Great xmas present

[New display name]

WARNER Village Theme Parks has sacked 45 staff less than three weeks before Christmas and the busiest holiday time of the year for the attractions. A company spokeswoman said about 1.8 per cent of the 2500-strong work force was made redundant yesterday. And companies wonder why staff are not loyal to them when they show no hart towards there staff. Humbuck to them I say.

[qldtaw]

WARNER Village Theme Parks has sacked 45 staff less than three weeks before Christmas and the busiest holiday time of the year for the attractions. A company spokeswoman said about 1.8 per cent of the 2500-strong work force was made redundant yesterday. And companies wonder why staff are not loyal to them when they show no hart towards there staff. Humbuck to them I say.

This is why they called it economic crisis. Unfortunately no business is immune to the effect of the down turn in the economy. Lets all hope that this 1.8% off lay offs is all that will happen. More importantly lets hope that Warner pulls through the crisis and is stronger for it, not perish and dissappear like alot of tourism will in the coming years. It is awful that it is Christmas but truthfully there is never a good time to lay workers off, but as a business if they are not getting the numbers to have a successful summer or Christmas you have to cut costs and the most efficient and effective way to do this is in payroll. I couldn't imagine the storms are helping attendance at all.

[cerberus584]

Just totally removed this post...sorry folks...better safe than sorry

Edited December 5, 2008 by cerberus584

[Original]

Channel nine had a field day with this tonight. They really shot down WVTP, they even did a live broadcast from outside Seaworld. I think it was pretty slack what channel 9 did they made a huge deal over 40 people loosing their jobs. Yet when they sacked heaps of their they didn't do this. I'd be careful all staff on here with something to say about this because nine said all staff speaking out about this will be fired. I wonder if this has come from the new COO and they are being very secretive about all this. Although I thought this may happen though the company has been on a spending spree and with the economic crisis it may be hurting them. Who knows, Disney is. I understand this has to happen, it is terrible, but no one is immune from what's happening financially. But I feel the media have been way to harsh about all this.

[rappa]

You'd be silly to believe an official statement, as you would that this is because if the crisis. The reaction is not over the number of staff but over who.

[mickey_079]

But qldtaw we aren't really effected by the economic crisis yet? My job at the mine has been moved back till January now because of the crisis but they haven't sacked anyone yet? Nor have they stated they have any plans to.

Edited December 5, 2008 by mickey_079

[Original]

It has affected Centro and ABC and they all went on big spending sprees to. Well I have no idea who was sacked that was something they didn't say, I just assumed it would be the junior holiday workers or something.

[DonjaiInLA]

The article on page 2 of thursdays Courier Mail was much less one sided I htought

[Bush Beast Forever]

But qldtaw we aren't really effected by the economic crisis yet? My job at the mine has been moved back till January now because of the crisis but they haven't sacked anyone yet? Nor have they stated they have any plans to.

The impact of the financial crisis is already starting to impact Australia and Qld in particular. The credit crisis has already seen weakly capitalised companies (particularly in the property space) collapse or be put on life support (Octaviar, Allco, ABC Learning, Centro, Babcock and Brown, City Pacific...the list is as long as my arm). Moreover due to the synchronised slow down in economic growth in the world's major economies (U.S. most of Europe, U.K and Japan are all in recession and Chinese growth has slowed dramatically) demand for Australia's resource exports has collapsed. Their steady rise over the past couple of years has been responsible for a significant proportion of Australia's economic progress (especially in WA and Qld). Commodity prices not benchmarked to contract prices (i.e. basically everything but coal and iron ore) have all fallen precipitously since the middle of the year. This is already impacting on resource companies (just look at practically any mining company's share price chart). Some are already closing unprofitable mines and laying off workers. More importantly all indications are that iron ore, thermal and coking coal will all see massive price cuts at the next round of negotiations in early 2009. These are by far our largest exports and this will massively negatively impact our terms of trade and is why the Australian dollar has collapsed from US$0.98 to c$0.65 in a matter of months. Qld and WA will be particularly hard hit by this given their significant bulk commodity exports (WA - iron ore, Qld - coal). Weakness in resources and the tightening in the availability of credit is already seeing Australian companies slash capital investment and this will directly impact on economic growth. This and the slowdown in consumer expenditure caused by the shock to consumer confidence that the share market collapse and weakening housing markets has caused is seeing companies across the board start to lay off existing staff and put off hiring new staff. This will see unemployment rise dramatically early next year further impacting on consumer expenditure. Fact is Australia will be lucky if it avoids a recession and at best (if monetary and fiscal policy are successful) will see a couple quarters of very weak growth that will see unemployment rise and consumer spending stay well below trend. Village is merely acting in its shareholders best interests by looking to reduce their cost base where appropriate so as not to see their profitability collapse (very important given the debt burden they need to support). While nobody likes to hear about job losses (particularly around Xmas) I think it is unfair to single out Village considering there has been and will soon be much more egregious examples of wholesale staff cuts to see companies support their profits through what will be a very tough couple of quarters in 2009.

[Richard]

The only problem with that explanation is that were it the case, the cutbacks would extend to frontline employees as well, not just management, where the cuts have been made exclusively. If the so-called financial crisis were having any immediate impact on our parks, then the results would take the form of decreased attendance and/or per capita spending, to which the solution is cutting back normal employees. Rather we have a situation where a new COO has come on board and is in the process of making extensive changes to the management structuring as part of his strategy for the company. Now, I definitely have my doubts about it all -- in particular the kind of strategic vision it indicates -- and it's definitely dreadful timing, but I'll wait and let the results in terms of financial success and the quality of the product speak for themselves down the track. Putting this down to a financial crisis is just a cop-out when you look at exactly where within the organisation these firings have taken place. In the past few years our parks (not just WVTP) have given us: 2000 Olympics, Ansett collapse, 9/11, SARS, bird flu, drought and rain and a host of others as reasons for cutbacks, redundancies and poor performance.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Precisely... just like wonderland's excuses.

[S.W24]

...

Edited February 16, 2009 by klassen24

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

Wonderful contributions as always Nathan.... mate seriously, you gotta start thinking ahead of time about what you post, instead of just blurting it out and having to come back and edit it....