Holden Cuts 500 Jobs Due To Strong Australian Dollar

[William Maley]

By William Maley

Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com

April 9, 2013

Holden is cutting 500 jobs due to the strengthening Australian dollar, which has caused country's labor rates to be one of the highest in the world.

“I can’t control what central banks do. The value of the Australian dollar, and importantly the currency plays being made by other countries, mean that we are not competing on a level playing field,” said Holden managing director, Mike Devereux yesterday.

The Australian dollar has surged 83% when compared to the Japenese Yen since 2008. This has prompted an increase in Japenese imports into Australia. This is further compounded by the rise in costs of plants in Australia. Devereux said this makes the operation “one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive” in GM.

The job cuts will take place in two facilities: Holden's Elizabeth plant, where the Commodore and Cruze are built, and Holden's Victorian product development facility.

These new cuts come five months after Holden announced 170 jobs would be cut for similar reasons.

Source: Bloomberg, Drive.com.au

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.

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[G. David Felt]

Sad to hear this as I hate to hear any person loosing a job especially before the holidays. Yet as GM and others have learned here in the US, Labor rates kill the ability to have manufacturing local.

[Drew Dowdell]

There was a mis-configuration with the Holden forum where news articles from the front page weren't getting posted. I fixed it the other day, so now all the old articles got dumped into the Holden forum all at once. This was from April 9th