About 2000 hospitality businesses will take part in a nationwide “lights out” movement today as restaurants call for urgent border exemptions for workers in the wake of staffing shortages.
National President of the Restaurant Association Mike Egan told 1 NEWS more restaurants will shut if nothing changes.
“If the Government don’t reverse this policy, more restaurants will shut down and that’s sad, and potentially new and great restaurants won’t be able to open because the innovators out there will find it too hard to start recruiting,” Egan said.
Hospitality business owners will stop service and turn their lights out for a period of two minutes at either 11.30am or 7pm today.
Around 2000 businesses are expected to turn their lights off for a short period to draw attention to their plight.
It comes after the Government extended working holiday and supplementary seasonal employment visas due to expire between June and the end of December by another six months.
Although essential skills work visas would not be extended again, Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi said the duration of these visas for jobs paid below the median wage would increase from six months to 12 months.
Faafoi said the Government is having “robust conversations” with various sectors about how they could move away from relying on migrants for their workforce.
“We’d love to recruit internally in New Zealand, but that’s just not a reality, so we rely on overseas workers and we’d just like to retain the ones that are here and extend their visas and then allow under special circumstances some talent to come in,” Egan said.
The Restaurant Association’s calling for urgent additional visa extensions for employer assisted work visa holders currently in New Zealand, border exceptions for critical workers from the hospitality industry and an extension to the number of hours international students can work.
“About 30 per cent of our workforce is on work visas, so as they start running out and not getting renewed that’s a huge number, nearly one third of their staff will have to leave the country,” Egan said.
“Many of our members are reducing their hours and have gone to five days a week."
The ACT Party turned out their lights at their 11:30am caucus meeting in solidarity with the Restaurant Association.
“The Government needs a better plan to open to our borders to workers so that we can get the workforce we need. Not just in hospitality, but also horticulture, agriculture, engineering and construction,” says ACT’s Immigration spokesperson Dr James McDowall.
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