Toyota has decided to discontinue manufacturing vehicles in Australia by late 2017. Around 2,500 workers will be made redundant. Toyota's decision was long-anticipated, Ford and General Motors have each made similar decisions in recent years. The Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU) and the Federal Government have each blamed the other for the death of Australia's large-scale auto manufacturing industry.
In late 2013, Toyota sought to renegotiate key elements of the Award (the agreement regulating pay, leave and employment conditions) in place at its plant in Melbourne. Among 28 other variations, Toyota wanted greater flexibility to shorten the plant's annual three week shutdown over Christmas, claiming it often starved supply to Middle East markets and required expensive overtime to clear the backlog. The AMWU, which represents 90 percent of Toyota plant workers, objected to Toyota's proposals. The union claimed Toyota was "trying it on" and would not pull out of Australia, and on 12 December 2013 procured an injunction preventing Toyota's proposals being put to workers at a vote. (Justice Bromberg, who heard the issue in the Federal Court, described the injunction application as raising "interesting and complicated issues" even by the standards of Australian labour law).
Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey subsequently claimed that Max Yasuda, the head of Toyota Australia, had privately told Hockey that AMWU's litigation and intransigence meant Toyota's global leadership could not be convinced that significant efficiencies could be made in Melbourne. However, Mr Yasuda and Toyota flatly denied that that was what Mr Hockey had been told, and said its ceasing manufacturing was the result of Australian market and economic conditions, not labour issues in particular. For its part, the AMWU denied it bore "any blame at all", and identified the Federal Coalition Government's "policy failures" as the cause of Toyota's decision.
Regardless of whether labour issues were indeed the final straw for Toyota, the complexity of the Toyota Award and the difficulties encountered in inflexibility of trade unions are illustrative of the labour-related challenges faced by many manufacturers in Australia.
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