Government cocktail gets beneficiaries back to work

Steve Maharey gets a lesson from Karai Wall. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

Employment Minister Steve Maharey threw a vodka bottle around yesterday to help people off the dole into filling vacancies in Auckland's burgeoning bars and cafes.

Actually it was a non-breakable training bottle and the 18 beneficiaries who started last month at the Lion Nathan School of Business were kept in their classroom across the road when the minister came visiting.

But the business audience who came to watch him make cocktails with experts at Lion's Khyber Pass brewery heard that the Government would pay for six months of in-work support as well as pre-work training for beneficiaries picked to fill vacancies in industries with skill shortages.

The Lion Nathan course for bartenders, baristas and waiting staff is the 10th partnership so far, following others with the rest of the hospitality industry, retailers, road carriers, bus companies, rail track maintenance, road building, plumbers and the meat industry.

The ninth partnership, also signed this month with the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, aims to help sole parents from the domestic purposes benefit into jobs with flexible hours and conditions.

Lion Nathan School of Business managing director Mo Cooper said his school guaranteed jobs for all its trainees, now numbering about 1200 New Zealanders plus 300 international students.

A former freezing worker, he was made redundant twice, first when Fortex's Dunedin meatworks closed and when the Tomoana works closed in Hastings. He moved to Auckland to work as a forklift driver at the Khyber Pass brewery, then worked his way up through a master's degree in business and technology, sponsored by the company, through distance learning at the University of New South Wales.

He became the brewery's training manager, then started the School of Business three years ago to serve outside clients in the hospitality industry and in manufacturing, as well as the brewery.