Pacific Islander unemployment halved

Sue Tinei, with the support of Advance Pacific Employment Solutions, has found satisfying work at Monarch. Picture / Martin Sykes

Sue Tinei can now buy presents for her mother, thanks to a campaign that has halved Pacific Islander unemployment in Auckland in just two years.

A year ago, the 26-year-old Manurewa woman was on the dole, despite a string of certificates to her name.

"I was doing course after course - hospitality, computers, childcare - but I couldn't get any employment," she said.

She now has a warehouse job, one of at least 2910 jobs filled by Pacific Islanders in the past two years.

A 10-person Pacific Island team at Work and Income NZ, working with local case managers and contractors, has helped to cut unemployment slightly faster for Pacific people than for Maori, and much better than the average. Auckland's overall unemployment rate dropped from 4.6 per cent to 4 per cent in the two years to March.

What made the difference for Ms Tinei was a firm called Advance Pacific Employment Solutions, founded by a former senior executive in the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, Andy McFarland.

Its staff of 10 are contracted by Work and Income to train Pacific jobseekers, help them get jobs and then keep in touch.

The company helped Ms Tinei get a job shelving at the Countdown supermarket in Papakura, working on the "graveyard shift" from 10pm to 6am. But family problems forced her to leave.

"When I got the job, my dad passed away and I was finding it hard to go to work, and then some more family stuff came along and I quit. There were also transport problems," she said.

"After that it was always Andy ringing me and asking if I was interested in jobs, knowing I was out of work doing nothing."

At the same time, the company's staff were contacting employers. Tala Tafu, who transferred from the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs with Mr McFarland, said it took about three months to persuade warehousing firm Monarch to start taking referrals from Advance Pacific. Now 28 of the warehouse's 115 staff, including Ms Tinei, have come through Advance Pacific.

Ms Tafu visits the warehouse every day to check that her workers are there and to discuss any problems. If they have transport problems, they can ring her and she will take them to work.

Ms Tinei works from 8am to 6pm as a "picker", picking out mostly socks and hats from bulk imports to fill orders from shops.

"I love it here," she said. "At first I was really shy. Now I'm part of the family."

She also said the money was "heaps better" than the dole.

"I can buy my mum gifts. I can help heaps with her bills and with the shopping for our house."

Work and Income Regional Commissioner Isabel Evans said young people were the biggest winners from her "Pacific Wave" strategy. The number of unemployed Pacific Islanders aged under 25 dropped from 1677 two years ago to 596.

Monarch warehouse operations manager Daniel Mitchell, whose mother is a Cook Islander and his father Maori, said he felt privileged to be able to give something back to his people.

"Having come from that descent and background and being very fortunate to have gone through the educational system with reasonably good results, I'm in a position to help nurture and work towards improving that part of our society."

Pacific Islander unemployment

5532 registered jobless in July 2003

2622 registered jobless in July 2005