More than 200 workers Toyota workers at the firm’s Altona plant in Melbourne, Australia, were in for a nasty surprise on Monday as the company went ahead with its original plan to axe 350 employees. The remaining workers will be sacked on Tuesday.
The announcement was made in January but up until today, nobody knew who was going to be sacked, despite repeated pleas from workers to end their torment. The company said that it axed the worst performing workers.
Both the workers and their union said they were extremely upset with the way Toyota handled the situation as the company brought in security guards to escort the employees in min-vans across the road to a special reception center to sack them.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) called Toyota’s tactics as “heavy-handed” while workers said they had been treated like “dogs and slaves”.
“They have basically walked around the lines, the managers have tapped people on the shoulder and marched them out of the plant. The great majority of people are just devastated,” told ABC News, AMWU spokesman Dave Smith.
“It’s unusual because the redundancies weren’t on a voluntary basis. You’ve got people in the plant who would like to leave, and you’ve got other people who don’t want to leave. So it just doesn’t make any sense,” he added.
One of the first workers to be sacked, Charles Allan, told the news site that it all went down just as people came in for their shift.
“We just got into work this morning and they said, ‘Oh you might get a tap on the shoulder’, and then the group leader’s came along and said, ‘Oh yeah, you’ve got to go to another room’, and I thought, ‘yeah, this is it’,” said Allan.
Toyota responded that all employees at the Altona plant were assessed according to their performance in order to reduce one tenth of the workforce.
Story References: ABC News & 7News
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