Chopped meatworks staff caught in jobs limbo

Manildra Meat Company – Cootamundra’s largest employer – will close its doors on Friday, shedding 150 permanent staff and 70 casual staff.

Based on Cootamundra’s population, the job losses are equivalent to slashing 3000 Wagga workers or 171,000 Sydney workers in one fell swoop. 

Workers were summoned to a meeting on Friday, where a written statement was read out announcing the shock closure of the meat processing plant.

Officials from the government departments of employment and social services will head to Cootamundra on Monday morning to help displaced workers fashion their futures.

The company has blamed record high livestock prices and the “inability of our customers to absorb these price increases” for shutting up shop.

A skeleton crew of mechanics will be retained for maintenance, in the hopes the livestock price will drop and the plant can reopened. 

However, according to one worker who cannot be named, the prospect of being recalled complicated the decision to find work elsewhere.

“Virtually everyone is local and they don’t know what they’ll do,” they said.

“The company intends to open the plant back up as soon as they can but we don’t whether to stick around and wait or go for jobs in Wagga, Gundagai or Junee.”

Riverina MP and federal small business minister Michael McCormack was in Cootamundra within hours of Friday’s announcement.

“I have spoken to mayors and meatworks processing operators – locally and interstate – to see if they can pick up any of the Manildra workers,” Mr McCormack said.

“The closure will cause uncertainty but there are jobs if people are willing to take them.

“Some of these people have lived in Cootamundra all their lives and many will have worked in meat processing all their lives, but sometimes when you lose your job you have to move town.”

Mr McCormack said there was an opportunity to retrain some workers, but there was “not going to be another company open up overnight with the job capacity of Manildra to replace what’s been lost”. 

“At least the Manildra Group will pay all entitlements, which is some cold comfort for the workers,” he said.

Manildra Meat stopped processing lamb for Woolworths stores across New South Wales last month after the supermarket giant switched allegiances to Junee Abattoir. 

Woolworths put the squeeze on the cut-throat abattoir industry last year by discounting lamb leg roasts by 28 per cent to $10 a kilogram as part of a $45 million bid to lower its meat prices. 

Former Cootamundra mayor and pharmacy owner Paul Braybrooks said the plant closure was the worst hit to the local economy in 30 years.

“If you take the incomes from the abattoir out of the community, it will have a dramatic negative impact not only on those individuals but on the whole community,” Mr Braybrooks said.