Up to 50 staff may be laid off just before Christmas from Fisher and Paykel Appliances' Mosgiel plant, in the first official round of redundancies.
At least 25 people have already left the whiteware manufacturer since it announced its closure in April, with the loss of 430 jobs by early next year. About 30 to 50 are expected to go by December 23, Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union organiser Mike Kirwood said yesterday.
He believed they would all be voluntary redundancies and numbers were yet to be finalised, but the company was due to issue six-week redundancy notices by November 8 for a December 23 finish, he said.
"There's still a lot of work going on out there, and overtime being done," Mr Kirwood said.
The plant was expected to slow its cooking product manufacturing but was still stockpiling its mainstay DishDrawer unit for distribution during the beginning of the Mexican and Thai plants, the latter having opened last week. Some engineering staff had gone to Mexico to assist with its being set up.
While the Mosgiel plant is under a conditional sale offer by Fonterra, no announcement has been made about the relocation of 90 engineering staff to Dunedin central, or the base, for a planned 40-person call centre.
