> Could any of our legal minded people tell me if it is illigal to
> willfully strip assests from a company with the sole purpose of
> letting the said company decay to the point it goes under, and as a
> result getting out of paying (out of their own pocket) redundancies??.
Its "legal" if the company goes into liquidation.... but in this case
it seems that the name of the game was not to drive the workforce
supply company (i.e. the employer of the stevedores) company into
liquidation, just to make it uneconomic to operate with a large
workforce for which there was opportunity to on sell their potential
effort.
The workforce supply company can legitimately make its workforce
redundant, with appropriate termination payments etc, if their is
"genuinely" no work for them to do. In this case the "genuineness"
of the lack of work appears to be entirely a "device" to satisfy the
letter, rather than the intent, of employment law.
If the company went into liquidation, the receivers would be bound
investigate what had happened to assets of the company in liquidation,
which would not be in the interests of the "main" Patricks company.
If the company is simple put into "administration" rather than
"liquidation", then no investigation of any asset stripping would
normally occur as the company is still theoretically solvent, and can
be kept that way with injection of just enough money to avoid
liquidation by the parent company.
> For my money I would say that would be a direct breach of company law
> and Corrigan and Reith (who masterminded it) should be held fully
> acountable!!
It seems to be fairly evident that it is nothing but mechanism to
circumvent the intent of law, while maintaining the letter of law.
What is particularly disturbing is that there is clear indications
emerging that the Federal Government encouraged the Patricks companies
to pursue this course of action.
The evidence from other places with similar industrial background,
notably the UK and New Zealand, that have switched to contract
stevedore labour is that any cost savings achieved have gone entirely
into the pockets of the Stevedoring companies and the Shipping lines
and have not benefited general shippers at all... which makes
something of a farce of the Government rhetoric of waterfront reform
being of general benefit to the community.
Cheers,
Bill
Bill Bolton
Sydney, Australia