Businesses say no to summit's nine-day plan

John Key was upbeat in Parliament yesterday despite Opposition attacks on the nine-day fortnight and cycleway ideas. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The nine-day fortnight is being shunned by businesses, but Prime Minister John Key says this could be a sign of "success".

An Auckland manufacturing firm is believed to be among the "one or two" businesses that have shown interest, and workers there will today finish voting on whether to drop a day to save jobs.

Mr Key said the lack of interest in the scheme - the first idea from the Job Summit to become a reality - was not a problem.

"My view of success is not when thousands of companies are on it. Success may well be if nobody uses it because that means businesses are continuing to be able to employ their employees for the full week's work."

Labour leader Phil Goff said the national cycleway and the nine-day fortnight were the major ideas to come from the Job Summit and National "are back-pedalling on one and the wheels seem to have come off the other".

The nine-day fortnight scheme starts on Friday and runs for 18 months.

Mr Key has said he knows of "one or two" companies interested.

Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little - also the Labour Party President - said Mr Key's affirmation that the scheme would be a success if no one took it up "is an interesting line but it doesn't square with reality".

"There are companies out there that would have considered it but what's in it for them is too little."

Mr Little said workers across different shifts at the Auckland firm were voting yesterday and today on the proposition. He also knew of another Auckland firm in the manufacturing sector that had expressed interest.

Mr Little said the two companies were the only ones interested in the scheme out of six he spoke to last week.

Under the scheme, the Government will subsidise wages of the workers with a minimum wage level "allowance" of $62.50 to cover part of the day - based on $12.50 an hour for five hours.

Businesses can only sign up once for a maximum of six months and must employ over 100 people to be eligible.

Mr Goff said the scheme lost its appeal when the plan to use the tenth day for training was dropped.

He said it also needed to be made available to smaller businesses, and the lack of interest "was a disappointing result for an idea, that if implemented properly, could have been useful".

Initial estimates from the Job Summit said up to 70,000 workers could take up the scheme, but that was based on the Government paying half the lost wages.

Mr Key said progress was being made on the cycleway, which officials are now saying will be a network rather than the initial proposition of a single route from Kaitaia to Bluff.

He said there had been discussions about the summit proposal for a joint fund between between banks and the Government to provide funding to get firms through tough times, but he was unsure whether it would happen this year.