Graveyard shifts 'start of better things'

Deon Thuynsma is working several shifts a week pumping petrol. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Switching from management to pumping petrol is not everyone's ideal career move, but Deon Thuynsma is determined to stay upbeat about it.

"My two graveyard shifts are the start of better things to come," he wrote to "Your Views" at nzherald.co.nz/jobs.

"From the day I was made redundant I decided to stay positive and take something positive from things that happen every day."

Mr Thuynsma, 53, worked in community development and social housing in South Africa before coming to New Zealand in 2000.

From 2001 until last year he was Rodney District Council's community facilities manager.

But the council contracted the job out to Fulton Hogan last December, making Mr Thuynsma and 11 others redundant a week before Christmas.

He has applied for every job he can find. "There are quite a few jobs going round at the moment in the property market," he says. "But you are competing against a lot of people."

At Housing NZ and other parts of the state sector, he has found himself up against people being laid off from elsewhere in the Government.

Local government jobs have been scarce because of the looming merger of Auckland's eight councils into one Super City.

"I've even applied for cleaner jobs, bus driver jobs, anything that's available here in the shops, anything that I can do," he says.

He can't get the dole because his partner works fulltime, but the drastic cut in their income has forced them to move to a cheaper house and virtually stop going out. "We can't even visit our friends in Howick, where we used to live. It's just not possible," he says. "If they can't come and see us, we certainly can't move around any more. I feel like I'm in home detention."

For the past six weeks he has been pumping petrol two nights a week at Mobil in Red Beach and two nights at Mobil in Warkworth, all on the graveyard shift from 10pm to 6.30am.

The four nights have just been cut back to three. But he still checks the job websites every day and is now also applying for jobs in Australia.

"I'm prepared to try anything. I've got work experience in management and financial aspects and people management," he says.

"It's been a tough battle and my partner and I have ended up financially far worse off than we ever thought," he wrote on the Herald website.

"But we still have each other and we still have our dreams."