KiwiRail stops cuts after 10 quit

A recent rally in the Octagon to save jobs at Hillside Workshops in South Dunedin. Photo by...
A recent rally in the Octagon to save jobs at Hillside Workshops in South Dunedin. Photo by Gerard O'Brien.
A round of proposed job cuts at KiwiRail's Woburn, Lower Hutt, workshops has been halted after a group resignation of workers pre-empted it.

KiwiRail made 44 workers redundant at its Hillside Workshops in South Dunedin last month, as part of a review by the state-owned enterprise of its national engineering, manufacturing and design operations.

The review, which proposed 70 job losses from KiwiRail's rail manufacturing operations, was scheduled to continue with a proposed 20 jobs to be cut at Woburn and 10 from an engineering design team in Wellington.

KiwiRail chief executive Jim Quinn said consultations with Woburn engineering workers about a move to cut 12 manufacturing jobs at the Lower Hutt division had been dropped after 10 employees resigned.

"Given the natural attrition which eventuated, we decided there was not a case for consultation to proceed," Mr Quinn said.

Consultation for another proposed round of eight job cuts from Woburn's administrative department was still taking place, while a review of another 10 jobs from KiwiRail's Wellington-based design team remained "on the table", he said.

The Rail and Maritime Transport Union blames the nationwide job cuts on KiwiRail's decision to outsource engineering contracts overseas, for the construction of rolling stock for an upgrade of New Zealand's ageing rail freight assets.

Woburn has been earmarked by KiwiRail to carry out an $80 million refurbishment of the Wellington commuter rail service's elderly Ganz-Mavag fleet, Mr Quinn said.

KiwiRail transferred ownership of its Wellington passenger rail and commuter services to the Greater Wellington Regional Council in July, in an agreement which included a scheduled refurbishment, or potential rebuild, of the 30-year-old Ganz-Mavag rolling stock.

The rail engineering refurbishment project at Woburn was "totally independent" of the type of work conducted at Hillside and there had never been an option for South Dunedin to pick up any of the contracted services, Mr Quinn said.

There would be no reversal of KiwiRail's decision to cut jobs at Hillside and no new contracts had been sourced for the South Dunedin engineering unit, he said.

 

 

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