How do we compete

[jmason]

Quoted a supermarket in western Victoria ,only to find out a company from Adelaide gets the job (Alltech Refrigeration)
When we quoted the job we allowed of course for all the expences that you have to here in Victoria so as to keep the union guys happy.
The South Australian company wins the job because they dont have to abide by everything we have to, just isn,t fair, after contacting the union and complaining ,we were informed that the guys from South Australia arent even in the union (that was specified in the contract) they dont have to pay anything except the guys wages and house them.
The union says they will investigate, bit late for that.
Saftey is a big thing for us on the jobs we carry out ,seems the guys from Adelaide just get in ,slap the job together ,get the money and run.
Just doesnt seem right in this day and age.

James Mason

[monkey spanners]

Blame the customer, its them that have chosen to use the other company despite them not meeting the spec you were given.
Who knows, they might not get paid when they finish!

[Bigfreeze]

More like blame your local government. If they are not holding external contractors to the same conditions as their own local contractors then they are effectively forcing jobs elsewhere. I'd take it up with them. Happens here too with Eastern European firms given contractors to build Irish roads etc. only to find out after the fact that the workers are on slave wages and the roads are disintegrating faster than they were laid down. These companies were made to pay compensation to their workers in the end but the damage was done.

[chilliwilly]

Its corporate crime, greed, and stupidity, the bosses at the top have all got blinkers on. Eventually the companies that undercut and cause job losses will eventually lose themselves. Sometime in the future, countries like China will have container ships full of exports in their docks but nobody in the world to buy them, as no one will be left working to afford them!

[mikeref]

South Australian registered company working in Victoria has to abide by Victorian laws. It would be the same conditions as if an aussie company quoted on a job in New Zealand, for example. We can't just barge in and ignore their rules and regulations.

[Magoo]

To be compeditive you have to be quoting on an even playing feild. Local regs and requirements are to be applied equally. I think you have been tucked by the SA mob., and your local union organizer should have shut down the site. Come down hard on the plant owner, and rock in the after sales charges for any service work in the future. Does the SA mob offer 24/7 after sales service/ highly unlikely. possibly uncool to quote the other company name for legal reasons, but good on you anyway

[chilliwilly]

South Australian registered company working in Victoria has to abide by Victorian laws. It would be the same conditions as if an aussie company quoted on a job in New Zealand, for example. We can't just barge in and ignore their rules and regulations.

Yes Iknow what you mean mate by complying with local regs and codes etc. If there's no clark of works to monitor and over see the job. Box's will just get ticked and certificates signed and handed to the client. I've seen this over here when I was in electrical contracting.

A certain company in Leeds that I used to work for over 20 years ago were probably the roughest set of coonts going. But they had an old school team who were conciencious and professionally minded that refused to work to such poor standards. So they would put that team on jobs local to the office so that when the NICEIC inspector inspected the job there were no major issues.

This meant they could maintain their work load with the council and other area authoroties, they would have all failed the inspection if they had used the other teams. The jobs that were over seen by clarks of works usually took twice as long because of the amount of snags that arised, because they just priced the work with a house bashing mentality and didn't read the job spec. Or more than likely didn't understand what they were reading.

This could be one of the many examples of methods of companies pricing and under cutting jobs to secure a contract, keeping their fingers crossed and working out how much of a back hander to drop for the person signing for the work.

[Tesla]

Hi jmason
I worked in Melbourne & had to have Victoria plumbers, drivers, disconnect/reconnect & arctick licenses. I could only imagine the SA company would be using Melbourne sub contractors to do the work. That would mean the SA company takes the cream. Perhaps your company could consider tendering large contracts in SA and use subbies to do the work, this would be business which is cut throat some times. There could also be some prompting to the union/inspectors to ensure all work laws are complied to. These difficulties and very low profit margin could deter continued loss of contracts to SA. Winning and loosing these big contracts can be dire for the techs as when a big contract is lost there could be job shedding. I have experienced this redundancy twice in the last five years so I know it can be very concerning. This hurts the last time was only 8 weeks ago and I have no job and are living on my savings which has nearly run out.