What the hospitality industry wants from the next government

Tuesday, 28 March 2023

Chand Sahrawat says Kiwis do not know that a waiter can earn $29 to $30 an hour.

Hospitality businesses say the next government needs to work with restaurants, eateries and cafes to ensure they can fill the critical staff shortages fast.

As a starting point, the industry needed its own hospitality minister to spearhead issues and needs of the sector, business owners say.

Restaurateur Chand Sahrawat, co-owner of Cassia, the French Cafe and KOL, said someone who had a background in hospitality, and could see and fix the flaws in the current Accredited Employer Work Visa migrant worker programme that businesses were jumping through hoops to meet, would be ideal.

“There’s an assumption that hospitality is part of tourism when it is so distinct in its needs. We would like a hospitality minister, for heaven’s sake we have a horse racing minister, how many horses are employed in New Zealand?”

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Sahrawat said the next government needed to make it easier to employ much-needed migrant workers and fund “visible training schemes” to attract New Zealanders into hospitality careers.

“People need to see that it is a viable career, and that’s why we need a minister to bat for the industry. To show Kiwis that you can be in hospitality as a waiter nowadays and earn $29 to $30 an hour. We’re paying that to hire someone from overseas, and I don’t think Kiwis understand that is the rate.”

Following the flooding of Sahrawat’s Indian fusion restaurant Cassia in February, Sahrawat said she had experienced firsthand just how hard it was to transfer the visa for migrant staff to new employers.

Cassia has entered a partnership with SkyCity to reopen its popular restaurant in its Auckland venue, and as part of the process needed to transfer its migrant workers over.

“Earlier on, if you already had a work visa for working in Auckland as a chef, for example, and you wanted to transfer your job to someone else, you could just ask the new employer for a contract, it was one piece of paper and the process was three to four weeks.

“Now, even though you and the other employer are accredited, that new employer needs to do advertising, needs to pay Immigration New Zealand $600 for a job check for the same employee again. There is just too much red tape for something as simple as a visa transfer for somebody who is already here.”

Sahrawat said it did not help in stamping out exploitation of migrants because it made it much harder for them to change jobs.

Her comments follow the Restaurant Association’s election manifesto released on Wednesday.

Restaurateurs Chand and Sid Sahrawat will re-open their restaurant Cassia in SkyCity in May.

Last year the hospitality industry grew by over 14% and made over $14 billion in sales, making it one of New Zealand’s largest industries.

The association wanted the next government to better address the critical skills shortage that continued to plaque the industry.

The Government should take “proactive measures” to tackle exploitative working conditions and better address worker relations, health and safety, and commit to not enacting any new legislative changes.

Association chief executive Marisa Bidois said policies for the industry were “fragmented, impractical and often devoid of the everyday realities of operations”.

“The sheer number and scale of enacted and proposed legislative changes to New Zealand’s employment, industrial relations, and immigration frameworks in the last 24 months, particularly with the Fair Pay Agreements, and Immigration Reset, has severely impacted our confidence as a sector. This coupled with all of the processes and changes businesses had to manage as part of the pandemic has [made for] a difficult road to navigate for business,” she said.

Auckland bar and eatery owner Tricky Hartley says last year was the industry’s toughest yet.

Although the unemployment rate had reached record lows, hospitality staffing shortages had worsened, she said.

The hospitality industry recorded a 0.37% increase in staff numbers last year, equating to about 135,000 people, the lowest growth in over 10 years.

Bidois said the Government needed to change its blanket immigration policy approach and invest in apprenticeship programmes to get more people working in hospitality.

The association wanted more training to encourage more New Zealanders into hospitality.

“A one size fits all approach to immigration settings does not meet the unique needs of our sector, which needs a clear roadmap from the Government pertaining to short, medium and long-term immigration plans that is responsive to our sector’s unique needs, and reflective of the realities of operating a hospitality business.”

The Association said more work needed to be done to better include the needs of the hospitality industry, which often fell by the wayside in Government policy.

Tricky Hartley, owner of Auckland waterfront bar and eatery The Conservatory, said there needed to be a dedicated hospitality specific visas to ensure hospitality could easily and quickly recruit overseas workers it desperately needed.

Hartley said he worked 75-hour weeks each week to keep his operation running as it had been unable to secure adequate staffing.

“We need to open the borders wisely and to people who are going to add benefit to this country.”

A hospitality-specific visa could also ensure that people coming into the country stayed working in the industry, he said.

“We’ve tightened up the borders, we’ve stopped people coming in and put the industry in such a dire situation and there are few Kiwis that want to work in our industry.

The Conservatory employed 18 staff, two of those were New Zealanders, he said.

Hartley said the industry faced a decline in quality and service due to the inadequate staffing levels.

“The problem we have is we can open the hours we would like to because we can’t fill positions.

“If you put into perspective the last few years that we’ve had, this last year has been worst than Covid because we have the customers and the general public being amazing and wanting to come back and support hospitality but to open doors you need staff and there just aren’t any.”