Brian Rudman: Two-fingered salute answer to holiday surcharge

Today I'm off to lunch at an excellent neighbourhood restaurant that proudly proclaims it does NOT rip customers off by inflicting a public holiday surcharge.

By rights I guess I should be whispering its name out loud ... but, sorry, you'll have to find it on your own. I'm selfish enough not to want to get knocked over in the rush.

If the past year is anything to go by, most Aucklanders will respond to the "hospitality" trade's public holiday wallet-gouging today with a good old fashioned two-fingered salute and stay home.

Which, of course, will leave punters and traders alike unhappy.

The widespread 15-20 per cent surcharge was introduced just over a year ago in revenge for the reform of the Holidays Act, which increased wages on a public holiday from normal time to time and a half plus a day in lieu. It applied across the board, but it was the wining and dining industry that immediately cried poor. The odd service station and ice cream vendor has tried to jump on the band wagon, but in general, other retailers built it into their overall costs and carried on. Which is what you would have thought the food trade would have done too. After all, wouldn't you have thought that on a day when most of us are on holiday, looking for ways to entertain ourselves, we'd be targeted by restaurants and bars as perfect fodder for their businesses.

Instead, we're being treated as a pain in the proverbial. A survey of Hospitality Association members last February revealed that 80.5 per cent felt the wage reforms were having a negative or extremely negative impact on their businesses. This was perhaps not surprising given that 66.5 per cent had reacted by closing on a public holiday. That seems a sure way to guarantee a negative impact on one's business.

I'm not sure how they came up with the figure of 51.5 per cent of the public being positive or extremely positive about the surcharge. They never asked me, nor the potential customers who stayed away - either because of the surcharge or because they couldn't find a place to eat because two-thirds of businesses had shut up shop for the day.

I eat out regularly and support the meagre holiday pay top-up the reforms have delivered. But I do object to being used as a pawn in the industry's battles with government over paying their staff a living wage. It can hardly be good for staff morale either, being blamed on every menu for a tax on the bill.

The reasonable approach would be for restaurateurs to add the holiday pay into all the other running costs of the business and average it out over the year. With 11 annual public holidays on the books, doesn't that make more sense? 

Talking political battles, since writing Friday's column about the Employers and Manufacturers Association's planned pro-roads election campaign, it's been pointed out to me I was too conservative - as always - in my estimate of the budgeted costs. I said $150,000. Sources close to the action are talking $200,000 plus.

Finally, the saga of the naming of the little road in Parnell. Following my last chapter on it, a chap with an American accent suggested if we were short of street names, to try the Chicago phone book, it has thousands we've never even heard of. Also, Parnell historian extraordinaire Rendell McIntosh points out that if the front-running name of Henry Niccol is tarnished by the carryings-on of his womanising son of the same name, then there's always another descendant to consider, Dame Sister Mary Leo, the famous singing teacher.

While on the subject, in my first piece on this issue I summarised the reactions of local politicians to the Auckland City Council's decision to drop Harold Goodman Place in favour of Henry Niccol Place. The quotes I used came from the East and Bays Courier.