Timken Bearings to leave Ballarat by early 2017

Timken Bearings, which only four years ago said Ballarat had “all the ingredients for business” and a “robust” economy, will contract out its entire warehouse operations to a Laverton company and merge its Ballarat administration with its Melbourne sales office.

Ballarat operations for the bearings manufacturer will be phased out before the lease expires on the current site in March next year, a memo to staff circulated in early August said. 

“It’s a sad story for Ballarat because this is a company that has had a presence in Ballarat for years and years and years,” Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union organiser Colin Muir said. 

“Most people would be unaware that Timken do have a presence but it is the end of an era for the Timken guys because they have been associated with Ballarat since the 1950s.”

Many employees have been with the company for decades, Mr Muir said. 

The merger of Ballarat administration with the Melbourne sales office is expected to take place early next year however The Courier understands only two staff have chosen to relocate.

Warehouse employees were not given the option to relocate. 

Timken opened a $15 million Australian distribution centre at Wendouree in 2001, two years after closing its local bearings manufacturing plant.

Less than half the staff are covered by an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement and the remainder will fall under the national employment standard which offers up to 16 weeks pay out following redundancy, Mr Muir said. 

Mr Muir said administrative and sales employees had been told routinely since retrenchments in the late 1990s that they would be offered the same redundancy package as manufacturing and warehouse staff, which reflected the years service to the company.

Unrepresented workers, some of whom had been with the company for over 20 years, were given the option to nominate representatives within the staff or represent themselves during consultation with the company.

“They were relying on the stand that the company had indicated and applied over the years, the blue collar redundancy and severance for the white collar workers,” Mr Muir said.

“It doesn't take away from the fact that they’re (warehouse staff) losing their jobs but at least they do get some level of compensation as opposed to the white collar staff who don’t have an EBA so effectively their severance is governed by the national employment standards,” he said.

Timken has told staff the relocation would improve customer service levels and reduce running costs.

The contracting of warehouse operations to Melbourne offered “increased flexibility to align operating costs with sales performance”, the company said.

The Ohio-based company’s then chief director Jim Griffith visited Ballarat in 2012, where he declared the Ballarat economy “impressive”, “robust” and with better values than a “big city”. 

At the time Mr Griffith said the company had steered itself through challenges in the 1990s but had turned a corner. 

“You’ve got the values that come with being in country Victoria as opposed to getting lost in a big city, so from my point of view this is very attractive,” he said.

“Ballarat is important to us and hopefully we are important to Ballarat.”

Timken reported of sales of $674 million in the second quarter of this year, 7.5 percent lower than the same time in 2015.

The company will release its 2016 third quarter financial results later this month. 

Timken did not respond to multiple requests from The Courier for comment.