Australian manufacturing giant Norco has stood down 170 workers after failing to find the money to continue paying their wages following a catastrophic flood.
Norco, which operates a major ice cream factory out of Lismore in the NSW Northern Rivers region, suffered major damage during floods in the area earlier this year, and has suggested the disaster had left the company with a $141.8 million bill.
Until Friday, Norco had been paying staff out of an $8 million grant from the government, but this money has now expired.
A separate offer of $34.7 million from a joint Federal and NSW government funding package for flood affected Northern Rivers businesses has been made, but Norco is yet to accept.
Staff at the Lismore plant told the ABC they did not know if the factory would be rebuilt, or if those stood down would receive redundancy payments.
AMWU state secretary for NSW and ACT Cory Wright last week urged the manufacturer to accept the nearly-$35 million on offer, and give workers clarity on their future.
“Now that they’ve been offered over $34 million, Norco need to provide clarity as to the workers’ future. Workers can’t be left in limbo,” he said.
“The combined Unions are committed to helping impacted workers access employment opportunities elsewhere if they can’t work at Norco.
“No one should be left worse off by this process.”
Mr Wright told the ABC on Friday there was “a big cloud of uncertainty” hanging over the workforce.
“All of the pressures that they’ve faced since February, we can see the mental strain on every single worker in the factory,” he said.
Workers are not expected to know what Norco’s plans are for the future, including if they will be eligible for redundancy payouts, until the board meets next Thursday.
Norco CEO, Michael Hampson, had suggested last week the company would look to welcome back workers “once we can get a project completed building the icecream factory at Lismore”,
“In the near term we will need to stand the people down next Friday, but we look forward to the future, we look forward to getting our ice cream facility up and running and in another couple of years, once that has settled down, how can we expand it,” he said.
Last week, Norco suggested as many as 240 jobs were at risk, and said the offer from the government “falls well short of what we need to safeguard the factory’s future”.
Discussion about this post