70 Chch jobs lost as two firms close

Press, 28 March 1983, Page 1

70 Chch jobs lost as two firms close

Seventy more Christchurch people have been issued redundancy notices because of two businesses closing.

Thirty staff at the New Zealand Fanners’ Co-opera-tive Association’s Cashel Street store have been told they will be made redundant because the sale of the building has fallen through, and about 40 people will lose their jobs when Oakley Architectural Windows, Ltd, closes its business in the city. The chief executive of the Farmers’ Co-operative Association, Mr J. B. Buxton, said last evening that the staff were issued with redundancy notices on Friday. One month’s notice was given. The 30 staff included four clerical workers and four workers in the restaurant, and the rest were shop assistants. “We had no option but to issue redundancy notices be-, i cause we had a contract for the sale of the retail business which regrettably has fallen through,” Mr Buxton said.

The two-storey building, which includes the last of the 19 stores formerly trading as Farmers-Haywrights, and the car-parking area in Bedford Row, were reported to have been sold to an investment company early in December. At the time of the reported sale, Mr Buxton said that the new owners pro-. redevelop the ng* as a tenanted retail store with complementary activities on the upper floor. The renamed Christchurch Home Centre continued to trade while new tenants were sought for the retail area.

Mr Buxton said last evening that 10 staff in the home appliance section, which is leased to'another company, would continue to work in the store,- which will continue to be known as the Home Centre. The Farmers’ Co-opera-tive, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bunting and Company, had had no long-term plans for the Cashel Street store as a retail outlet, Mr Buxton said.

“We are extremely disappointed,” Mr Buxton said of the abandoned sale. “Sadly we have to call it a

day?’ When the sale was announced in December, Mr Buxton said that the emphasis would be on retaining existing staff both then and under the new retail management.

As well as the 40 Christchurch staff, another 79 employees of Oakley Architectural Windows at Mount Roskill, Auckland, will be made redundant.

The executive director of the company, Mr G. J. Williamson, said last evening that the company had “just run out of work.” “We are in the same position as people building private dwellings — there is just a general decline in work in the building industry,” he said. “We do have contracts to complete and we will fulfill our obligations. It will be a progressive closing down,” he said. Mr Williamson said he did not know when the first workers would be laid off, but said there would still be people working for the company in six months. Alternative employment

had already been found for some employees of the firm. There had also been a surprising amount of sympathy from other firms, some of whom had offered to help, he said. A loss of about ?1 million was expected for this financial year, witn a similar loss for the next year, Mr Williamson said. Oakley Architectural Windows was formed through the merger o£ the former A.H.I. subsidiary, Architectural Windows, Ltd, of Auckland, and J. F. Oakley, Ltd, of Christchurch, in late 1981. In September, 1982, the company won a multimillion dollar contract to supply exterior aluminium joinery and wall cladding to

a big hotel and shopping centre development in Singapore in a joint venture with a Singaporean company. About two months later the firm won another multimillion contract to supply aluminium window frames and doors for the College of Medicine and Medical Science faculty at Bahrain’s Gulf University. The secretary of the Canterbury Carpenters and Related Trades Union in Christchurch, Mr J. E. Clough, said last evening that 23 of his members were involved in the redundancies. Mr Clough praised the way the company had handled the redundancies.