KEY POINTS:
Leila Harre's piece in defence of shop workers seemed to overlook a couple of critical factors.
Unfortunately, some occupations are going to be closer to the minimum wage than others, and without some form of job evaluation and ranking, this argument is always going to surface. Some unionists shout louder and have a greater ability to inconvenience the general public than others.
Pay rates ideally should be within a range dictated by many factors, including the amount of time spent getting qualified (and competent), the inherent danger of the job, antisocial hours, responsibility for the safety of others, the ability to generate extra income by bonuses or extra hours, supply and demand, integrity and the handling of cash. Or the physical demands of strength and agility, and the number of hours required per week. The list goes on.
Mostly, brain surgeons, police, prison staff, dentists, and so on are going to outrank shop assistants, road sweepers and office cleaners. That does not in any way decry the necessity or value of these jobs, but there is a hierarchy, whether we like it or not.
Opening hours should ideally be dictated by the business owner. But in shopping malls, the demands are set by the mall owners, not the shop or business owners, and this is an area that so far has escaped unscathed. It may well be one of the root causes for the loss of jobs in the clothing and footwear industries, for example.
Let's be realistic. Long working hours in New Zealand and productivity are not related. Long working hours are demanded by the shopping malls, and if a business is required to be open from 9am to midnight, then it has to pay wages for all staff for this time, regardless of the takings.
Any analysis of daily shop turnover over a year, particularly in the clothing or footwear industries, will show that on some days, it wasn't worth opening at all, and therefore the business would have made a substantial loss. Those losses can only be made up by some good trading days.
Using that analysis, shop owners could make the decision to close on Mondays for example, like many restaurants, except on the approach to Christmas or holiday times.
But can they close? The malls say "no". Can they close at 6pm if their figures show that opening until midnight is a waste of money? The malls say "no".
The malls also often have ratchet rent clauses linked to turnover (not profit), and having ratcheted them up, the mall owners then develop a mall further up the road and take much of the trade with them. Add to that compulsory six-figure refits after six years, and the shop owner is on a hiding to nothing, having to bank perhaps $300 a week just to pay for a refit that they probably don't want anyway.
What can the shopkeeper do? Probably dump all New Zealand-made goods - where manufacturers are also forced to pay for ACC levies, maternity leave, sick pay, over the top Occupational Safety and Health requirements and for an extra week's holiday. Not to mention a culture that virtually denies the employer the right to dismiss useless, unreliable staff.
So, the shopkeeper imports from low-cost countries and in many cases, the goods for sale to the consumer are no cheaper and no better than the New Zealand-made goods were. The difference is that the shopkeeper has a margin to pay the costs of running the business.
The cutters, pattern makers, sewing machinists and other technical staff leave the clothing trade for good. Many no doubt end up on some form of benefit.
When it comes to productivity, particularly in manufacturing, the majority of local businesses are totally untrained in the techniques of real productivity improvement. Accountants and advisers abound, but few really understand true product costing and production planning. And virtually none understand labour and management cost control, material utilisation and performance training - probably because tertiary institutes no longer offer adequate training in these areas.
They prefer to specialise in the popular bums-on-seats courses, catering for the dreams of wannabe designers instead of offering the technical and managerial skills required to survive in business.
Opening at Easter is not a major problem. Let the shop owners decide when to open and then maybe they will have extra money to pay their staff. But if people can't get all their shopping done between 9am and 7pm, then there is something wrong somewhere, and everyone deserves at least one day off a week. Even the owner of a small business.
* Ray Green is a former head of management services at Bendon and operations manager for Specialty Brands (Rodd & Gunn/Logan). He is also a qualified productivity specialist for the sewn products trades - with 30 years experience, including several years tutoring AIT/AUT fashion technology courses.
