Alcoa closes Point Hay

[xxx000]

Originally Posted by zilo

Someone please show me where Alcoa management have said that the CARBON TAX has had anything whatsoever to do with the plant closure?

Go ahead....make my day?

Correct
they gave 3 reasons and none were the carbon tax

[Charliewool]

The Alcoa Anglesea power station will no doubt also go?
Isn't this used to back up the grid during high use peaks?
Be interesting how electricity supply copes during future summer heat waves?

[Bowser22]

Anglesea power station was used to power one potline at Point Henry. It too will go the same way as the smelter, local residents will heavily object to it's licence renewal.

Alcoa paid $137,000,000 collectively for all its sites across Australia. Point Henry has an approx. 95% exemption from carbon tax.

[nuthin' fancy]

Originally Posted by Charliewool

The Alcoa Anglesea power station will no doubt also go?
Isn't this used to back up the grid during high use peaks?
Be interesting how electricity supply copes during future summer heat waves?

It is going to be put up for sale.

[castellan]

Originally Posted by EDManual

The thing is at alcoa everyones pretty much "rich", they'll all get their massive payouts, and many will not ever have to work again.
The younger family guys probably live to their high wages though so may have to downsize their houses. I know of a few who are just waiting to retire...and are quite young too! (40's)

But yeah, lots of electricity used by Alcoa, Ford, Holden, Toyota will give lots of capacity but the electricity companies will want EXACTLY the same total amount of revenue to cover their costs, so our bills will what DOUBLE!? Great...
What will happen is the supply costs to us will go up, so even if we use less we still get charged more. Same happened with water during the drought, we used less, but they still wanted the same money, so the supply charges went up to cover it.

Well the gov won't have to pay them the rocken roll for a few years and by then all the so called new jobs will be created.

[EDManual]

true, the blokes getting their big payouts (200g +) can live off that for quite a few years, without getting the dole, so theres no reason for any change in housing markets around geelong for at least 3 years? Then they should have got a job or have retired anyway.

[nuthin' fancy]

Originally Posted by EDManual

true, the blokes getting their big payouts (200g +) can live off that for quite a few years, without getting the dole, so theres no reason for any change in housing markets around geelong for at least 3 years? Then they should have got a job or have retired anyway.

Plenty will donate their payouts to the Leopold Sporting Club and the Peninsula Hotel.

Plenty will try the FIFO path, their skills won't be required in Geelong and unlike the Ford employees, they have a pretty short period of time to make adjustments.

[mik]

Just the beggining , decades of idealistic government policy has stuffed us
and we are almost an industrial backwater,
10 million tax payers for the whole country quickly heading to 9 million.

We sold out our manufacturing and industry years ago and now it's coming back to bite us on the backside.

[Bowser22]

Originally Posted by nuthin' fancy

Plenty will donate their payouts to the Leopold Sporting Club and the Peninsula Hotel.

Plenty will try the FIFO path, their skills won't be required in Geelong and unlike the Ford employees, they have a pretty short period of time to make adjustments.

This is what will bite the majority of workers. Sparkies, fitters, mechanics, etc. have a trade behind them and will need minimalistic retraining. The guys who tapped metal, set carbon and drove forklifts are in deep sheet.

[XWGT]

Originally Posted by Charliewool

"Rich" eh??
A scenario.. A 45 yr old, worked at Alcoa (OR Ford OR any of the other major players closing) for 25 yrs....
Assumming wage of say.. 90k per annum, married, 2 kids at secondary school, 40% through a 350k mortgage.. How much does he get in his redundancy package?
My guess would be, maybe 200-230k?
Ok, a fair whack in one bite.. But that 200 odd won't even be remembered 5 or 6 yrs down the track because it'll be bloody GONE..
Meanwhile, the ONLY job "Joe Blow" has ever had was making ally at Alcoa or cars at Ford.. and is virtually unemployable after he's gone through his "rich" payout and turned 52-53!!
Do tell how "rich" he is for the next 30 years of his life??

I've said it before and I'll say it again. $200k is enough to fund an entire 4 year University Degree for gods sake!
Thousands of people every day leave jobs in this country with 4 weeks pay in their pocket and that's it.
No one is unemployable. Everyone has a chance. And quite frankly someone has a much better chance of retraining and redeploying with $200,000 in their pocket that someone with $2,000.

Anyone who was half smart and half employable will be re-employed within 6 months and have $150k in their back pocket to offset and initial salary decrease or relocation expenses.

So can we quite the drama and scaremongering and get on with life please?

[ratter]

what about those that are older?

[XWGT]

Originally Posted by ratter

what about those that are older?

What is to stop anyone of any age reskilling, re-educating or redeploying?

When you have $200k in your pocket you have plenty of time to sort out a solution. Lots of time.

[ratter]

oh good, so nobody has a problem



reality is, many older people in the workforce find it difficult to get re-employment no matter how skilled they are.

[Polyal]

Originally Posted by ratter

oh good, so nobody has a problem



reality is, many older people in the workforce find it difficult to get re-employment no matter how skilled they are.

I understand where you are coming from, my father, who long ago was a supervisor, then fell out of it and has been doing different jobs in between had a stroke a few months back. His 65 (I think) and has no real skills other than lots of different experiences.

Anyway, he did a course in traffic management, $1000 later walks out with a ticket and now earns that a week spinning a traffic sign. But it took nearly 3-4 months of applying to get there. I honestly wasnt sure if he would land something because of his age but these people need to think about what they can do not what they want to do (age dependent).

There are so many people that loose their jobs with no notice and no payouts.

Its still a horrible thing to go through, and I fear in the short term Geelong is going to turn into a ghetto.

[XWGT]

Originally Posted by ratter

oh good, so nobody has a problem



.

No. Lots of people have problems and lots more are going to have problems.

Luckily however due to generous redundancy packages and ample notice (3 years in some cases) the solutions available to them are much greater than the normal redundancy / termination scenarios most people find themselves in.

[cheap]

Hypothetical job's - there are lots of these.

It is an employers market, they pick and chose. A middle aged guy, working on the factory floor paints a certain stereotype, likewise a pencil pusher employed for 20 years in a government dept paints a certain stereotype too. Being part of the union movement will not help either.

Regardless of all the "paper based skills" people have, employers pick people with practical experience, malleable mindsets and good looks (not necessarily in that order).

[Kieron]

Originally Posted by Charliewool

"Rich" eh??
A scenario.. A 45 yr old, worked at Alcoa (OR Ford OR any of the other major players closing) for 25 yrs....
Assumming wage of say.. 90k per annum, married, 2 kids at secondary school, 40% through a 350k mortgage.. How much does he get in his redundancy package?
My guess would be, maybe 200-230k?
Ok, a fair whack in one bite.. But that 200 odd won't even be remembered 5 or 6 yrs down the track because it'll be bloody GONE..
Meanwhile, the ONLY job "Joe Blow" has ever had was making ally at Alcoa or cars at Ford.. and is virtually unemployable after he's gone through his "rich" payout and turned 52-53!!
Do tell how "rich" he is for the next 30 years of his life??

I'd be surprised if this person was in that situation, if he was 40% through a mortage, that would suggest he purchased that house around 2002 making him 33 at the time, fairly late in purchasing a first home.

I don't know Geelong property values but I suspect a typical family home there back in 2002 would be around $250K max? 10% deposit = $225K mortgage and 40% into that = $135K.

Potentially pay off the home which leaves around 1 years pay to retrain/find another job which doesn't have to be as high paying given the mortgage is sorted.

[buggerlugs]

Originally Posted by zilo

Someone please show me where Alcoa management have said that the CARBON TAX has had anything whatsoever to do with the plant closure?

Go ahead....make my day?

The silence is deafening eh.............

[zilo]

Originally Posted by buggerlugs

The silence is deafening eh.............

I love catching bull sheeters out....

[Chocko]

Originally Posted by Bowser22

As do I, I've heard many stories that they've buried so much waste around land which have a 100 year lease. On would hope that they'd attempt to return it to what it was (a swampy marsh)

Careful repeating stories that you hear. I don't want to burst any conspiracy theorist's bubbles but they don't go around burying waste in the ground. I know because I work there (for now). They do however have a deal in place that if the plant ever shuts then the site has to be repatriated to its original condition and that's going to cost them a fortune.

Oh, and there won't be that many payouts of $200K plus. I've been there for near on 25 years and I'll give you the tip that if our redundancy is based on the provision in our EBA I won't be anywhere near $200K. We're obviously going to try over the next six months to get a better deal but there's certainly no guarantees on that.

Also I saw mentioned above that Point Henry uses 25 or 30 percent of Victoria's power. It's actually about 6 percent which is still a pretty big chunk. I don't know what they're actually paying for power down there, I've asked the question but it's confidential, but if I had to have a calculated guess I'd say somewhere about 4 cents per kilowatt hour. Go have a look at your power bill and see how that compares, they're getting power dirt cheap.

And will you blokes please let this carbon tax waffle go. There are two major factors that are bringing about this closure. One, the glut of aluminium worldwide caused by an oversupply particularly from plants in China. Many of them receive government funding that allows them to continue to operate at a loss so that they're able to influence the LME price for aluminium and squeeze out their competitors. That is causing a dramatic drop in our revenues.

Two, as mentioned elsewhere we have a 50 year old plant. Total capacity of the smelter is about 180 000 tonnes a year. The plant in Saudi Arabia that has just come online last year has a capacity of about 500 000 tonnes. We struggle to compete with the technology in those newer plants, some of the machines in our plant were second hand when they were installed in the sixties!

And, like most exporters in this country, we're being hurt by the high Aussie dollar. We trade in greenbacks but our outgoings here (wages, production inputs etc.) are paid for in local currency.

Anyhew, enough of my waffling. Just thought I'd set the record straight on a few details. I'm off to polish my resume.

Cheers.

[jpblue1000]

Originally Posted by Chocko

Careful repeating stories that you hear. I don't want to burst any conspiracy theorist's bubbles but they don't go around burying waste in the ground. I know because I work there (for now). They do however have a deal in place that if the plant ever shuts then the site has to be repatriated to its original condition and that's going to cost them a fortune.

Oh, and there won't be that many payouts of $200K plus. I've been there for near on 25 years and I'll give you the tip that if our redundancy is based on the provision in our EBA I won't be anywhere near $200K. We're obviously going to try over the next six months to get a better deal but there's certainly no guarantees on that.

Also I saw mentioned above that Point Henry uses 25 or 30 percent of Victoria's power. It's actually about 6 percent which is still a pretty big chunk. I don't know what they're actually paying for power down there, I've asked the question but it's confidential, but if I had to have a calculated guess I'd say somewhere about 4 cents per kilowatt hour. Go have a look at your power bill and see how that compares, they're getting power dirt cheap.

And will you blokes please let this carbon tax waffle go. There are two major factors that are bringing about this closure. One, the glut of aluminium worldwide caused by an oversupply particularly from plants in China. Many of them receive government funding that allows them to continue to operate at a loss so that they're able to influence the LME price for aluminium and squeeze out their competitors. That is causing a dramatic drop in our revenues.

Two, as mentioned elsewhere we have a 50 year old plant. Total capacity of the smelter is about 180 000 tonnes a year. The plant in Saudi Arabia that has just come online last year has a capacity of about 500 000 tonnes. We struggle to compete with the technology in those newer plants, some of the machines in our plant were second hand when they were installed in the sixties!

And, like most exporters in this country, we're being hurt by the high Aussie dollar. We trade in greenbacks but our outgoings here (wages, production inputs etc.) are paid for in local currency.

Anyhew, enough of my waffling. Just thought I'd set the record straight on a few details. I'm off to polish my resume.

Cheers.

Thanks Chocko, your honesty and insider knowledge is appreciated. Good luck with the future
JP

[mik]

I absolutely hate looking for work, I find it very stressful, and I imagine everyone getting the bullet wont be walking out with 200k in their pockets, work location is another consideration, for some people losing a job and finding something that suits their skill set and not big kilometres away from home will be very hard.
And not every one picks up a new skill set like buying a pack a winny blues from the shop.
some of these people will be doing it very tuff indeed.

[Jacko*]

Thanks for clarifying the situation Chocko. I also work in the same industry, only for a different employer. I heard about the closure a couple of days ago & I can't say I was shocked. I know the challenges the industry you speak of (over supply to the market & the subsequent low price per tonne on the LME. The high AU dollar e.t.c.) We are doing all we can as employees to cut costs & improve productivity but the situation has been slowly worsening. This summer we had the added challenge of losing access to part of our electricity supply which meant we had to cut production. Restructuring has seen some jobs become redundant but thankfully the number roles lost has been done through redeployment & natural attrition. I can only hope the AU dollar drops soon as this will be our only relief.
Sorry to here of your situation & hope you get a fair deal with your redundancy.

[XWGT]

Thanks Chocko

Interestingly the decommission and repatriation may well be a 10 year operation.

Is it not feasible that those that currently run and maintain the plant would be the first in line for the contractor who wins the contract to dismantle and remove the plant?

I imagine the power station will also be dismantled. I understand its a second hand unit that dates back to the 50's and is possibly the most inefficient in the country. On that basis it would be hard to sell to anyone I would think. Again another opportunity for current employees with IP to be first in line?

Hope it all goes well

[Chocko]

Thanks for the well wishes guys.

XWGT, it's still early days but we're talking with management about whether there could be some work for employees during the demolition/salvage phase but we don't have a clear picture on when that will actually happen.

I feel for the production guys, I've got a trade with a pile of post trade qualifications so I have that behind me but many of the production workers are basically unskilled (there are some with a trade qualification though) so it's going to be tough for them to find work particularly in the current economic climate.