MBIE Mediation Opening Statement

I would like to take this opportunity to give a brief introduction on my employment relationship with the company.

My very first start date with the company was in July 2017 until 11 of August 2018 after which I changed into a casual contract for six months and then I went back again into a fulltime contract in February 2019 until 3 September 2020 the day I was dismissed.

I have always had a good relationship with my employers during my tenure working as a customer service representative but my duties predominantly was of a rental car groomer. Despite being a very small operation with just two employees including myself and a branch manager representing the company, I enjoyed working for there and found my employment to be stable and even considered getting a mortgage based on my job.

On 3 September 2020 just after 5pm, I had just finished work for the day when my manager, Lawrence Anderson, informed me that the company was in the process of undertaking a restructure and that my role might be affected. I did not respond immediately as I was in shock when he said that I might be “let go” and I was trying to pull myself together and make sense of what he was saying. I did not see how my role would be redundant.

That evening at around 7pm I checked my personal email and I found an email from Lawrence with an attached letter from the company, which read that “due to increasing business costs we have been looking at reducing staff numbers” and that “we are disestablishing your role effective immediately”. It then went on to say that I would be paid one week in lieu of notice and that I was not required to return to work.

Effective immediately I had no job, I felt so shocked and upset that they had sprung a redundancy on me so suddenly. So much stress and pressure came over me as I was only being paid for one weeks work and my wages from that week and at that point I had no job after that.

I had bills and living expenses to pay for. I had just got married to my partner with a five year old son two months ago and overnight I had to figure out how to support my family, pay rent, put food on the table.

I also felt cheap and humiliated in front of my family and friends to be borrowing money for my survival and providing my family with just the essentials just to get by. The very same week I started applying for new jobs and with Covid, other car rental companies had completely stopped recruiting.

I kept applying on a daily basis and attended 2 phone interviews. My priority was to get any employment as long as I can get back to working fulltime. I consider myself lucky to have found employment again from last month and I now have an opportunity to payback my debt and bring my life back to normal but the period from 4 September till the first week of November was extremely stressful, uncertain and traumatic as I sat and wondered what have I done wrong to be in this position. I had given almost 3 years of hard work to this company and cleaned and delivered 1000’s of cars for this company without any issues and I feel betrayed to have been let go so suddenly without any warning or process.

I eventually managed to secure a new job where my first day of fulltime work was the 2 November 2020. During the September and November period I had income other than from a part time cleaning job of $800 in October and $900 in November so a total of $1700 for 2 months before tax and expenses.

What I request from the company is to be fair and pay me lost wages for the just over 8 weeks that I was unemployed and to compensate me for the hurt and humiliation I had to endure and to reimburse me for my representation costs.