Northland frigate builder lays off 45 staff

12:00 pm

Northland's see-sawing labour market has been dealt another blow with the loss of one third of the workforce at the Tenix shipyard in Whangarei.

The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union said today the 45 workers to be axed at the company's Port Rd shipyard would learn who they were tomorrow.

It is estimated the job losses would take more than $2 million a year in wages from the Whangarei economy, and result in skilled workers leaving the area.

Ten days ago Tenix's Whangarei manager Allister Taylor said the yard - which manufactures modules for Anzac frigates - had a workforce of 130 at that time.

The looming redundancies are the latest in a series of see-sawing developments across Whangarei's labour market.

Big layoffs across our meat, glass, clothing, printing and shipbuilding industries have already cost more than 1200 people their jobs over the past 15 years.

However, this has been tempered by major industry players coming to the district and creating hundreds of jobs - including in recent times a multimillion-dollar wood processing plant at Marsden Pt and a superyacht manufacturing facility at Port Whangarei.

Today union secretary Andrew Little said there was a chance some of the workers being made redundant could be rehired, depending on how much work Tenix decided to do in this country on the 10th, and final, ship to be built under the Anzac frigate contract.

But he was not optimistic.

Mr Little raised the possibility some of the workers leaving Tenix might be able to find jobs at the nearby New Zealand Yachts operation that was looking for skilled staff to build superyachts.

Similarly, he hoped Whangarei would get shipbuilding work arising out of the Government's defence review, but that would be "way down the stream".

Northland Chamber of Commerce president Philip Higham said the frigate project had always been a finite job.

The writing had been on the wall since the Government decided to buy just two of the ships, he said. "It's going to take some money out of the economy, but it's not unexpected."

He did not expect the loss of jobs at Tenix to have an impact on other businesses here.

One Tenix worker said the staff had been told several weeks ago that redundancies were likely, but the news yesterday, given at an all-up meeting of the staff, still hit hard.

The man, who did not want to be named as those who would be made redundant had not been decided upon yet, said the redundancies were a "body blow" for the workers, their families and Whangarei.

"There was anger, stress and disappointment when we were told. All those emotions came out and some were just left numb."

He said the company told the workers that all work on Anzac frigate number 10 was stopping and the 45, mainly fabricators/welders would be out of a job from next Friday.

"This is really going to hit some people hard. Some people have already been under tremendous stress because we have known something like this was going to happen for a while.

"Many of these will find it very hard to get a job, particularly in Whangarei. A few of them (to be made redundant) will be ones who have always travelled to where the work is, but many of them will be locals who have mortgages and families here."

The man said the workforce at Tenix was highly skilled and much of that expertise was likely to be lost to Northland.

"For those made redundant who live locally it will be very tough. Tenix has always been a good company and paid decent wages, but that doesn't help those who will go," the man said.

He said 17 workers had already asked for voluntary redundancy, but no decision had been made yet on whether they would be accepted for redundancy.

Today, the company's Whangarei site was referring all queries to its Sydney head office, where group communications manager Liam Bathgate was unavailable for comment this morning.

But earlier this month he did confirm the amount of work to be done in Whangarei on the 10th frigate had been under review for some months.

He added the company was pleased with the work being done in Whangarei, and needed to maintain an operation here with an eye to possible shipbuilding opportunities in the future.

- NORTHERN ADVOCATE