Fisher & Paykel first business to sign for nine-day fortnight

Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Fisher and Paykel is the first company to sign up to the nine-day working fortnight.

About 350 workers at the company have agreed to take part in the scheme.

Fisher & Paykel's Auckland refrigeration assembly workforce has agreed to a temporary 35-hour working week arrangement, running from April through until September.

The company says the six month arrangement will prevent what would have been approximately 60 redundancies.

Fisher and Paykel has negotiated the scheme with the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union.

Under the agreement, employees will work a 35 hour week. This will be supplemented with an additional 3.5 hours pay, consisting of the Government nine-day working fortnight scheme and an equivalent Company contribution.

The remaining 1.5 hours per week may be taken as paid leave to ensure continuity of wage levels.

As part of the scheme, employees will attend a Company funded in-house up-skilling training programme for 3.5 hours each fortnight.

Prime Minister John Key said he was "pleased" Fisher and Paykel had taken up the scheme.

EPMU national secretary Andrew Little said making sure workers received an employer "top-up" was the key to agreeing to the scheme.

"As we said from the outset, to make the nine day fortnight work we need employers to top it up and Fisher & Paykel Appliances have come to the table on that. It shows how important it is for employers and unions to work together in the face of the recession," Mr Little said.

Fisher and Paykel CEO and managing director John Bongard said situation has come about by the recent decline of global demand, combined with entering our traditional off peak manufacturing winter season.

Mr Bongard said it was "exceptional times" and it was pleasing to retain normal staffing levels through a combination of the Government nine-day fortnight subsidy, assistance from our employees and the EPMU, along with a contribution from the Company.

Fisher and Paykel is believed to be among the "one or two" businesses that have shown interest.

Prime Minister John Key yesterday 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 yesterday, prior to today's Fisher & Paykel announcement, that 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.

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.