One hundred former workers from ACL and their families gathered for a barbecue outside former managing director Ivan James’ house on Sunday to protest against the loss of their entitlements.
The workers are among the 105 made redundant and are owed an average of 80 weeks pay in redundancy entitlements - almost $8.5 million, which they will not receive.
Former managing director Ivan James did not set aside money to pay workers redundancy entitlements but did pay former directors Michael Saward and John Capuano $400 000 and $265 000, respectively, before the collapse.
What’s even more galling for workers is that they took a 20% pay cut in the months leading up the company collapse while James paid himself $7814.94 a week.
In a leaflet, written by the workers and distributed to houses around James’s neighbourhood, the workers described their feelings of upset and betrayal at how they have been treated by a company to which they gave years of loyal service.
“Directors were receiving payouts while workers were sacrificing income to help keep the company going.
“We are here to personally tell Mr. James how we feel and how his actions have affected us,” the workers wrote.
“Ivan James should take personal responsibility. While directors with their huge redundancy payments will be fine, ACL workers now face unemployment or early retirement without any of the redundancy pay that they earned through years of service and should be able to rely on.”
AMWU National Assistant Secretary, Glenn Thompson, said that Ivan James had left town for the event and his only public comment on the matter was how the protest would affect his neighbours.
“It says a lot about him that his priority is the inconvenience to his neighbours rather than the plight of the workers who stand to lose so much.”
Mr Thompson said the ACL workers felt very strongly about making Mr James personally accountable for what happened.
“They don’t want this to happen to other workers. They are right behind our
broader campaign to change the law so that situations like this don’t happen in the future.”
The AMWU is pushing to change laws which currently let company directors off the hook if they do not secure workers’ entitlements.
Corporations law allows companies in trouble to transfer assets out of employees’ reach. The laws also require liquidators to use any remaining money to pay off debts to banks before debts to workers. Employees often end up with nothing and are forced to rely on the taxpayer funded redundancy entitlements scheme (GEERS), but this only covers 16 weeks of redundancy pay.
“The AMWU wants the government to create a legal obligation for directors to secure the entitlements of their employees,” said Mr Thompson.
In the mean time, ACL workers are asking that the $665,000 paid to directors be returned and shared amongst the families of workers who have been left with nothing.