Fisher & Paykel Appliances CEO John Bongard. Photo / Richard Robinson
The Fisher & Paykel closure has provided a brutal lesson in how regional economies are hit by job shocks.
Warnings for the wider Otago business community came immediately after Fisher & Paykel announced it was closing its Mosgiel factory.
Otago-Southland Employers Association chief executive Duncan Simpson, Dunedin Deputy
Mayor Syd Brown and Select Personnel managing director Karen Bardwell all provided warnings that suppliers to F&P might find the going tough in the immediate future.
Simpson said there was at least one significant Mosgiel supplier to F&P who would take a hit but there were many other smaller companies which supplied products and services to the appliance manufacturer.
"There is a lot more at stake than the 430 jobs announced."
Brown said it was too early to assess how wide the effects of the F&P closure would be but knew there would be other smaller firms hurting from the news.
Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little said the usual multiplier was that every manufacturing job supported four or five other jobs.
Using that calculation, up to 2000 Dunedin jobs could be affected in some way by the loss of the 430 workers at the Mosgiel factory.
The affected jobs would be across a wide range of industries, such as suppliers, cafes and cleaners.
Bardwell said Select Personnel would urge affected workers to register and make themselves available for employment as quickly as possible.
Dunedin, like the rest of the country, had a skill shortage and she believed a high percentage of the workers would be keenly sought after.
Little said he hoped that it was as easy to find new jobs for the redundant workers as people had been saying.
"The difference this time is that the manufacturing sector is under pressure. Whether they find manufacturing jobs is open to question. They have a reasonably good contract at F&P and are unlikelyto find work that remunerates as wellas that."
The workers had an eight-and-two redundancy agreement, with eight weeks paid for the first year of employment and two weeks for every following year up to 20 years and 57 weeks' pay, he said.
Workers were paid a further $700 for every year above 20 they had worked at the plant.
- OTAGO DAILY TIMES
