Empire Rubber trial over  THE judge presiding over a Supreme
Court trial seeking redundancy pay for hundreds of former Empire
Rubber Bendigo workers has retired to consider his verdict.  The
hearing before Justice Sloss was scheduled to run for five days
in October in the Supreme Court of Victoria between Fitzgerald
and Humphris,  as trustees for the former employees of Huon
Corporation (owner of  Empire Rubber) versus CBL Insurance.  But
the hearing was expanded and actually ran for 12 days because of
the amount of witnesses and evidence, said National Union of
Workers assistant secretary Gary Maas.  After the collapse of
Empire Rubber in 2006, owned by Huon Corporation, employees were
owed about $19.1 million in entitlements.  Since then $14.1m
had been paid but members were still owed the remaining 30 per
cent in entitlements, Mr Maas said - about $5 million for 300
former Bendigo and Frankston employees.  The hearing finished on
25 October and the judge would hand down his judgment once he
had considered