STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 818/3

Full transcript of an interview with

GRAHAM FRASER

On 26 April 2007

by Peter Donovan

for the

HISTORY TRUST OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Recording available on CD

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library

2

OH 818/3 GRAHAM FRASER

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

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3

J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, STATE

LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 818/3

Interview of Graham Fraser, Electrolux employee, by Peter Donovan on 26th

April

2007 at Regency Park, South Australia.

DISK 1

This is disk number one of an interview with Graham Fraser. Now, Graham I

understand is – well, he certainly works for Electrolux. Graham will be speaking

with me, Peter Donovan, for the purpose of recording some of the history of

Electrolux and its predecessors for a project initiated by the History Trust of

South Australia and facilitated by the State Library of South Australia.

Graham, do you understand that the copyright of the interview is shared by you

and the History Trust?

I do.

This being so, may we have permission to make a transcript of this recording,

should the History Trust decide to make one?

Yes, certainly do.

Graham, bearing this in mind we hope you’ll speak as frankly as possible, knowing

that neither the recording nor any transcript produced from it will be released

without your authority. This interview is taking place today, the 26th

April 2007,

in the offices of Electrolux at Regency Park.

Now, with those formalities out of the way there, Graham, we can get into the

interview.

Okay.

When did you join the company, how long have you been associated with the

company there, Graham?

I’m pretty lucky, actually: I started on the fifth of the third 1987, and the reason why

I remember the date very easily is it’s my birthday. So I actually started on my

birthday – birthday present from then the company was called ‘Simpson’s’.

Why join the company? How did you learn about, what was the job you went to?

Okay. When I first started here in 1985, Simpson’s had a contract, so you did a three

months contract and that was valid for a total of three of them. By the time you got

your third contract you either got made permanent or you walked out the door. I was

4

one of the lucky people that understood a fair bit of the workings of around about

three or four different jobs out there so I was multi-skilled very quickly, within about

two months, and then the role came on as a shop steward left who stood down from

the division and nobody else wanted to do it so I put my hand up for it and I got the

shop steward position within Simpson’s, which is a role that I had for seven years.

So I’ve had a lot of input into actually what goes on in the company.

Of course, in those times we also had enterprise bargaining, which was, you know,

enterprise bargaining in this time was beautiful because there was a lot of things that

we could give the company and get a percentage of a pay increase. But of course as

the enterprise bargaining went down the track further and further and further it’s just

got to a stage where you can’t give them anything any more, because if you do you

end up giving your shirts or your trousers to them. So got a little bit hard.

So what skills did you bring, what was your training? How old were you when you

joined?

Well, I’m 56 years old now, I’ve been with the company for just on 20 years so I

would have started when I was about 36. Yes, about 36 years old. Prior to working

here I spent 14 years in the Royal Australian Army and I was based up at Townsville

and I was out of work for probably about six months, had a couple of casual fill-in

jobs and I heard about vacancies or they were putting on people at Simpson’s, and I

come down and I applied for it. Initially I didn’t get it because I had no background

in working in a factory, but I was asked to come back probably two or three days

later and spoke to another manager, whose name was at the time Gerry Quirk or still

is Gerry Quick, who was the factory manager here. He said he’ll give me a go and

away I went.

So you started in the dishwashing division?

I’ve always been in the dishwasher division. As you might not be aware there is

three different divisions or was four different divisions in Adelaide. There was a

pump and motor line over at Woodville, there was the washing division at Beverley

and then there’s the cooker division at Dudley Park, and then there’s dishwasher

division. So I’ve been in dishwasher division since the fifth of the third 1986.

You said you didn’t get the job originally because you didn’t have factory skills.

Had no [experience].

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What were they looking for, what factory skills? I would have thought it’s easy to

go out on a line and put a screw in.

I thought the same thing myself, but actually I got caught when I was in the position I

was working on the final assembly line at that time, and one of my jobs was to put an

earth wire on, an earth nut onto a wire and screw it in. And blow and behold I let one

get through, and in those days you used to have a red light and a green light to let you

know if something was happening and all of a sudden the red light come on. The

whole factory stopped, we all got taken in the canteen and I got pointed out that I

made a very bad mistake. I took it on the chest because I know I did the wrong thing,

I was then ..... ..... ..... and I went back to work and I was then given a Texta, and

every time I put a nut on I had to mark it with Texta, and I tell you that really pissed

me off. But I certainly learnt very quickly that the safety factor within the dishwasher

division was very high at this time.

And as far as bringing in any skills – well, no, I had none. None whatsoever. Like

I said, they gave me a chance. I initially worked on the outer door line or the door

line area, which blow and behold was about four foot away from the factory

managers, the team leaders, the supervisors, and they always seemed to be looking at

you. But they obviously weren’t, but you got that impression that they were. So you

worked to your best of your ability. And in those days we were only building 180

probably to 210 units per day, compared to today where we build 650 to 700 a day.

Being made an example of like that, was that unusual? Did it happen regularly

where everything stopped and people were taken to the canteen and somebody was

pointed out?

It was unusual in a way that the whole factory actually got pulled into the canteen.

Normally – well, I’d seen it happen once before in another part of the factory where

actually all they did is just took that line to one side and had a bit of a chat. I mean,

at this time it was a life-and-death type situation because if the machine hadn’t been

earthed out at all and if that had got out into the marketplace, it could have caused an

injury or could have caused a death. So, like I said, safety was their number one

priority in the old Simpson days – and still is; but of course they don’t use the lights

any more because all the inspection’s done on-line now. They have people checking

on people, people on checking all the way down through the line, so if somebody sees

something wrong he puts his hand up, it gets fixed straight away before it goes any

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further. In my days, well, we used to only have one guy. Used to be a floater, used

to float all the way around through all the whole lot and even he didn’t pick my

mistake up because he wasn’t in the area at the time. So yes, I learnt the hard way.

Probably the best way to learn because I never (laughs) made a mistake again. But

yes, it was a bit embarrassing at the time; but I also got, after everyone was told I got

pulled to one side and I was told – they actually thanked me for taking it on the chin

like a man. So some of the other young kids he would have probably ..... up a bit, but

I knew I’d made a mistake so I wore it.

Was South Australia always your home?

South Australia?

If you’d been up in Townsville, why did you come back to Adelaide?

I was born in Melbourne, born in Carlton actually, and I got called up for National

Service in 1970, July 1970. Got posted all over the place. I missed out on going to

the funny land.1 I was based with 10IRC which is 10 Independent Rifle Company

which was out at Canungra, and we used to always play the enemy; and put in for a

transfer to go to a nice sunny place up in Townsville and I spent probably about nine

years in Lavarack Barracks in Townsville. I had enough, I’d wanted to get out of the

Army after then because a peacetime army is no good for anybody – it might be good

for not getting killed and those type of things; but a peacetime army you’re doing

stupid things within the army barracks which I found monotonous and tedious. So I

decided that I would get out and they asked me where I would like to be discharged

and I said – I don’t know why, but we just picked Adelaide and said ‘Keswick

Barracks’. So I spent about six months at Keswick Barracks before I got discharged

and my wife and myself at that time started a whole new life herein Adelaide because

in those days it was like a big country town that hadn’t grown up properly and the

pace was beautiful, and it was just a nice place to live.

When you first came here, what was the factory like? How does it compare with –

it’s a bit difficult saying ‘now’ because they’re in a wind-down situation; but say

up to 12 months ago? Was it much different from what it is?

1 Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

7

Oh, yes. A lot different. The changes that have happened since the days when I first

started here until even probably the last six, seven months – even probably right up to

right now, because people in the factory, even though they are leaving, been made

redundant or going to another site, they’ve still got a lot of pride. I mean, our rework

rate is still down very low, it’s down around probably one or two per cent, and that’s

very good when you consider they’re pumping out 640, 650 machines a day.

In my days, when it was in the younger days when I first started here, gee, it was

nothing to think that rework could go as high as 15, 18 per cent, and that’d be done

very, very easily. Like I was explaining to you before with my little safety mistake

that I made, that would be a machine that would have to come off the line, then

they’d have to fix it up and put it back on the line, so losing. Every time a machine

comes off the line your target rate comes down.

As far as changes: been humungous big changes. One of the biggest changes that

I’ve seen in the factory would be inspecting your own work. Somebody now inspects

what you do; whatever that person’s done is getting inspected; so it’s inspection,

inspection, inspection, inspection all the way down the line. So very rarely you’ll see

a situation where something’s not right because there’s been three of four inspectors.

So that was part of an enterprise bargaining thing that was agreed to by the then

manager, I think his name was Julian M..... – that’s going back a long time – and

everything was then, everything even today, is still inspected on-line. So we’re

making top-quality dishwashers, have been making good dishwashers for years. I

remember when I first started here they were making Malley’s dishwashers and they

made a Malley’s ‘Cascade’, which I believe was one of the first machines ever made

in this factory. And they were an absolute beautiful machine: they had a glass front,

very well-presented, and if you looked at it you’d never think it was made in

Australia, you’d think it come from overseas. So yes, it’s good stuff.

So what have been your different jobs? You started on the line, I take it.

Yes, I did. I started on the door line. I’m six foot one and these things were a little

bit hard for me at these times because you had to bend over all the time. I started on

the door line and then I progressed to – – –.

So what were you doing on the door line?

Door line: assembling the – – –.

8

Different jobs?

Basically putting screws in the bloody outer doors, and they were a pain in the you-

know-what because – – –. Once you got experienced with them – the screws were

only about three-eighths of an inch long and they were fiddly and they were stainless

steel so they didn’t stick to a magnetic thing; you had to actually feed them in, and

there something like about 16, 24-odd screws you had to put in, and then once you’ve

assembled that you’d have to walk that off there and then put it onto another elevator

so that’d roll down the thing, go to the final assembly so they could manually pick it

up with a suction gun, put it on top of the machine. Those things are changed, now

completely changed. But I started, like I said, on the door line. This is where I was

always in front of the supervisors and the manager’s office at the time.

I progressed from there – because, like I said, being tall my back used to give me

hell – progressed to a final assembly line where everything was at eye level, worked

there for a while.

So what were you doing there, what’s final assembly?

Final assembly, I was just connecting wires, capacitors – putting a capacitor on, and

that stupid little nut and that earth wire, I had to put them on; drain hose, connect the

drain hose, connect an inlet hose and wrap it around the machine. Machine then went

to the carousel.

After I progressed from there I then went down to the packing line, and that was

my forte. That was the best job that I’ve ever had in the factory at that stage. The

packing line was we used to pack five machines at a time and one person, that was

myself, used to wipe down the inside of the machine, put books in the machine, jump

across the line and connect a hose and then ..... that hose up so that you could pack

the machine, then jump across to the other side of the line then pack five machines.

We used to always try and pack five machines at a time because, like I said, they

were only doing 180 a day: divide that by eight and you’d see they’re probably only

doing about 20 an hour. So if you were packing five, five, five, five, you eventually

got yourself a little bit in front so you could have a bit of a rest. Not sit down and do

nothing, but just probably put some labels onto a carton, because in those days had to

basically physically write the serial number on the top of the box with a crayon.

Every single (laughs) machine that went through was exactly the same. So, like I

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said, that was my forte and I probably – I think I done that job for about, I don’t

know, hard to say, probably six years, seven years; and then progressed up to the

store.

Put my hand up to become a material handler, which is something that’s always

been – well, physically it’s a pretty hard job because you have to make sure that all

the right parts are on the line and you get to know all the parts. I know from the time

that I’ve been now in the store I probably know all 1200 parts. Somebody can pick

up something and I can give them a part number but I wouldn’t bother telling them

what it is, so if somebody would pick up a screw, say a 15400-118 – that’s the screw

number – but (laughs) they come in and ask me what it is, I’d say, ‘It’s a screw’,

where actually that part I think is an Innox half-by-seven[?] or something like that.

But yes, I’ve been in the stores area for 15-odd years, I think, and that’s the last place

you want to be because it’s a good place to work.

Do you get a chance – who decides whether you move or not?

You get asked, actually. In the younger days when it was Simpson’s, there was what

they called multi-skill tasking. So as soon as you become multi-skilled you instantly

got a pay increase, so you went from a – I think the level was 14 up to a 13, so as

soon as you walk in through the door you’re a level 14, as soon as you progressed

and you’ve multi-skilled and you prove that you can do these jobs – – –. ‘Multi-

skilled’ in those days means that you could do four jobs. What’s the word I’m

looking for? You could do the four jobs easy, without making any mistakes.

Like what jobs?

Now, some of the jobs were – door line was one, because it’s not an easy job, it’s

continually go-go-go because if you stop the rest of the factory stops; final assembly

area; putting the doors on, which is an overhead job, which is a vacuum job, put the

doors on, that was another task job; the job that I was doing just connecting the wires,

capacitor and drain and inlet hoses on was another task job; packing was another task

job. And I also worked in the flowlines on the press shop for a little while. Not very

long, but I did for a little while. So I had about five or six jobs underneath my belt,

so they gave me another pay increase.

Further down the track, when you asked before who decides, well actually you

decide. So there might be a position like that came for me up in the stores, I put my

10

hand up to do the job but they took somebody else instead, somebody else who had

experience. But (laughs) the guy didn’t last very long; I don’t know why, he just

didn’t want to do it; so he went back into production and of course I took on the role

again. I put my hand up and got the job and I’ve been there ever since.

But yes. Most jobs in the factory in those days, if you wanted to do something

else, by all means you just go ahead and put your hand up and you probably got the

job within two or three weeks. They’d send you over there for say three or four

hours’ training, go back to your own job, so you never got put in cold; then try and

work your way back up to the rhythm again. They always used to put you over to an

area three or four hours, sometime after lunch – after 1 o’clock till say 3.30, two

hours – just to give you a feeling to see if you wanted to do the job.

So if you walked in as a level 14, how long could you get to be to be a level 1?

What was level 1?

Okay, I’ll explain to you. Level 14 is straight from the street. Level 13 is once

you’ve become multi-tasking. Level 12 is what they call you have to understand and

be able to guide other people in how to do jobs correctly, so you would either be –

well, you would be a team leader and you would work with somebody who’s learning

a new job and actually show them the correct way to do the job and how to do the job

in sequence. Because a lot of people when they do a job, they’ll try to be smart and

try to do it different than the way it’s always been done because they think it’s easier

and it’s quicker, but it’s not; it’s slower, because when you get shown something to

do, that’s the correct way to do things. What level’s that? Level 11 I’m not quite

sure, I think you had to have a trade behind you. You could be a B Class electrician,

say; you didn’t have to be a fully-qualified tradesperson. I’m not 100 per cent sure

on that because I had nothing to do with it.

No, don’t worry about that.

And then you got Level 10, which of course is a tradesperson. Then you progress up.

Once you’re a tradesperson in the company you can – what’s the word? – you can

work your way up. There’s several ways of working your way up, which is part of

what I did when I was a shop steward here. Yes. So there’s basically just the three

levels. There’s 14, 13, 12 and 11, and that’s what the average man off the street can

get to and that’s it. Of course, if you went to night school and those type of things

11

then you might be able to progress up to Level 10 and then go on further and further

up the chain. I can’t think of that damn word! It’s gone.

Don’t worry, it’ll come to you.

Yes, I’ll come out in a minute and I’ll say, ‘Yes, that’s what it was.’

So you’ve been here 20-odd years, so you must have really got something from it.

What’s turnover been like?

Turnover of staff?

Yes.

Not that high, actually. I was quite surprised. The people that have been here, I’ll

give you a good example. We had a young guy work here, his name was Tony

Dignan[?], and he started here when he was 16. He only just recently left, probably

about two years ago; (laughs) I mean, starting at 16, just imagine, he could have been

here for 34 years, could have retired. That’s a long time to be in – oh, no, it was

more than that, sorry; 44 years, 44 and 16 is 60 when I went to school – that’s a long

time to be in one job. He just decided that he wanted a change of pace and now

works for a company on Research Road in Pooraka. He’s doing very well. But yes,

in answer to your question: no, there’s not many people walk out the door. Not

many people got the sack.

There’s the old adage in this factory that if you stuff up you normally get three

warnings: you get one verbal, one written and then goodbye, see you later. So yes, I

honestly – probably in my time that I’ve been here for 20-odd years, probably seen,

especially when it was Simpson’s, I suppose I’ve seen probably – I don’t know,

pretty hard to say – four or 10 people walk out the door; just walk out the door, not

get the [sack]. Well, I’ve only seen three people get the sack: once when I was shop

steward two people decided they liked something that was in the factory and it didn’t

belong to them so they took it, and the other person was just being a silly boy, taking

time off when he was told not to because every year the same time he used to take the

day off. It was to do with a public holiday, I’ll let you work that one out – to do with

a public holiday and he was pre-warned, and I was the shop steward at the time and,

guess what, he took the day off and got sacked the next day.

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No, they’ve been pretty good, very good company. I’ve enjoyed working here and

I enjoy working here right up until 6th

May when they give me some cash to leave.

Thank you very much. (laughs)

How about the, we’ll call it the ‘ethnic composition’ of the workforce: has that

changed at all?

Yes, it has, actually. When I first started here, I would say the only ethnic type

people that were working here were Italians and Greeks and I think we had one

Indian guy working here. Now, I reckon that stayed like that right up until the time

Email took over, and then all of a sudden we started having one or two Asians start,

three or four Asians start, then all of a sudden that just seemed like every person they

were employing was Asian. It was incredible. But never had any problems with any

of them. They’re very good workers. In fact, (laughs) some of them are so damn

good they make some of the normal people look stupid. No, I don’t think there’s

anybody had any problem. We’ve got people out there on the factory floor at the

moment we got them from Taiwan, we got them from Thailand, got them from

Chine, we got one from Turkistan, we’ve got two from Russia. And we’ve got a

Pom, we’ve got a Scot, got a German, What other nationalities we got? Oh, we got

one from Sri Lanka. Trying to think where Nick comes from – Canada, I think he

comes from Canada. Montreal, that’s Canada, isn’t it? Yes, Canada. So we’ve got a

real international little field out there, and everybody gets on with everybody. They

all sit in their own little areas when you have lunch or your smoko, so yes, a good

little company to work for. (laughs) Very true, very good. I can’t think of anybody

else where they come from. Oh, hang on; yes, I can: got one from Malta as well. So

yes, forgot about Joe. That’s about it, I think.

Has language been a problem? Lots of those people – you know, Russian’s very

different from English.

No, I don’t believe it has been. If they don’t understand, in the case of the two

Russians – well, we were lucky: one of the Russians speaks very good English, so if

there is something not known – I just remembered, there’s Croatian and a Serbian out

there, too – so if one of the Russians didn’t understand he’d speak to him in his own

tongue. So no, basically all of the international-type people that start here can speak

fairly good English, you can hold a conversation with them. Some words they can’t

13

say; then again, us English people can’t say (laughs) the words sometimes. So no,

never had a problem. Never.

There aren’t any little tensions between people? You said we got Serbs and

Croats.

Peter, I think you get that doesn’t matter where you work. You work in the police

force you get the same thing. You get the odd one who might say the wrong word at

the wrong time or be a little bit silly in himself, and probably realises it two or three

days later. But no, I’ve never – hardly; I mean, you get the odd verbal bash, you

know, ‘You bloody stupid Asian, wouldn’t know what you’re bloody talking about’,

or, ‘You, you’re a stupid skip’ or just verbally; it doesn’t progress any further,

doesn’t go outside the factory. Soon as you walk through the door they can go out,

it’s like a game of football: shake hands and away they go. So yes; no, I’ve never

ever – – –. Oh, yes, I have once seen a stoush and that was between two Australian

guys. And that’s a long time ago, long, long time ago. And there’s a Welshman that

works here, too. They’re all coming out in my head. We’ve a real international little

field here.

How about the women, do they always a group of women?

Women that used to work here in my very early days were of the older class, like

they were all over-40s, I think they had one young girl working here and she was

about 18, 19. But yes, things have changed as far as women go, you’ve got to be

very, very careful around women because of the new laws and I know that some of

the guys have been pulled into the office for someone’s sexual harassment. They at

the time – you just think it’s funny, you know; at least just, ‘I’m only joking with

her’. But if she wants to take it a bit further of course the law’s there for the female

to take it a bit further. So yes, you’ve got to be a little bit on the careful side. Very,

very careful, actually. A woman sometimes (laughs) can come up and touch you but

if you go back and touch her you are the one that’s going to get in trouble, you know

what I mean? But the girls that are here now I have no problems with any of them.

They’re very good workers.

They fill roles within the company that aren’t – be careful how I say this – the jobs

that they do aren’t as heavy as what the men would do. That’s what brings a lot of

people undone sometimes. You’d say, ‘God, she’s getting the same money as me,

14

why can’t she do the same work as me?’ That happens a lot. You see a box on the

ground that weighs 15 kilos but this poor skinny woman, she can’t pick it up so the

guy’s got to pick it up. It’s pretty good, pretty good now. I don’t think there’s any

problems out there whatsoever – not with the females, anyway. Or the guys which I

haven’t seen, and I walk around through the factory in my role as the ..... co-ordinator

and storeman, material handler, forklift driver, so I get to see a fair bit if something’s

going to happen. But like I said, you don’t see nothing, Peter, nothing at all.

So your role as a shop steward: do you still fulfill that role?

No, I don’t, Peter. I pulled out of that after I lost faith or lost a little bit of faith in the

union, I suppose. I initially knew nothing about unions and I was put into a course

and I thought, ‘Jeez, is this how the unions live?’ I couldn’t believe some of the

stupid questions that were being dragged up at this so-called shop steward trainee-

type thing. I mean, I’m not a union-basher, I never will be; but gee, some people out

there they get so rattled with the union, and I thought, ‘Jeez, I don’t think I should be

doing this.’

But I got on reasonably well with all the managers here in my role as enterprise –

well, basically had to do a lot of the enterprise bargaining part of it. Like I said to

you initially, enterprise bargaining for the first three or four years while I was in was

very easy because there was a lot of things out there we knew that we were doing

wrong that we could fix up, and the company would give you one per cent or two per

cent in your wage increase. As a senior shop steward, sometimes the unions would

call a stop-work meeting; instead of the rest of the guys losing money I used to be the

only one, I used to go and represent them and just go down to the union meetings,

come back and feed them so they didn’t lose any money. That’s the way I just

thought it should have been operated and the company sort of appreciated it and by

the company appreciating it they actually paid me when I went to the union meetings.

So we actually didn’t lose any time, the guys didn’t lose any money, I went down and

found out the information, brought the information back, fed it back to the guys. The

manager at the time would give me 10 or 15 minutes to have a talk, have a bit of a

spiel.

Yes, we done a lot of good things as far as the enterprise bargaining went. We

went to a nine-day fortnight, which was pretty hard to get through at the time because

15

we were the only division that was going to try this nine-day fortnight, which means

that everybody had to work an extra half an hour a day and initially not get paid for it,

because that half an hour a day after it come to the tenth day you’d have your eight

hours saved. But it was so hard to push through because people used to believe that

that half an hour should have been paid at time and a half. It’s not the way it was

going to work so you just couldn’t get it through and it took ages. Then when we got

it through it worked reasonably well. The basic aim of having a nine-day fortnight

was to cut down the sick days, because everyone knew that on the tenth day they had

a day off, so yes, initially it worked very well. It cut down the sick days; it also cut

the machines running for an extra half an hour a day so they got more sub-assemblies

done. It worked very well, I was very pleased with it.

But for some unknown reason – I’m not sure if it was union, to this day I’m still

not sure if it was union-organised or not – but they didn’t want this nine-day

fortnight. They went back into the other, just like we are now, from 7 o’clock till

3.30 start. But yes, I’m not sure so I shouldn’t be really – – –. Oh, well, I can say it:

I have a feeling that the union had a bit of a pull-in and had a bit of a say, because

they had a feeling that they wanted Dudley Park and Beverley to do exactly the same

thing and of course in those days Dudley Park – and I even believe right up till now

that Dudley Park is one of those that’s got three or four unions on-site and they were

always having trouble. Always. So one union goes out, another union goes out and

all of a sudden there’s nobody working there. So I had enough and so I put my hand

up and said I didn’t want to be a shop steward any more, sort of spat the – – –.

So how long were you a shop steward?

About seven years. Like I said, seen through a lot of enterprise bargaining, and that

was really good. That was a big eye-opener because we actually took people off the

shop floor to be part of the enterprise bargaining, what they perceived or what they

wanted and how we worked with unions and how we worked with management. The

only time I’ve ever walked out of a meeting, when we had a guy from the union

whose name was Wayne somebody – I can’t think of his last name – and I thought,

‘God, how rude is this guy to the manager?’ He was just so abrupt and so rude; I

thought, ‘No, bugger that’, and I just got up and walked out. I remember getting

pulled aside by him later on – Wayne Hanson[?], his name was – pulled away and he

16

said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again.’ I said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘You’re sitting there

belittling the guy. The guy’s done nothing wrong.’ He said, ‘He’s the manager.’

That’s all he said: ‘He’s the manager.’ So after he’d spoken to me I went and seen

the guy who he belittled and I said, ‘I apologise.’ He said, ‘No, that’s standard

procedure from union delegates.’ And I thought, ‘God.’ I didn’t want anything to do

with it after that. It’s not the way I work; I wouldn’t have worked like that. I can

believe that you can trust – if you put your trust in people, and if they want to – – –.

Especially in the company organisation, you can put a lot of trust, I believe you can

put a lot of trust in people. The only time they’re going to pull the plug is if they get

told above, ‘Hey, listen, that’s not how we’re going to work. This is how we’re

going to do it’, bang.

Yes, shop steward was a good position, actually. I felt very comfortable being the

shop steward. You had a good group of people here. They weren’t scared to come

up and ask me; if I didn’t know the answer I would go and find out for them. That’s

what a shop steward’s supposed to do, I believe.

So how many unions were there then?

In here there was two. There was the Electrical Trades Union and then there was the

Amalgamated Metal Workers’ Union, so they were the two that were here. And the

Electrical Trades Union amalgamated or joined forces with the AWU, which is

Australian Workers’ Union, is what they’re covered by now. Yes, but we never had

any hassles. Once again, with having two unions on-site we never had any hassles.

They used to work with us. I can’t recall ever having a problem with that other union

at all ever. No, not once.

So you’re still a union man?

No, I’m not, actually. Part of the role when enterprise bargaining came in there was a

part there where if the company agreed for despatch and inwards goods stores people

not to be a member – did not have to be a member of the union, in other words what

the company wanted was two people at both ends of the factory, that if there was a

strike they could still load a truck, still receive goods in, and of course this was

passed. So I thought, ‘Well, might as well give myself a $5.10 pay increase and pull

out’ and got out of the union. But still if the union here goes on strike I normally just

out anyway, just go out with them; but it doesn’t mean to say – you don’t have to,

17

you don’t have to abide by the union. But if the guys here went on strike, nine times

out of 10 myself or the other end, we’d both go out too. We wasn’t there to ruffle

any feathers, not to stir anybody up, just because you weren’t in the union.

How often have there been strikes? What was the last one, what was the issue?

(laughs) Yes, good one. What was the last one? I can’t recall.

Might they average one a year –

Oh, no.

– one every three years?

You’d be lucky if you’d seen a strike here. Probably about every five years probably,

maybe. None of them are really bad. The most they’ve ever lost in the times that I

can recall here would probably be half a day. And normally if they did that on Friday

they go, ‘Yeah, let’s have an early minute, let’s go’, and they mightn’t even know

what they’re going out on them for but they do it. I’m just trying to think: I think the

very last one, the last one here was for – jeez, I can’t remember. I think the last one

was something to do with Patrick Stevedores where some guy got the sack and the

whole of Australia stopped.

Can’t help you on that.

Can’t help me? I think that was the last one. Somebody will remember it.

So it wasn’t a local issue; it was a – – –.

Yes, it was an outside issue where some guy – I’ve a feeling some guy thumped the

foreman or a foreman – I know one got the sack where they reckoned the other bloke

should have got the sack as well and they took the whole – the whole of Australia

virtually stopped, just for that one day. That was Patrick’s, I’m sure it was Patrick

Stevedores or something like that. But as far as strikes here, no. Might have a strike

meeting, might last an hour or something, but once again the people got paid, the

employers paid them. So it’s not really a strike if you’re getting paid, is it?

You started under Simpson’s there, Graham. Have there been any cultural

changes when it sort of moved to Email and since it’s gone to Electrolux?

Peter, I can tell you one thing about this place, about dishwashers: there has been a

culture in this factory from the day that I started and it’s still there today, where if

18

you go to other divisions they’re horrendous. You’ve got part of the factory that

wants to work to the system, another part of the factory doesn’t want to work to the

system and the rest don’t give a stuff. Here, the culture in this factory has been so

different and we know that it’s different when we get people in from another factory

and they’ll come over and work with us and say, ‘Jeez, this is good!’ You know?

Because everything, the culture in this factory from management down, right down to

the last person that works here, it’s a case of in the morning the general manager,

John Rutherford, or whoever it was, the managers then, will always walk through the

factory. ‘Good morning, Peter, good morning, good morning.’ Made you feel like

you were part of the team, always made you feel like part of it. Then you had the

supervisor’d come around every morning, probably spend two or three minutes

talking to you on the line while you’re working. The culture in this factory has been

incredible. You can ask anybody. Just go out on the factory floor now and just ask.

The culture, it is smooth, it just flows, there’s no hiccups, there’s no nothing. It’s a

very nice place to work in; very, very nice.

And the culture change, from the days of Simpson’s to Email and from Email to

Electrolux: I don’t believe it’s changed at all, I think it’s still the same, from the day

that I walked through the door to the day I walk out the door, it’s going to still be the

same. I can’t say – the culture is spot-on here.

So what have the managers been like? At the moment it seems to be very much a

skeleton staff.

Yes, at the moment, Peter, we’ve got John Rutherford, who’s the factory manager;

we’ve got Dougie Woodward out there who is a QA guy, because we need to have a

QA guy on-site; Rob Silvestri[?], who’s the development manager; and that’s it,

that’s as far as that big office out there goes. And each and all those individuals out

there, they’ll always come out on the factory floor. I mean, it’s not a snobby area.

You probably already understand that, as soon as you walk through the place, you

walk through the factory and, gee, guess what? You can look straight in the offices.

A lot of factories you can walk through, you can’t see nothing but a brick wall. Here

you can actually physically see people in there doing work – (laughs) I mean, some

people doing work, some people not. But yes, it’s pretty good. Been very good.

And manager-wise, gee, I can’t ever recall anybody being a bad manager.

19

They’re all bringing their new ideas with them, of course, and some of them you

hate, some of them you think, ‘What a waste of bloody time.’ So you progress and

go and do it and, guess what, two or three months down the track it’s gone ta-tas.

But, you know, it’s what an individual perceives that this is what should be done in

the factory. Main problem out there in that factory at the moment is cardboard, and

that’s the biggest pain in the butt. Cardboard. You get cardboard, cardboard,

cardboard. Fill up a 22-metre cubed Collex waste bin with cardboard every day,

every day. Somebody has to take it out. Our poor material handlers have to do it.

Yes, that’s a big bug, that’s a real pain in the butt, that thing. Cardboard, hate it.

(laughs) Absolutely hate it.

What can you do about it? Not much?

Well, when they initially went to VMI, which is vendor management inventory,

which is held over at Woodville and that’s how we draw all our stock in now, that

basically was going to stop a lot of cardboard coming in because what they were

going to do is they would decant it over there over on their site, send it in in our tubs.

But that would have been too hard to do. Even I would have probably bucked the

system a little bit. You know, if we got boxes of 30 of something coming in and

you’re doing 90 an hour, you’ve got to have four hours’ production worth on the line

and you’ve got to have four hours’ coming in, you can (laughs) understand why they

didn’t want to do it. So we end up doing it here. So yes, it’s good. Everything’s

good.

Going back to managers, do you get – managers, have they been sent through here

to train?

No, Peter.

Sometimes in some outfits they put a manager in somewhere for three years and

they pull him out and put another manager in.

All our managers that have been here, we’ve had one female when I first started,

Barbara Hall – gee, see how I’m good with these memories now – Barbara Hall, she

was here when I first started. She was here for a week. Next person in was Julian

....., who’s South African. All of these people come from a factory background. We

then had Jerry Quirk, who’d come from a ministerial background, he was a minister,

a layman. Went to a chap called David Hackett[?], he was another manager from

20

Toyota or Nissan. Then we had Mark Courser[?]. Mark Courser was the manager of

Dishlex in Bayswater because when Email brought out Dishlex – that’s how we make

Dishlex products here – he was the manager, I think he was, yes, he was the manager

at Bayswater and he was over here, and he initially seen the program go through from

progressing Dishlex into Simpson and Kelvinator and Westinghouse products. So

he’s seen all of that through. Then Electrolux decided that they needed to downsize a

few people, so they offered him another position within the company but I don’t think

he took it. And then now we’ve got John, John Rutherford, who used to be the

factory manager over at appliance motors over at Woodville, and of course when that

closed down John was a floating manager. But he always was in and around, in and

around the dishwasher factory for a while.

And then of course the last manager we had – oh, sorry, before John we had Eric

Sergei[?]. Eric was a Frenchman who’d come from the Electrolux site in France,

specifically came here. He was our manager, he then became our manager and

Beverley’s manager, he then progressed from that to being the CEO of the whole of

Electrolux. He’s a very, very witty man, very, very clever man. Very, very clever.

In fact, in the whole of the Electrolux organisation if you sit down and work it out

they are very clever – probably the reason why they’ve made so many billions of

dollars – because they’ll have one person, say like in yourself where you’re doing this

job, but you could be doing that job, so all of a sudden that person who’s doing that

job no longer works here and you’d pick up his job, so you’ve got two roles or three

roles.

From what I can understand from these guys out here in the office, they’re not laid

down with work. They just have a bit more put onto them. And of course if they find

that that’s a bit too hard for them they can drag somebody out off the production

floor, which they do every now and then, to give them a bit of a hand.

Doug made the comment – because he was involved in setting up this factory –

Yes, 1981. I would have loved to do that.

– interesting thing that everyone comes through the one front door.

Yes. You see, that’s where – the culture, that’s where you go back to the culture.

That’s where the culture starts, actually: every physical person can walk through the

same door. Doesn’t matter if you’re the general manager of Email, your name’s

21

Trevor Carroll and you come down from Sydney, you have to walk through the same

doors that the workers go through. That’s what I mean, that’s part of the culture.

Because you go to the other factories, there’s about 5,000 blowholes you can walk

through, so here there’s only one. And as they walk through they can also see

everybody in the reception or in the office area. Basically, anybody can walk in

through the production side here, walk up, help themselves to a glass of iced water or

make himself a coffee, you can do that any time so long as you’re not abusing the

system. I mean, you can walk off the line – say if you start at 7 o’clock here, you

walk off the line at 7.30, quarter to 8 and go and make yourself a cup of coffee, bring

it back to the line and drink it. Nobody says anything. It’s part of the culture, it’s the

way it is. But yes; no, it’s a great feeling to know that (laughs) everybody walks

through the same door, it is, it’s a good feeling, because you all feel on the same

level; and, like you said before, the culture, that’s what pat of the culture is, I think.

That’s how it starts.

Was there a social club here?

Yes.

What did it do?

Oh, jeez.

Was it very active?

Yes, used to be, Peter, it used to be very active. It used to have some shows. Used to

go out to dinners, they’d organise raffles for Easter, Christmas times you’d always

get something given to you as you walked out through the door. The social club was

whatever the social club made – I think it was only 50 cents or something a week to

join – the Beverley social club or the Simpson organisation used to match it, so if you

got $1,000 then they used to put in $1,000. So yes, it was pretty good. But getting to

a stage where you’re only paying 50 cents a week, so it’s $26 a year, it’s not a whole

pile of money, but because the Simpson organisation or Simpson part of it was

putting in – matching it, it was $52 a year, so it was pretty good money.

Some of the shows they done was like in my days, the younger days, they used to

do a movie and a meal deal, you know, just like they do now. Been to Globe Derby a

couple of times. Yes, just a general outing[?] and anybody could go if you were a

22

member and just about everybody was a member in those days, including the staff.

They used to pay yearly where we would pay only on a weekly – come out of our

wages on a weekly basis.

The Simpson organisation have a senior social club, and it’s for people that have

been with the organisation 15 years and more, and that was completely run by

Simpson’s. That’s Mr Simpson used to support them financially. And from I’ve seen

– I never ever joined because I was too busy playing golf or too busy playing 10-pin

bowling, so I never – it’s a waste of time getting in here to do something on a

weekend. I can’t think of the damn name of that one, either – I’m having a senior’s

moment here! Can’t think what it was called. Doug will tell you, because he’s a

member of it.

No worries there, Graham. You’re married. Does your wife identify with the

company at all? Some of these social events, presumably you’d bring – – –.

My wife passed away three years ago on 17th

April, three years ago, she had a

massive heart attack. But prior to that, yes, we used to go out.

I guess what I’m getting at, does the company include the family?

Yes, used to get involved. You always used to take your partners or were always

strongly asked to be partner-orientated, so to make the females feel more involved in

what was going on. And there’s another good thing, another part of the culture: you

were quite entitled to bring your wife into the factory as long as she had the

appropriate footwear on – can’t wear high-heel stilettos, you can’t wear thongs, it

must be closed-in shoes type thing – and you stay within a designated area. You

could take your wife through the whole area and say, ‘Now, this is where I work,

love’, and she can look and say, ‘Is that all you do all day?’ or, ‘Gee, how do you do

that?’ type thing. But no, that was always asked if your wife was sitting out in the

car: ‘Oh, bring her in just to show her around.’ It was nothing in those days to show

people around because this factory here had so many people go through it as guides,

as tour guides. It used to scare you, actually, used to see a whole pile of these

business-type people coming through in suits, say, ‘Gee, what’s happening to

Simpson’s? Are we closing or something?’ And these’d be sales reps from another

site, from places like Betta Electrical, Keith Bowden or RetraVision or Radio

23

Rentals, and they’d continually walk around just watching us build, watching people

making dishwashers.

Yes, family-orientated: yes they were, they were very strongly family-orientated.

Very, very strong. In fact, they were so strong even at Christmastime when you’d go

around, they’d give you a present for you and a present for your partner. So always

make them feel like part of the team.

Might just close it off there for the moment. Got some more questions for you.

I was just thinking, I should be way up the other end because I reckon the phone up

there be ringing its you-know-what off.

Give us another couple of minutes there, Graham, but I’ll need to put in another

little card.

Been talking that long, have we?

END OF DISK 1: DISK 2

This is disk number two of an interview with Graham Fraser, Peter Donovan

interviewing Graham at Dudley Park –

Regency Park.

– Regency Park, date being 26th

April 2007. An easy one here, Graham, so not

much longer: how have the dishwashers changed in the time you’ve been here?

Have they changed?

Dishwashers?

Yes.

Yes. In my days when I was here, basically every dishwasher that went down was

exactly the same. Exactly the same. I mean, there was just one type of dishwasher,

bang, away it went through. And they were all cosmetic changes because in those

days we only had one panel control, basically one panel control, and all we did is just

change or put extra buttons in or take buttons out, put a rotary timer in and those type

of things. And that was probably like that for about – could be wrong here, trying to

think of when I started – probably about eight years like that for. We’d make a

specific machine for a company like Myer’s, make a specific machine for Grace

Brothers, make a specific machine for RetraVision – I mean, (laughs) they were all

exactly the same machine, they were exactly the same machine, only one was called a

24

‘Riviera’, one was called ‘Nada’[?] and the other one might have been called just an

‘860-DW’. But they were exactly the same, just a cosmetic change because Myer’s

wanted a machine made for Myer’s and called ‘Myer’s’, so they went ahead and

made them, that was Mr Simpson, what he done.

As far as changing of the machines: yes, gee, have we changed! We basically

make – in those days, we’d probably make 35 to 40 different models. But

remembering what I’ve just told you, we could make an 860, but an 860 could be

eight different models, even though it’s exactly the same machine. There’s no

difference; all it is is just cosmetic. So that gives you some idea. And today we only

make 14 machines, and of those 14 machines there’s six are identical, the only

difference is that one will be white, have a white door, and one will have a stainless

steel door, one will have a grey controller with a stainless steel door, one will have a

white door – I’ve already said that. So that’s the six. So yes, there has been a fair bit

of change. They’ve compacted it up so the market out there now, they don’t get so

confused. They’d see eight different machines on the shop floor; nowadays all they

have to do is look at six. Say, ‘Oh, excuse me, sir, does that come in white?’ or

‘Does that come in stainless?’ And they can turn around and say, ‘Yes, it does.’

And the beauty about – this is some of the changes that’s happened within this

factory is that our strike rate is 99 per cent. So if you were to walk into Radio Rentals

right now, you’d say, ‘I’m after a Dishlex 302-WJ white, I want it delivered

tomorrow’, bloke get on the phone, bang, and it’s delivered tomorrow because it’s

sitting in the store. It’s sitting either in their store or it’s sitting in our national

warehouse. And that’s guaranteed. That is probably one of the great, best things

that’s ever happened in the dishwasher or in the whitegoods industry, because we’re

not the only ones who do it; Beverley and the other sites do it also, you see. There’s

nothing worse than when you walk into a shop and you say, ‘Oh, I’ll have that 302.’

‘Oh, hang on, sir, I’ll find out for you.’ Come back and say, ‘Oh, do you mind

waiting three weeks?’ Guess where you’re going? Fisher and Paykel. There’s a sale

on. That’s one of the greatest things they’ve ever done is their strike rate, and how

they achieve that is by having, instead of having 100 machines in the warehouse they

have 200 machines in the warehouse. They have a cut-off period where as soon as it

gets down to 60, flag’s shown, it’s like a Kanban card, flag is shown on there, bang,

25

we need 140 machines up there. So that 140 machines will get made here, straight

away, made, bang, straight up there. We only make what the market demand.

In the old days – jeez, Peter – we could have 1,000 850s down there because they

were so slow-moving, you could have 1,000 of them and every time you get in

trouble, ‘Oh, just make 850s, make 850s.’ Got to a situation where you got to a stage,

like I said, you got 1,000–1,200 bloody 850s down there. They’d sit there for three

months and they can’t get rid of them, so then we’d ring up Keith Bowden: ‘Here, do

you want to buy 140-odd machines at such-and-such a dollar?’ So of course he’d buy

them. But yes, things have changed in that aspect, the strike rate. One of the best

things that ever – – –.

I don’t know where they got the idea from. I think it might have actually come

from Mark Courser, the Dishlex man. I’m not 100 per cent sure on that. But yes, I

remember them pushing up 99 percent. ‘Jeez, how in the hell are you going to do

that?’ Because you go out and have a look in our factory now, because we have to

build out to the material that we’ve got left, so we’re just building whatever, all right?

So if anybody wants anything that’s made in Australia, now’s the time to (laughs)

jump on the boat and get it, on 26th

April 2007, because on 4th

May is our last model

will be going down the line. So it should be a sad day for a lot of people.

In terms of the shop floor out there, has that changed much?

Shop floor?

Yes, in just the equipment and stuff.

The way the lines have developed?

Yes.

Yes, they have, Peter, actually. They’ve literally, from the times that I’ve been here,

from the time when I first started, they’ve literally gutted it and rebuilt, and the

reason why they rebuilt is so they can get more machines out. Like I said, when I

first started here, they were lucky to do 20-25 an hour. They can quite easily make

now between 60 and 80 an hour, quite easily, very, very easily. And I think they

even got up to a target once where it was about 90-odd an hour. But the quicker you

go the more mistakes there are, even though you’re having people check on people,

check on people, check on people, so they’ve got to be a little bit worried and they’ve

26

got to be a little bit smart in the head, so I think they’ve worked out a figure of

around about 640, 650 seems to be a nice figure for them, because your sales aren’t

640, 650 a day; they’re probably about 300 a day if you’re lucky. It’s normally two

or three 44-foot containers, which hold 154 units at a time, so give you some idea.

There’s 450-something, 462 machines. And then you’ve got your local and domestic

stuff that goes out.

But yes, assembly-wise they’ve made a lot – smoothed a lot of the lines out; in

other words, the lines are dead straight now instead of go to one side and then have a

machine get picked up, get put on another line and then go down another way.

Everything today is square. If you go out and have a look you’ll see cab line goes

down one line, ..... 100 metres, goes up to another line, the final assembly goes up for

probably about 50-odd metres, then they’ve got what they call a double loop so we

don’t have any empty spots on the carousel, because empty spots on the carousel

means down time for these double loops. What that means is that you’re always

picking up a machine, continually picking up a machine on the carousel. And of

course then it goes down to the packing area. So yes, everything’s virtually straight.

You don’t have to do any walking. When I first started here, gee, when I worked on

the door line, I had to walk – doesn’t sound very far, but I had to walk a distance of

10 feet. Doesn’t sound far, does it? But you do that 160, 180 times a day, go home

with calves built like Arnold Schwarzenegger. No, things have changed.

Another good one is the overhead. I don’t know if you’ve been outside, Peter,

have you?

Yes.

The overhead line where they have the liners being made? In the old days, that was

probably lucky to hold about 110. Holds about 218 up there, up in the air, so there’s

no need, they don’t have to wait any more for liners to come down. And then of

course by doing that they extended it, changed the way the heat tunnels where the .....

or insulation gets put on, sped that up, there’s another quick thing, and that runs about

five hours a day; in the old days that used to run for eight hours a day continuously,

going, going, going, so it saves a lot of time on that, too. And some of the parts that

they make inside that they used to make outside. They’ve got a couple of mighty big

presses, 30-odd tonne of presses, from Dishlex, which are up in the top right-hand

27

corner near maintenance, which make two panels. Yes, I don’t think there’s that

much more.

Oh, yes: where the packing area goes down they’ve now got probably about 10

chutes for the finished goods to go down; in the old days they had three, so the guy

that was unloading, using the ..... ....., he was continually like had to go back every

five minutes to make he could pick up so the lines didn’t get too congested. Now

what happens is the line’s full, just goes to the next line. Just have to work a bit

harder to unload it. And besides that, Peter, no. It’s about it, I think.

You suggested that you’re going to ‘take the money and run’ next week. Why?

Not many places, Peter, will give you X amount of dollars to leave the company.

Like I said before, I’m 56 years old so I own my own home, I have no debts

whatsoever, the company wish to give me some cash to leave them. I could probably

stay on quite easily, but I haven’t had a holiday for a long time. My wife and myself,

we had planned for myself to retire when I was about 58, 59, 60, around that area,

just now I’ve pulled the pin a bit earlier because Marg and myself – that’s my wife –

we were going to go all around Australia and just because Marg’s not here I’ve been

told by a lot of people that’s what I should do, go out and fulfill my dream – or our

dream, be doing it for two people. So that’s what I’m going to do. ..... ..... ..... ..... .....

and have a ball. I really am.

But I’ll settle down and I’ll get another job, and there’s plenty of work out there,

Peter. People say there’s no work around, they’re either stupid or can’t read, because

there’s heaps of jobs out there, there really is. The only problem is you can’t be

picky. Like in the old days when I was – and probably your younger days, you could

be a little bit picky in what you took because there was plenty of work out there.

Well, nowadays if you want a job – – –. I mean, I’m lucky: I work in logistics, I

understand Kanban, I’m computer literate – I’m trying to sell you a job, Pete.

(laughs) Yes, so I’m not scared at all, I truly am not. I can go and get 30 hours in the

fruit and veg market up Pooraka, may only give me 25 bucks an hour to sit on my

backside on a forklift. So that sounds like pretty good, doesn’t it? So I mean you

could go up there and earn, what’s that, 750 bucks for 30 hours’ work behind the

stacks.

Do you have any particular roles outside the company?

28

Any roles? Yes, I do.

What do you do?

I do 10 pin bowling, above average in tenpin bowling. I’ve been a president of a

league, at the moment I’m a vice-president of a big AMFlite 10 pin bowling league,

which bowls at Norwood Bowl on Tuesday nights, there’s 96-odd people in there, the

average age is around about 45, vice-president in that league. It’s very good. You

get some good roles organising shows and things that we can do and things that we

can raffle. I used to work part-time in a bowling centre as a spruiker with a

microphone in my mouth on a Saturday night, used to give people hard times if they

threw a gutter ball. I’m sure that if I said, ‘There’s a colour pin on lane 23’ you

probably heard it if you’re listening to this in a couple of years’ time, and say, ‘Is that

that mongrel?’ (laughs) Yes, I used to embarrass people, I used to get away with it

quite easily. There’s certain ways you can do it and certain ways you can’t do it.

The other roles I’ve been is I’ve been president of the social club here, I’ve been

vice-president of the social club here at one stage, that’s when we were going through

a bad period and I thought I could lift it out and if people wanted too much out of the

social club we couldn’t get enough money, we could put on shows but they’d have to

ask them to put in some money at the same time and they didn’t want to do that, so

that sort of hurt a bit. Besides that, Peter, no.

Oh, a bit of golf, love my golf. I’m not a club captain yet, but I will be one day –

probably 96, one foot in the grave.

So what’s the club?

The club is Electrolux, which is Electrolux Golf Club. Used to be known as the

Simpson Golf Club, it’s what they call a group four, and there’s something like 56

members, I think there’s 56. And of the Electrolux part of it there would probably

only be about 20 people now that actually work for Electrolux; all the rest are

vendors, like we’ve got people outside that supply us goods we find out they play

golf and they come along and join. They get an official handicap. And we play on

every golf course in South Australia, you name it, we play it. The only one – oh,

sorry, I should rephrase that – the only three we don’t play on is Grange, Riverside

and Kooyonga, all the rest we do. Yes, us little hackers aren’t allowed to be on those

..... (laughs)

29

One quick one before I let you go: you’ve taken time off to come in and chat with

us and that’s been terrific. So who’s doing your job at the moment, or it’s just

banking up on you?

The person who’s doing my job – well, no; actually, I don’t get left in the dark. We

were aware of this, John come and asked me probably last week sometime that would

I be interested in this openly speaking on the surrounds or what you’ve seen happen

over the period of time that you’ve been working here and I said, ‘No, let’s go for it.’

So my mate Hans, he’s another logistics controller and production controller, I’ve

just rung him about 10 minutes ago to say I’d be up there in 10 minutes, he’s actually

doing the job at the moment. So I’ll just go up there and tick a few things off and

print some more cards for him and keep him happy.

I’ve just been intrigued how people can just take a bit of time off and there’s

always somebody to fill in.

Well, that’s the good thing about Hans and myself: we work very well as a team, we

always have worked well as a team. He has been literally – because the guy is so

clever, he’s very clever in his job, he’s very clever in virtually everybody’s job, I

should say: he understands what’s got to happen, he plays right along the line, so you

he never ever falls off. Puts a lot of pressure on himself, gets very stressed out, but

he’s going to hang around for another six or eight months, he’s going across to

Beverley, so I wish him good luck. But yes, he’s been a great guy to work for. I

hope you listen to this, Hans.

Righto, Graham. Well, I will let you get back to –

Back to the old grind.

– for the last week.

Yes. We’ve got five days left, so it’s not long.

Yes. So thank you very much for that.

Not a problem at all. Thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW.