More than 80 staff likely to lose jobs at Origin Pacific

1.00pm

More than 80 Origin Pacific staff are likely to lose their jobs as the Nelson airline struggles to stay on its feet.

Sara Poore, a human resources consultant hired by Origin Pacific to manage redundancies, said at least a quarter of the 350 staff directly employed by the airline would be made redundant.

Of that, about 35 people had already indicated they would take voluntary redundancy, she said.

Origin announced it would have to slash jobs about a week ago, just before it was revealed the company owed $11.8 million to unsecured creditors.

Origin employs about 450 staff in Nelson, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, with about a third being contractors.

Ms Poore said consultants had spent the past two weeks discussing options with Origin Pacific staff throughout the country, and it was hoped that every worker would know their fate by Friday.

"Nobody has had anything firm yet, but we hope they'll know by the end of the week."

The company also expects to find out on Friday whether 50 of its major creditors have accepted a package designed to save it from receivership. Several of the largest creditors, including Air New Zealand, are supporting the deal, which will see them receive 40 cents in the dollar from Origin during the next five years.

Ms Poore said the company had acted "sensitively and responsibly" and had offered a fair redundancy package. Workers would be given four weeks' notice, plus four weeks' pay for the first year of work, and two weeks' pay for every year after that.

"The company has budgeted for this," Ms Poore said. She described the offer as "very generous".

Origin Pacific managing director Robert Inglis initially predicted "relatively small numbers" of people would be made redundant.

He said today that the numbers now identified were not set in stone, and he was working on several initiatives which could see staff being used and redundancy notices withdrawn.

"Things could change. I don't want to bandy numbers around until we're absolutely sure."

Ms Poore said flight attendants in Christchurch had been offered interviews with low-cost airline Pacific Blue. She was confident this would result in more voluntary redundancies, rather than forced job losses.

"There is this sort of thing happening. I'm sure we will see more voluntaries."

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union Nelson area organiser Alan Clarence said he thought staff would be surprised by the number of jobs being lost.

"Obviously, people won't be too happy about it."

He said people would be faced with making difficult decisions, such as whether to shift to another town to find work.

- NZPA