Other businesses at risk after Mobile Electrics shuts

LONG-term Darwin businessman Harry Maschke has told of the 12 workers he has had to sack in the face of bad economic conditions in Darwin

Mobile Electrics owner and Managing Director Greg McLaughlin said telling his staff they no longer had a job was tough

LONG-term Darwin businessman Harry Maschke has told of the 12 workers he has had to sack in the face of bad economic conditions in Darwin.

Mr Maschke has had Action Sheetmetal at Berrimah for 50 years and says he has never known conditions to be so bad.

He said he the liquidation of 47-year-old business Mobile Electrics and the sacking of 60 workers was tragic and warned other businesses will fall.

60 JOBS GO AS ICONIC NT FIRM GOES INTO LIQUIDATION

“I feel for them, I truly do,” Mr Maschke said. “Things are bad … very bad at the moment.

“I had to cut my workforce in half because there just wasn’t the work around.

“Sadly I had a number of indigenous apprentices among them and I just could not afford to keep them. The work is coming out too slow.”

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Mr Maschke said six of the 12 workers he had to sack have now left the Territory.

“A lot of businesses have been forced to shut their doors because of the economy and we are losing a lot of good people from the Territory,” he said.

Mobile Electrics owner and managing director Greg McLaughlin said closing his business and telling his 60 staff that they no longer had a job was as tough as it gets.

Mr McLaughlin, who has had Mobile Electrics for 21 years, said he expected to lose everything once liquidators had finished winding up the business. He said a problem he had with the Inpex project had not helped his situation.

“That coupled with a lack of work momentum made it impossible for us,” he said.

“With a business our size you need work continuity and it just isn’t there. It is hard to plan ahead when there just isn’t a lot of work coming on.”

Mr McLaughlin said his main focus now was his ex-staff and their futures.

“They will be paid out but it is still tough … we were like family” he said. “I have staff who have been here 30 years, a lot as many as 15 years.

“We have fathers and sons working here. There are generations of families working here. I had four father-and- sons working here. There is a set of sisters here.”

Mr McLaughlin said his company’s demise should serve as a reminder to Government of what happens if the continuity of work doesn’t flow quickly enough.