FOR 28 years Cheryl Seymour has clocked on at Electrolux, following in the footsteps of her brothers, her mother and father, who all worked at the factory.
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Her children have also worked at the plant for a time.
Ms Seymour said, with the end of her job looming, she had not been feeling too bad.
“But it has really hit home now,” she said.
Ms Seymour was referring to the termination letters and notices of redundancy sent to workers two weeks ago.
Ms Seymour is one of the lucky ones who has found herself another job and will walk out of the factory on April 15 with 220 other employees.
“I have really liked working here and I’ve made some really great friends,” she said.
Ms Seymour has worked in several roles at the plant. She began on the production line in 1987 and says she will miss the factory.
Although Electrolux has hosted several job expos to introduce employees to prospective employers over the last two years, Ms Seymour says she was was able to find a new job through her own efforts.
“I saw a job in the paper working with CareWest and I was fortunate enough to get it,” she said.
“It will be an administration role which I really enjoy.”
Plant manager Mark O’Kane said several employees had started working a second job in order to transition to other work when they left Electrolux.
ON April 15 the bulk of the remaining workforce will finish the last shift at Electrolux and 220 workers will leave the factory for the last time to move to a new phase of their lives.
However, 100 employees will remain to be part of the decommissioning process to remove the plant at the factory.
So far, 164 employees have left the factory or taken redundancies as part of the facility’s staged shutdown.
Electrolux plant manager Mark O’Kane says he is pleased some of the equipment, which is still in excellent condition, will be used by the company.
“Some of it will be shipped to South America,” he said.
“This equipment has served us well and we didn’t want it to go to scrap.”
Mr O’Kane said the warehouse would remain operational for several months so stock could be shipped to various parts of Australia.
Included in the 100 employees, some of whom will undertaking the physical process of removing equipment from the factory, will be the Asia Pacific Research and Development Department.