She often visited the Southland with her staff to bring employment-related roadshows that enabled Southlanders to keep up with the rapidly changing employment law landscape. Nicholls has been a strong advocate on issues Southlanders face, including lobbying for the continued operation of the New Zealand Aluminium Smelter at Tiwai Point after Rio Tinto announced in early 2020 its intentions of winding down operations by August 2021. She argued that it ought to remain open long enough to give the region time to develop alternative employment options in other industries. “The reality is there was no other viable demand for the electricity the smelter consumes, as there was insufficient infrastructure in place to transport the power further afield. Any such infrastructure will take five-to-eight years to complete.”
“There will be some happy people here in Te Anau. We have all been waiting for this news,” Kremer said. Te Anau and Fiordland have been the Southland regions arguably hardest hit by the pandemic and international border closures. “People have been hanging on, just waiting and waiting,” Kremer said. While thousands of tourists would go through Te Anau daily at peak season, that had fallen-off since borders were closed. Businesses had closed in the past 12 months, and the surviving ones had that time to adjust to how they could operate in the future, Kremer said. Otago Southland Employers’ Association chief executive Virginia Nicholls said having a clear timeline allowed Otago and Southland businesses to plan their next steps.
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The trust is one of the largest employers of minimum wage-workers in Invercargill with 650 employees across pay grades. While Ramsay knew the increase was coming and had prepared in advance, he could not deny the pressure it put on businesses like his. Theoretically, the trust s wage bill increased by $600,000 for every dollar increase it gave staff, he said. ILT businesses had already cut the costs it could have in other areas, Ramsay said. Te Anau Top 10 Holiday Park owner Brad Molloy is facing a similar challenge. The business has already gone through a round of redundancies in 2020 after border closures impacted visitor numbers.
There was also a trickle, not a flood, of tourism workers going into agriculture, Hunt said. Ardlussa arables farmer Chris Dillon said he would need contractors for harvesting in the coming weeks and then replanting after that. “You don t want your own equipment sitting idle,” he said. Dillon had a pilot doing seasonal work on his farm last year, but there were fewer kiwis available to fill those gaps this year, he said. He is the Southland Federated Farmers arable chairman. Flow on effects of the worker shortage meant farmers could have to consider selling equipment, he said. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said “given the risks in the world around us and uncertainty about the global roll-out of the vaccine, we can expect our borders to be impacted for much of this year.”