The Lion Match Factory: when work disappears

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The Lion Match Factory when work disappears
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(No Transcript)
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UND
The Lion Match Factory
http//www.durban.gov.za/urbanstrategy/publication
s/maps/dbn1.pdf
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• the Lion Match Company first took up residence
  in Stamford Hill Road in 1900
• by 2002 the turnover was R 193.1 million
• had a local market share between 85 and 95 per
  cent
• making matches is an extremely labour intensive
  job, but by 2002, the Durban branch of the Lion
  Match Company closed down the factory leaving 385
  employers with the choice of either unemployment,
  retrenchment or relocation
• the Factory now stands empty and barren.
•  

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• Mr Ashwin Cheerkoot
• worked for the Lion Match Factory for seven
  years.
• moved to Pretoria to work in the Rosslyn
  Factory, but came back to Durban after two
  months.
• having worked there for a significant amount of
  time, had managed to work his way up to a job in
  management.
• he believes that the closing down of Lion Match
  was due to the mismanagement of funds and not
  Eskoms electrification drive.
• now works for Steincraft, a gardening company
  in the Phoenix Industrial Park

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• 36, worked for Lion Match for fourteen and a
  half years
• started as an apprentice fitter and turner, and
  three years later, he qualified as a professional
• moved to the machine building section and
  thereafter to the Factory proper where he worked
  as a fitter and turner and rendered his service
  for maintenance
• then moved between department, starting with
  the splint section, then packaging/heads and
  eventually when the Factory closed down, he was
  the production foreman
• after the closure remained unemployed for one
  month and three weeks, during which his family
  depended solely on the income of his spouse. now
  works for GUD Filters, where he is still a
  production foreman, but feels that the company
  would be far more efficient and remunerative if
  it were to be automated.

Mr. John Doe
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Mr Ashwin Dayanand

• 33 worked at Lion Match for 13 years
• first applied for an apprentice at the factory
  as a fitter and turner
• worked as a machinist in the engineering
  department where they would make shafts, cams,
  and pushes
• moved to the factory, as a shift fitter and
  stayed there for four year
• became the senior fitter in charge of the night
  shift
• after three years, he moved to the main factory
  as a production foreman, until the closure
• remained unemployed for a significant period,
  but through HMS, a labour broking company he was
  able to get a job at Sasco
• six months later through Capital Contract, one
  of the larger labour brokers in Natal, he got a
  job at the Toyota- Mobeni and then Prospecton.
• applied for a job as a fitter at Mondi. Here
  he earns twenty Rand less an hour measured up to
  the rate at Lion Match.

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Management at Lion Match asserted that the reason
for closure was a result of Eskoms
electrification drive. However, on closer
inspection, it was actually a case of
mismangament. When workers went on stirke in
1996, the enitre uinionised work force was
dismissed..
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The union then took the Company to court claiming
that it was an unfair dismissal. If Lion Match
had lost the case, in which case they did, they
had to pay their workers a severance as well as
offer them jobs back at the plant. However, they
sold Lion Match at a figure that would
substantiate the settlement. Moreover, in the
process of consolidating the two factories, the
Management at Lion Match, Durban had to show that
the plant was running at a loss. In turn they
had spent millions of rands on maintenance and
renovating
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In the new economy it becomes so much easier to
use information technology as an excuse to
justify downsizing. But at the same time it is
also unjustifiable to place all hopes of
re-employment on the rise of information
technology