Hillside worker redundancies, after owner KiwiRail decided to accept Chinese tenders to build rolling stock, have united opponents across the political and business divide.
A petition containing thousands of Dunedin signatures was presented at Parliament yesterday by railway workers from the troubled engineering workshops at Hillside, Dunedin, and Woburn, Lower Hutt.
Hillside Engineering employees were left reeling after a meeting yesterday afternoon, at which KiwiRail managers announced more jobs will be cut from the workforce than was first proposed a month ago.
Songs and shouts of protest, led by Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull, have delivered a strong message to KiwiRail and the Government to save 40 jobs threatened at Hillside Engineering.
Hillside workers will find out the fate of 40 job-threatened positions at the South Dunedin engineering workshop this afternoon, but not before they make a last-ditch protest against the controversial KiwiRail proposal.
Forty-four Hillside employees finished their jobs at the landmark South Dunedin engineering outfit yesterday, the culmination of a six-week long KiwiRail redundancy process which one union official has labelled "a debacle".
Kiwi jobs will not keep disappearing overseas if Labour gains power, party leader Phil Goff said in Dunedin last night.
A rail and Maritime Transport Union delegate at Hillside has likened rail workers being told they had lost their job yesterday to "plucking sheep out of a herd".
KiwiRail and the union representing some of its workers have reached a settlement over the unloading of new rolling stock from China at the Port of Tauranga.
Hillside union delegates have labelled a visit by KiwiRail chief executive Jim Quinn to Dunedin this morning as "morally repugnant'' given the expected confirmation of 40 job cuts at the South Dunedin engineering outfit later this afternoon.
Kiwirail management is about to begin its final deliberations on which Hillside jobs are likely to go, after a consultation period with employees and union delegates ended yesterday - the eve of a public rally campaigning for a change of heart.
Protesters gathering in Dunedin's Octagon have sent a strong message to KiwiRail and the Govnerment to save jobs at Hillside Engineering.
Speakers are lining up to support the Save Hillside jobs campaign at a public rally in the Octagon today.
Retired engineer Lex Smith (83) intends to be front and centre in the rank and file of campaigners at the Save Hillside public rally in the Octagon today.
Save Hillside campaigners intend to get their message across to Minister of Transport Steven Joyce when he visits Dunedin to open the State Highway 88 realignment behind Forsyth Barr Stadium this morning.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters yesterday threw his support behind the campaign to save the KiwiRail-owned Hillside Engineering workshops.
The Government can step in and do the right thing over contracts to build wagons in China rather than at Hillside, Dunedin, the Rail and Maritime Transport Union South Island organiser John Kerr says
The next event in the battle to save Hillside Engineering workshops will see supporters taking to the streets in a rally.
Hillside workers have been prohibited from speaking to media about the threat of looming job cuts, after KiwiRail bosses issued a communications policy to employees yesterday - three months after it took effect.
An ordinary Sunday morning and on my way to the cathedral I stop at the service station and at the counter find a petition to save the jobs at Hillside. Five minutes later, at the supermarket...
