Caltex closure a 'duplicitous' act: Howes

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This was published 11 years ago

Caltex closure a 'duplicitous' act: Howes

By Jonathan Swan

Union leader Paul Howes accused Caltex of "duplicitous" behaviour and said the first his workers had heard of the decision to shut its Kurnell refinery was this morning.

Caltex earlier today announced plans to shut the Sydney refinery in the second half of 2014 with the loss of as many as 630 jobs, 300 of which are those of contractors. The company plans to turn the site into an import terminal for refined petroleum products.

"Today almost 800 workers here at Caltex Kurnell have been delivered a massive kick in the guts," said Mr Howes, the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union.

"Because they've turned up for work and been told that despite promises of consultation, despite promises of negotiation ... this company is simply going to cut and run," he said in comments made to media outside the plant.

Caltex plans to retain fewer than 100 workers at the plant after the refinery's closure. The decision to halt production of refined products followed a year-long review by the company.

Mr Howes said the union would be launching an advertising campaign tomorrow to inform Australians that their petrol was no longer Australian. But he did not elaborate on whether the union had other plans to reverse the plans to close the refinery.

'Betrayed'

Mr Howes, flanked by officials from the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Electrical Trades Union, said the workers behind him "won't know what they'll be doing with their lives because all they know is this industry".

Graeme Grace, an oil refinery operator, said he felt "betrayed" by Caltex. He said that, for the past year, union staff had been "working our butts off" and succeeded in making the refinery more efficient.

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"I've been a refinery operator for over 30 years; as refineries are shutting down, I've got nowhere else to go," Mr Grace said.

"At my age I'm not going to get a job on one of the new gas projects."

'Alarm bells'

Mr Grace said he found out his refinery was being shut down when friends began calling him this morning. They told him barricades were going up around the Kurnell plant and that Caltex had called a media conference.

"That rang alarm bells," said Mr Grace, 58, who has worked at Kurnell for 22 years.

"We expected that the announcement would be made in August," Mr Grace said. "And we expected that the Caltex board would give due consideration to the great plans that we put to the board to increase the efficiency of the Kurnell plant."

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Mr Grace conceded the plant "wasn't set up for the future at the moment," but said the operators, engineers and management had been working "flat out for a year" to fix it.

"We really thought the plans we put forward would save the place," Mr Grace said.

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