By CAROLINE STRAINIG
TWELVE employees have been made redundant without warning after Wyndham Vacation Resorts outsourced the entire house-keeping department at the Flynns Beach Resort.
Earlier this week the devastated staff were still reeling from the news, with some of the older employees in particular worried they would be unable to find alternative work in Port Macquarie, which is renowned for being a tough job market.
“We are absolutely shattered,” ex-house-keeping supervisor of nine and a half years Judy Fletcher said.
“You hear of this sort of thing happening in the city, but not in Port Macquarie. It’s people’s livelihoods. We all have families, and we all rely on our salaries. It’s extremely scary.”
All were given notice at a meeting last week, with their manager reading from a prepared script in the presence of two representatives from head office. Their official last day of work will be this Sunday. Only four had been there the necessary five years to qualify for redundancy, so the others will leave just with their final two weeks’ pay.
Staff were told house-keeping was being outsourced to the Metro Group, the same company which recently took over house-keeping at Wyndham’s Coffs Harbour and Gold Coast resorts. They were welcome to apply for jobs with Metro, but only basic room-attendant positions would be available.
Mrs Fletcher was undecided whether to apply because it would mean a drop in salary and going back to being a room attendant instead of a supervisor.
She said the first time she knew of the retrenchments was a notice on the noticeboard saying there was a staff meeting.
“On the day we were told to have all the arrival rooms ready by 2.30pm, which I never thought anything of,” she said.
“When we all went into the meeting I looked around and saw only house-keeping staff in there and knew straight away something was up because the other departments weren’t there.”
She said she knew the company had to look after its bottom line but Wyndham’s actions showed a lack of compassion.
“Wyndham is a huge company and when you start work with them they go on and on about going the extra mile for the company, so to just turn around and put staff off like this does not fit with that,” Mrs Fletcher said.
Lisa Smith, who had worked at the resort for two years, said she was still undecided about applying for work with Metro.
“We can understand the company has to survive and be competitive, but at what cost?” Mrs Smith said.
“I always thought my job was secure if I worked hard, took no sick days and did a great job, but obviously it wasn’t.”
The resort was approached for a comment about the outsourcing, but no response was forthcoming as of Wednesday morning.
However, a visit to the Metro Group website revealed Wyndham is happy with its decision to outsource house-keeping at its Gold Coast and Coffs Harbour resorts.
“Metro always produces a more than satisfactory service, which is measured by our QAP program,” director of Wyndham operations manager Markus Sigmann wrote in a testimonial.
“Hence, we are now using Metro’s services at our Coffs Harbour and Gold Coast resorts. I would recommend Metro to any business that is in need of dependable cleaning services.”
Wyndham Vacation Resorts Asia Pacific operates a network of 24 vacation resorts in the Asia Pacific region, serving more than 47,000 owners. Corporate headquarters is on the Gold Coast.
