentation and competition across the entire automotive industry continues to place pressure on locally built models,” the statement read.

“As a result, it is necessary for Holden to re-rate its Elizabeth facility’s production from 310 cars per day to 290, effective March 2. This move will better align production with demand and support our plan of continuing to build world-class cars in Adelaide until the end of 2017.

“There will be no reduction to full-time staff numbers but a small number of contract-labour workers will be impacted. We appreciate the effect decisions like this can have on employees and we’re taking the appropriate steps to manage and support staff.”The statement comes after Holden executive director of corporate affairs George Svigos told press last week that staff losses would occur as the company reduced scaled back production in the lead up to end of manufacturing in 2017.

“It’s no secret we are phasing down manufacturing over a number of years and there will be different lots of redundancies over certain periods in response to market demand,” he said.

“We are also in discussions with government and other agencies, and are ensuring that whenever that happens for our employees that the right supports are in place for them to help them transition to new roles or new jobs in the economy."Holden’s VF Commodore along with its Cruze sedan and hatch are built at the Elizabeth facility.

While the Cruze was Holden’s best-selling model last month with 1870 units, sales of the small car in 2014 fell by 24 per cent compared with the previous year.

Last year 30,203 Commodores were sold – an 8.8 per cent increase on 2013’s total. January, however, saw Commodore sales take a 24.5 per cent dip compared to January in 2013 with 1784 sold.