Reskilling Opens up New Opportunities as Australian Automotive Manufacturing Comes to an Endcontrol the Pet Palette Movement

Ford, Toyota and Holden have all had a long manufacturing presence in this country, employing generations of families at their plants. It’s not uncommon for workers to be able to say their father, grandfather, mother or sibling were also employed at the site or that they met their spouse there. They are typically fiercely loyal to their employer’s automotive brand and take pride in their work.

Now they are looking for new work opportunities, often hoping to use their existing skills in jobs allied to the automotive sector or in complementary industries. The demise of Australia’s automotive building industry not only spells the end of an era: there are fears it may lessen our manufacturing capability and national skillsets, thereby reducing our international competitiveness.

But the big three manufacturers have been praised for the level of support they’ve offered employees whose positions have gone: plenty of notice, efforts to move them into new roles, generous redundancy packages and opportunities to learn new skills.

And while the closure of the local manufacturing plants now seems to have been inevitable, given the recent history of the GFC, exchange rate pressures, the decline of sedans and rise of SUVs and a host of other factors, it’s not all doom and gloom.

Ford has transitioned 160 staff from its manufacturing operation to Ford Asia-Pacific Engineering, which from next year will be the nation’s biggest automotive employer, with 1,100 design and engineering staff in its product development team. They will be working on the Ford Ranger and other compact cars not sold in Australia but in markets like India and Thailand.

But the broader decline of engineering and R&D roles across the big three inevitably means that many former employees must now move on. There are also sales and marketing positions which have been lost, and even those staffers will often require some degree of retraining or upskilling, such as that necessitated by moving away from proprietary design systems to instead acquiring a working knowledge of more common industry tools.

The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel: the support from government and industry, and the opportunities for reskilling in the form of affordable short courses, is providing many former automotive workers with the chance to make a fresh start in a new role.

A former employee of one of the big three automotive manufacturers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, tells us that for him, redundancy has provided the chance to reassess his goals and reignite the passion that drove him to the automotive sector in the first place.

“When you join a large company, your career path often sees you migrating through different roles and into unplanned paths, and you can lose sight of what you initially came in wanting to do,” he explains.

“For me, the need to reskill has led to me asking myself what my passion is, and that can open up pathways that you either haven’t considered or perhaps have forgotten about over the years. In my case it’s product development – from planning through design input to market launch and strategy.

“My employer has provided all of us with terrific support, meeting with staff and looking at their individual interests and objectives. It’s common for everyone to have an individual training development plan and opportunities within that to retrain.”

He makes the point this is broader than simply job placement – the focus is on identifying vocations. “I know some colleagues who are interested in starting up their own businesses, and others who have made a complete change of direction in their careers.”

For some, relocating will provide them with the opportunity to take up a similar role to their former job, but again this depends on age and family situation. “It’s very much a personal journey as the majority of automotive jobs are now in Melbourne and that’s a big change from Sydney.

“Some people from sales and marketing are moving outside the industry into new roles which complement their skills, such as pricing strategy for car rentals, working with earthmoving equipment or in mining.

“When you look into it, there are a lot of transferable skills when you’re moving across to leasing, logistic operations and the transport industry. Those staff who have worked closer with the retail side have a good crossover to work in car dealerships – senior people can often take on executive roles and the wages in those environments can be quite lucrative.”

While staying positive is an important element of the journey, for many ex-employees there’s an undeniable sense of loss: “I’m grateful for the training I’ve received in the automotive industry, but with the decline of local work I do worry we’re at risk of losing a strong skillset from the country. Australian automotive engineers are highly regarded internationally because we have a natural diversity to our skills and we need to take steps not to lose this reputation.”