House of Assembly Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2) 51 2 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Grievance Debate Le Cornu LE CORNU Mr PISONI House of Assembly Unley Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:48): I, too, acknowledge that today, 1 May, is May Day, the international day of the workers. What we will see in the upper house today is the Labor members voting in favour of cutting workers' entitlements in the WorkCover legislation. So this is no doubt an anniversary to be celebrated by those in the Labor movement. However, I am not here to speak about that today; I am here to speak about the opportunistic way in which the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employee's Association came in like a vulture on the Le Cornu situation yesterday. We had a media blitz on Monday and Tuesday featuring the new assistant secretary of the SDA who used any excuse to get his name on the radio and his face on TV about the so-called brutal and harsh sackings that occurred in the Le Cornu situation. He went on to complain about the fact that Mr Kevin Pudney promised us when he took it over that there would not be any reductions. Well, the Le Cornu family said just 12 months ago that they were not going to sell. The thing about business is that it is a fluid thing, and things change. The assistant secretary also went on to say on radio that the whole retail sales across the country are consistently on the increase. That is just not the case. The latest figures that have come out will tell you that we have the lowest business confidence and the lowest consumer confidence that we have had since 2001. Interest rates are really biting. The new owners of Le Cornu's have every right to manage their business as they see fit, and they have done so. I have spoken to Le Cornu's and they have assured me that they have done everything in accordance with the award and agreements with their employees. It is interesting that the letter that was sent by registered mail to Le Cornu's from the assistant secretary goes on to state: As you are aware, a number of members of the SDA have recently been made redundant at Le Cornu's. Unfortunately the SDA was not formally contacted in relation to this decision. I will come back to that. The letter continues: Had the SDA been formally contacted, we would have sought to meet with you prior to the redundancies being made to discuss a range of issues, and I would like to request a meeting with you to discuss the following points: how many employees are being made redundant, whether there are further redundancies proposed, the selection criteria applied in selecting employees to be made redundant, the amount of severance pay being paid to employees selected for redundancy pay, and the process followed in informing employees that they have been sacked and the events that follow this. I am flexible in relation to time to make such a meeting. Please contact me...' A letter from Mr Pudney to me yesterday states: I would like to confirm the recent events that have happened at Le Cornu's furniture centre. Due to the downturn in the economy and rising mortgage rates— and with all due respect to the assistant secretary of the SDA, I think probably Mr Pudney has a better idea of how his business is going and what the sales are like than the assistant secretary has— we have to carry out some redundancies in the company. I spoke to our contact Mr Ben Dineen from the SDA a few weeks prior to the redundancies to talk through the process. Ms Kerry-Anne White, human resource manager, also spoke to Mr Dineen on the issue so I thought I had better get clarification as to just when that happened, and I asked for some dates. It states here: Kevin spoke to Mr Ben Dineen from the SDA on 8 April, and Ben was actually in the store the day we did the redundancies in the Cyberkiosk in the rugs department. I bet he did not buy anything. It continues: The day I spoke to him on the telephone was the following day, 9 April. So here we have the SDA saying there was no consultation and the owners of the business giving us the dates when that consultation actually happened. The letter goes on to state: All employees were advised of their redundancy and they were given a letter stating their redundancy entitlements. At the conclusion of the meeting employees were allowed to collect their personal belongings, speak to their colleagues if they wished to and made their own way off the premises. At no time was anybody escorted off the premises or security was involved.' Time expired.