Redundancy drove father into self-employment

In the final part of our series on coping with redundancy, Simon Collins looks at people who have taken the plunge to start their own business.

Greg Toia says he would never have made the jump into self-employment if he hadn't been made redundant.

Mr Toia, a 45-year-old fitter and turner, had spent all his working life in full-time jobs until his work at Manurewa plastics company Marley NZ disappeared.

"Redundancies came up. They offered me another job but the hours didn't suit with the kids, so we took it [redundancy]," he says.

But it turned out to be much harder to find a new job than he expected.

"I was out of work for four months," he says. "I applied all over Auckland - about 60 or 70 jobs that I found in the paper, on Seek and Trade Me.

"I got quite a few interviews so obviously I made the first cut. But a lot of them never got back to you."

Finally, with the money running out, he took the plunge into self-employment as a contractor on maintenance shutdowns of industrial machinery.

"It was just word of mouth. I knew quite a few guys in the trade from my time at Marley. It was a bit stressful, but it just pushed me to look at other things. I probably would never have made the jump into being self-employed till I got pushed into it."

Mr Toia has been able to get enough work in Auckland so he can get home to Papakura at nights, but in the next few months he expects to have to spend time away at places such as Kinleith, Tauranga and Marsden Pt.

He's still applying for permanent jobs and there are "a lot more engineering jobs than two or three months ago".

But self-employment will always now be a backup, he says. "I don't know why I never did it before."