Nathan Hewett, Tammy Truscott, Simon Zacharko and Anthony Scowen had each worked at Holden’s Elizabeth plant for several years, but were shown the door after they completed electrical apprenticeships in early 2013.

Holden announced the closure of the Elizabeth plant in December of that year.

The ex-employees’ lawyer, Michael Ats, told InDaily they were seeking redundancy payments and payments in lieu of notice. The case will be heard in the Industrial Relations Court.

A spokesperson for Holden said that “each [employee] was made aware that there would be no guarantee of ongoing employment once their apprenticeships were completed”.

However, Joe Kane, of the Australian Workers’ Union, claimed the award under which the workers were originally employed had no forced redundancy provision, and that they should have been allowed to return to their production-line jobs after completing the apprenticeship.

Kane alleged that Holden relied on a contract the workers had signed at the beginning of their apprenticeships to justify the dismissals, instead of the award under which the workers were employed.

“The union wrote to the company asking [for] clarification on how employees could be put off a contract … without the backing of an industrial instrument [enterprise agreement],” he said.

“We’re arguing that’s illegal.

“Their tenure wasn’t broken … because they were [pre-existing] employees.”

Hypothetically, said Kane, had the workers been returned to the production line, they would have been eligible for sizeable redundancy payments following the announcement of the Elizabeth plant closure.

Ats said the workers were seeking payments for redundancy, and in lieu of notice, for their dismissal in early 2013 – but not seeking the significantly larger redundancy payments that had been offered to other Holden workers following the announcement.

However, he said: “They see significant unfairness in that, had the right thing occurred [they may have been eligible for the larger payments].”

Ats said the group’s case relied, in part, on the Training Act, which says pre-existing employment is not terminated by the completion of an apprenticeship alone.

“There’s a question about whether what took place fitted with those legislative obligations,” he told InDaily.

Ats added that whether or not the apprenticeship contracts constituted “fixed employment” was another important element in the case.

However, the company spokesperson said: “Holden maintains that it has acted lawfully at all times and is seeking to have the case dismissed.”

“[The workers] successfully completed their apprenticeships and left Holden well before the announcement in December 2013 regarding the ending of local manufacturing,” the spokesperson said.

In April, the carmaker applied to have the case against it dismissed because of a procedural complaint involving the late submission of paperwork – but the application was, itself, dismissed.

Kane said the case would be heard in the Industrial Relations Court in February 2017. He said Hewett, Truscott, Zacharko and Scowen did not wish to comment.