300 workers to go at Austal
Shipbuilder Austal has started laying off workers at Henderson under a wind-down of a $330 million Customs patrol boats program, in a move which will see up to 300 jobs shed by the end of the year.
The defence contractor made 40 people redundant on Monday. Austal said they were non-permanent staff, including labour hire, contract workers and casuals.
The Henderson workforce had doubled to about 600 in recent years to design and build eight Cape Class patrol boats and two high-speed support vessels for the Middle East nation of Oman.
The workforce is expected to be scaled back to about 300 once the last of the patrol boats is finished. Five boats have so far been handed over to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, with the last three to be delivered by the September quarter.
Austal Australia president Graham Backhouse said reducing the workforce was a natural and necessary step as the contract entered its final phase.
"The contract required delivery of a large number of vessels in a short timeframe and we needed to bulk up to meet that demand," Mr Backhouse said.
"Now that demand is close to finishing, we need to normalise our employee numbers.
"The Cape Class contract has been a significant and highly successful contract for Austal and we have delivered vessels of exceptional quality for our customer, the Australian Government, due largely to the skills and expertise of our staff."
The two vessels Austal is building for the Royal Navy of Oman under a $125 million contract are expected to be delivered late next year.
The company has not secured more shipbuilding work for Henderson beyond that program. Chief executive Andrew Bellamy in February said the Australian business was bidding for two defence contracts for clients in the Middle East and Australia.
The bulk of Austal's revenue comes from the multi-year contracts of its operations in the US, where it is building warships for the US Navy.
Defence Minister Kevin Andrews yesterday said the Federal Government was in the early stages of a program to procure up to 40 ships and submarines over the next two decades.
Mr Andrews said the Government was developing a naval shipbuilding plan, including an option for continuous construction, rather than the stop-start system characterised by long troughs between contracts.
with AAP
