A contractor's decision to tell hundreds of traffic management workers they were out of a job via a text message has been labelled inappropriate by WA Premier Roger Cook.

Advanced Traffic Management (ATM), which is involved in some of the state's largest road projects, was placed into liquidation earlier this week.

Workers were notified by text message on Wednesday.

Mr Cook said the company's closure, and particularly that aspect, should have been handled better.

"People deserve the right to be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace," he said.

"To dismiss someone simply by sending them a text message is not appropriate. It's not on.

"Our thoughts are with those workers, I understand it must be a very distressing time for them at the moment."

Other companies step in

Mr Cook said he was pleased to hear many of the workers had since been re-employed on the same projects they had been contracted to by ATM.

"We hope that that redeployment will continue to happen, but obviously we're monitoring the situation," he told a media conference in Albany.

"We're very pleased that other companies have now been able to step into the breach and to secure them with that employment."

Many of ATM's former staff are represented by the CFMEU.

The union's state secretary Mick Buchan on Thursday called for the government to audit its arrangements with companies like ATM to ensure workers were not exposed to undue risk.

Mr Cook stopped short of committing to that audit, saying the government had a number of ways to have oversight on different industries.

"We don't want to be heavy-handed on that, but we want to ensure that they treat their workers right and they treat their customers right, so we'll continue that," he said.

The government met with the CFMEU on Friday to discuss a path forward.

'Watch this space': CFMEU

Speaking after the meeting, Mr Buchan said the discussion was positive, and officials had acknowledged the seriousness of issues facing the traffic management sector.

"We're in the process now of working together to come up with a method to ensure these traffic controllers receive industry rates of pay and conditions with permanent job security on these jobs moving forward," he told reporters.

"And even more than that, look at the jobs that are currently going to see that we can get measures put in place to get that back to a standard that should be acceptable."

Mr Buchan said he wanted to see the construction sector employ more traffic controllers directly, rather than the existing arrangement where many workers were on casual contracts .

"They're very positive discussions ... watch this space over the next couple of weeks," he said.

"We're confident we're going to see some positive changes."

'No respect' for workers

Former ATM worker Kirilli Saunders was one of the hundreds who were informed by text that they had been sacked.

"As soon as I got the message, I'm like, am I even going to be working tomorrow? Do I have a job? I have a family to support, I have myself to support," she said.

"Every single employee of ATM, even the office people, the admin people, they all got the same exact message."

Ms Saunders said she was shocked by the method workers were told they had lost their jobs.

"There's no respect, no consideration of how people are feeling," she said.

While Ms Saunders has been fortunate enough to find another job straight away, it is understood others were not so lucky.