On the day the swathe of redundancies was announced - 430 at Mosgiel of more than 1000 from Appliances' ranks at sites including in Australia and the US - a sticking point immediately emerged.
F&P Appliances wants staff to stay until their finish date to get their redundancy payments, some time during the next 13 months, while the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) wants some leeway for staff to be able to accept new jobs and retain their redundancies.
Mosgiel staff, stunned at the severity of the retrenchment announced on Thursday morning, were told in a statement that the company had a ‘‘very generous redundancy provision''.
‘‘We will need to ensure that staff work until the final shut or beyond to be entitled redundancy.''
Appliances' chief executive John Bongard confirmed in an interview that staff would be required to stay until their final date to receive payments.
The statement went on to say that ‘‘obviously'' some staff may choose to leave before their employment was terminated and ‘‘unfortunately, though, redundancy will not apply in these cases''.
Several workers spoken to after the announcement - including some with more than 15 years' service at the Silverstream plant - were concerned that with 430 staff looking for work in Mosgiel and Dunedin they would become compromised.
EPMU national secretary Andrew Little told the Otago Daily Times the issue was a major concern to workers and arose immediately after the redundancy announcements.
‘‘People will find jobs between now and then [redundancy date], but it is because they are being made redundant they are looking for work in the first place,'' he said.
Mr Little did not want to give specific details and options before negotiating directly with Appliances' management, but said the possibility of Appliances paying retention bonuses to make people stay or having a graduated leaving period of four, eight or 12 weeks around the redundancy dates were options.
Mr Little disputed Mr Bongard's claim that the union had been ‘‘consulted' during the past two weeks over the pending redundancy announcement, saying he had only spoken to Mr Bongard on Wednesday of the previous week.
He had only received a ‘‘non-committal'' response to the two week con sultation period, which started from Thursday.
Mr Bongard had said free trade agreements, such as last week's China agreement which removes tariffs, were a compounding factor prompting the decision, but Mr Little noted the China tariff reductions were over several years and Appliances was ‘‘happy enough'' to do business in an environment with free trade agreements covering Mexico.
Mr Bongard accepted that there might be a backlash from New Zealand and Australian customers against the Fisher and Paykel brand for switching to offshore manufacturing, but he felt they would support a New Zealand company on realising the alternative was imports from China, Thailand, Korea and India.
