Adapting to an altered future

Once Wellsford's biggest employer, Irwins may now not continue past Christmas. Photo /Richard Robinson

Global recession may be receding but the lives of many New Zealanders have changed for good - or worse. In a series beginning today, Simon Collins looks at what happens when a small town's biggest employer slashes staff.

After knocking on the door of every potential employer in Wellsford and quite a few in Warkworth, Glen is getting desperate.

"I've applied to butcher's shops, cafes, gas stations, Four Squares," he says in the modest house where he boards on the main road northwards out of Wellsford.

"I'm going to stand out here and say 'Job Wanted'. I've got the paint. I saw a guy down in Christchurch did it and got a job as a baker."

But, even after two previous redundancies in his 53 years, there is still a feeling of shame which has stopped him actually taking a sign out in public or having his surname quoted. Instead, alone at home most of the day, he stews.

"I mow the lawn and do the washing and cook dinner and say I'm bored. You do get disillusioned with life."

Six months after Glen and 104 others were laid off from Irwin Industrial Tools, a saw factory that was once Wellsford's biggest employer, this town of 1670 people is still hurting.

Unemployment benefits listed at the nearest Work and Income office in Warkworth leapt nine-fold in the year to June, from 26 to 228.

Local businesses are being squeezed. Glenn Wetherill's 15-year-old tyre business has just gone into liquidation and passed to a national chain, with staff cut from four to two. "That redundancy [Irwins] had a fair bit to do with it," he says.

The saw factory that was founded by Richard Izard in 1980 was once a Kiwi success story. At its peak with 465 employees, it supplied 40 per cent of the world's saw-blade market.

But manager Michael Kelly says it has struggled for six years against competition from China. It now employs just 56 people and will decide this month whether it can continue beyond Christmas.

Although Izard sold out to American owners in 1994, redundant workers all describe a "family" culture. Kelly himself came to Irwins 20 years ago as a shop-floor fitter and turner.

His human resources manager, Melissa Watts, has been there 15 years and had to lay off her aunt's partner, 53-year-old electrician Riki Williams. "We've had generations working here - parents and children, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews," she says.

Shannon Livingstone of Wellsford social agency Te Korowai Aroha o Ngati Whatua says there was "quite a peak of violence at the time of the closure". Her agency helped 33 redundant workers with various needs including food parcels and budgeting.

Six months on, the good news is that of the 98 redundant workers we can account for, 54 have found work for at least 20 hours a week. Another 43 are working less than 20 hours or not at all. One died of an aneurysm a few days after being made redundant. Seven cannot be traced.

Young people are faring relatively well, with 11 of the 19 who were under-30 when they lost their jobs finding new work.

Even more of those in their 30s and 40s - 26 out of 41 - are working. With children and/or mortgages, they simply had to pull out all stops.

Glen, who began this story, wishes he had moved as quickly as his neighbours, a couple in their 40s who both lost their jobs. "He went out two days before we got made redundant to a plastics company in Warkworth. He got a call two weeks later - someone had left, so he took the job. Then they wanted someone to help, so his wife got a part-time job."

Fatima Shanobi, 37, who came here from Zimbabwe in 2000 with her husband and now has three children, got a job within a week by filling in a form at a Warkworth petrol station. She works the night shift, 10pm to 6.30am, sharing childcare with her husband who works days as a mechanic.

In Glen's 50-plus age group fewer people have found jobs, only 13 out of 32. Debbie Holt was unemployed for three months and applied for 10 jobs before getting a shelf-stacking job 30 hours a week as a "last resort" at Warkworth's New World.

"I couldn't sleep properly at night. When we were down to our last $300, I went in on the Sunday and filled in the form. They gave me a ring on the Monday."

The job pays only $12.50 an hour, and she and her husband are hurting even though he still has full-time work. "We used to go out to the beach and go fishing with my brother-in-law every weekend. That's all stopped. It's had to."

John Peeni, 55, and Barbara Penerata have found jobs at a Dargaville meatworks, and Louise Olliver, in her early 60s, is in a kumara packhouse.

Iri Brown, 65 next month, had worked for IHC for 18 years, initially as a volunteer and then part-time, during her 22 years at Irwins. When the Irwins job went, IHC took her on full-time looking after disabled clients.

"It's less income, much less," she says. "But I love working with these guys."

Forty-five of the 54 people in work have stayed in the Rodney/Kaipara area, commuting to new jobs between Whangarei and Auckland. Four have moved elsewhere in New Zealand and five to Australia.

Melanie Korewha, 40, and her partner Malcolm Lancaster, 50, have joined Korewha's brother and sister at the Western Australian mining town of Tom Price. "There's heaps and heaps of jobs here," she says."For me as a casual I'm on A$20.80 ($25.20) an hour. At Irwins I was on just under $15."

But it has been a different story for many of the 43 redundant Irwins workers who are still out of work - even those, such as Marc Pritchard, 39, who drove to Lower Hutt in one unsuccessful bid for a petrol-pumping job.

"I'm willing to go anywhere, wherever there's work," he says.

He and his partner split up just before he lost his job. Since then he has been "between places". He slept in his car for two and a half weeks.

Three redundant workers are on accident compensation for work injuries sustained while they were still at Irwins. Another, a chronic asthmatic, is on a sickness benefit, and another is just starting to look for work after a bout with cancer.

Craig Barrow, 35, is an epileptic with a speech impediment who worked for 13 years at Irwins. He has knocked on doors in Wellsford and Kaiwaka, where he lives, but is still on the dole.

His mother, Vonnie Kennedy, says he is "not managing that well".

"He has come to see us [at Matakana] about three times since he got put off and we paid for the petrol. He just can't afford to go anywhere," she says. She and her husband, who turns 70 in January, are also helping to pay the mortgage for another son who has lost his job in the clothing industry. The son's wife, who had been caring for their two young children, is also now looking for work.

"We have put our lifestyle block at Matakana on the market. I never thought I'd get to nearly 70 and be in a position where I'd be asked to do that," says Kennedy.

However, not everyone is trying so hard for work.

For about a quarter of those still unemployed, redundancy has been a chance to rebalance their lives - some temporarily; others, including three of pension age, probably forever.

Daniel Watson, 27 and single, had two months' work with a flooring company but since then has been browsing on YouTube and "researching stuff related to cars" online. "I'm enjoying some time off," he says.

Paul McRae, 46, has three children and is still actively job-hunting, but redundancy after 11 years has let him "explore a few other options".

"We have a house and [two hectares]. I'm looking at what we could do with the land, perhaps herbal products," he says.

"I'm also a musician ... I'm looking at setting up our own recording studio, it's easy to do that on a computer these days."

Andrea Gough, 28, worked at Irwins for nine years when her husband Robert was a postie, but now that he's at a fisheries packhouse she can afford to stay home.

"I'm just being a mum for a while," she says. "I have a 10-year-old girl and a 4-year-old son and I've never really spent enough time with them."

Kathryn Lee, 59, has become a caregiver for her husband, who has stopped work for health reasons, and four grandchildren under 8 who have moved into the house with their father after a marriage break-up.

"When you have traumatised kids you put them first," she says. "I don't think we'll be ending up in the workforce."

On balance, there's no doubt the pain of redundancy for most of the Irwins workers outweighs the benefits for a few. Gerard Kok, 66, says everyone on his batchline was emotional when their co-ordinator gave them a group photo on their last day.

"In the first couple of days I couldn't look at it because I was starting to cry," he says. "Our group - you couldn't have any better. We sort of became brothers and sisters, you know."

Socially and economically, New Zealand has suffered a permanent loss. Disadvantaged workers such as Craig Barrow will find it hard to find another sympathetic employer.

Even Glen is struggling, caught in a poverty trap that has forced him to disconnect the landline and rely on a pre-pay cellphone. He can't afford a computer, or even the Herald, to search for jobs.

Just possibly New Zealand will be better off with Jasmine Bourne packing oysters, and Marny Jones making sandwiches for passing tourists, than having them make saw blades that can be made more cheaply in China.

Even in a severe recession, most of the redundant workers who really want to work have found it. Les Reeves, 56, was out of work for only two months until he found a job digging a new sewage tunnel under the North Shore.

"It's a bit hard," he admits.

"My advice is: just keep looking. I think there are jobs out there but you have to just keep looking."

STARTING AGAIN

LYNDA NOY AND GLENYS TATTON

For Lynda Noy and Glenys Tatton, redundancy from the Irwins factory has meant going back to the classroom. Noy, 61, is one of nine workers made redundant who are still unemployed but doing courses.

She used part of her redundancy pay to buy her first computer and is doing a computer course at the Te Hana Community Development Trust while living on her husband's income from truck driving.

"There's absolutely nothing from Whangarei down to Warkworth," she says. "I'm 61 now and I think age has a lot to do with it."

Tatton, 48, had three job interviews, competing against up to 60 other applicants, before finding work for 23 hours a week cooking at nights at the Maungaturoto Hotel. This leaves days for the computer course at Te Hana.

"I want an office job," she says. "I want to be able to go back to working days and a 40-hour week."

LYNETTE GUBB

Lynette Gubb, 51, who led the in-house union, was made redundant along with her son-in-law, Alec Ruka.

"It was very sad for some families, where both partners were made redundant," she says.

"I also feel sorry for the couples where one kept their job and the other didn't - one might feel their worth was better than the other."

MARNY JONES

Marny Jones, a member of the national under-25 bowling team, picked up one of half a dozen jobs that were offered by other local employers when they heard about the lay-offs. S

he started at Subway in Wellsford a week later, and transferred to Orewa last month so she could get weekends off for her sport.

"It's about the same pay [as Irwins]," she says. "I'm enjoying it."

JASMINE BOURNE

Jasmine Bourne, 28, found a job at the Biomarine oyster packhouse at Snells Beach three weeks after being laid off, through the Seek job search website.

The hourly pay is slightly less than at Irwins, she says, "but I make it up by the bonuses we get, so I don't make any less".

BAD NEWS MANAGED WITH CARE

Handling redundancies well is all about good communication, says a union involved in the Irwins redundancies. Katrina Vazey-Neilson, a Northland organiser for the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), says Irwins manager Michael Kelly told staff months in advance that redundancies might be necessary.

"People knew it was coming. They didn't know who, but their selection criteria were absolutely A-plus. They showed us everything they were doing as they went through, so if there were any mistakes there was the opportunity to correct that. A lot of people can learn from them."

Kelly and his human resources manager, Melissa Watts, worked with both the EPMU, representing about a third of the workforce, and a house union led by Lynette Gubb which had most of the rest.

Since becoming manager in 2006, Kelly had held staff meetings on the state of the business every three months. "In June [2008] I said to them obviously there was a softening of orders. I said things were going to get pretty tough, and warned them to take care on their spending."

"In September, the same again. In the next quarter the whistle was blown on the recession in the US. That meant we had to communicate at Christmas that we were in for a really tough year."

In February, he met the unions to discuss who would have to go based on skills and length of service. He had individual interviews with all 210 staff to check that the company's information on their qualifications and service was accurate.

This process also identified 20 people with "special needs" such as disabilities or old age.

"Some were let go early. Some we tried to refer to counselling. Melissa organised one person, a friend, to go and check on someone after the announcement."

The 105 redundancies were announced in late February, confirmed in early March, and most people left on April 3.

Watts and the office receptionist helped a lot of workers to write CVs. Work and Income staff posted two work brokers on site, ran seminars and helped people apply for the dole. Inland Revenue sent someone to help them get family assistance.

Kelly says another key decision was to "keep the media right out".

But ironically, publicity about the redundancies helped get jobs for several workers. Sandwich-makers Subway, Warkworth's New World supermarket, a timber yard and a paua farm all rang in offering jobs, which were posted on a noticeboard.