Kemalex Plastics employees Raj, Stephanie and Pauline, who refused to supply their surnames, outside the Dandenong South factory just days after being sacked without any prior warning.By Shaun Inguanzo
EMPLOYEES of a Dandenong South factory who were sacked without warning have won a battle for full redundancy entitlements.
Kemalex Plastics closed its Dandenong factory on 31 October, but its 80 employees were not aware they had lost their jobs until they turned up to work on Monday, 2 November.
Kemalex managing director Richard Colebatch handed the company into administration and blamed union pressure on a substantial $1.1 million loss.
He referred to 10week employee strike earlier this year, after the company said it would place all new employees on individual contracts with Australian Business Numbers.
“The strike cost us in excess of $1.1 million in legal fees, lost production, lost sales, plant and truck damage, excess transport fees, excess overtime and sabotage resulting in poorquality product since the strike ended,” Mr Colebatch said.
He said he would now focus on Kemalex’s operations in South Australia.
But the National Union of Workers (NUW) said Mr Colebatch’s claims were absurd, and focused its energies on ensuring Kemalex workers received their entitlements.
Mr Colebatch said last week in a radio interview that employee entitlements would not be paid out directly, and would instead be given through the Federal Government’s General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme (GEERS), which would take several months to process.
But in a meeting this week between administrators from Ferrier Hodgson, Kemalex workers, and the NUW, it was announced the employees would not have to wait for GEERS.
NUW spokeswoman Di Lloyd said it looked as though on preliminary investigations the members would receive full entitlements and not have to go through GEERS.
“Obviously we are very supportive of them because they have lost their jobs, but the good news is that they will have access to full entitlements,” she said.
Ms Lloyd said the administrators were impressed with the NUW’s professional conduct and absence of industrial action.
She said there was no specific date at which workers’ entitlements would be available, but it would be sooner than through GEERS.
“GEERS can be restricted, whereas they will get what is provided for in their Enterprise Bargaining Agreement,” she said.
“It should in theory come through quicker.”
Meanwhile, administrators are continuing investigations into Kemalex’s Dandenong South closure, including the disappearance of equipment over the weekend before employees were notified they had lost their jobs.
