More redundancies at Wickliffe

A further thirteen workers at Wycliffe Press’ Dunedin plant have been made redundant after the company decided to move its rotary press operations to Auckland this week.

The move follows an earlier round of redundancies which are due to Wycliffe shifting its main operations to its new Auckland site and means the number of Dunedin-based positions has been reduced to 22 from more than 150 last year.

EPMU organiser Mike Kirwood says the increase in redundancies came as a shock to members. “The company said they were updating their restructuring and then handed the extra redundancy notices out.”

“A lot of our members were pretty pissed off,” says Kirwood, “which is understandable considering they’d been told their jobs were safe and then got their notice.”

Bargaining for a national collective is still underway and the next negotiation dates have been set for the 4th and 5th of September.