>> 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.
It couldn't operate with *any* workforce as corrigan cancelled the
labour supply contracts.
>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.
corrigan stripped $68,000,000 from the companies so they couldn't pay
the Workers.
>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.
Which is a breach of their own industrial relations laws.
>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.
Just as the savings since '89 from a halving of the workforce and an
increase in productivity also went into the stevedores and shipping
companies pockets.