Joint effort on behalf of workers

The Government and the Dunedin City Council will combine their efforts to help find new jobs and financial support for workers who lost their jobs yesterday.

Dunedin deputy mayor Syd Brown yesterday called for an immediate meeting between the council and local MPs to find out what support could be provided by the Government for the 430 Fisher and Paykel employees who would lose their jobs when the Mosgiel plant closed.

The council would also seek a meeting with Fisher and Paykel management to offer help.

Dunedin South MP David Benson-Pope, in whose electorate the plant is sited, assured the Otago Daily Times that the Ministry of Social Development had already been instructed to implement an action plan.

He would support any meeting between the MPs and the council.

Cr Brown, a Mosgiel ward representative, said he had reacted with complete shock to news the plant was to close.

‘‘It's a shock in many ways because this plant is so new and modern with a very stable workforce in previous years of operation.

The closure news was a setback to the people employed at the plant but also to the wider business community, Cr Brown told a media conference.

Cr Brown stood by the council's financial support of Fisher and Paykel during past years.

The council had provided $581,000 in rates relief over five years and had made $4.5 million available to the company over three projects.

The $4.5 million had come at no cost to ratepayers, $3 million had already been paid back by the company and there were no issues about the security of the remaining $1.5 million, he said.

Mr Benson-Pope said other New Zealand manufacturers worried about the strength of the currency had followed the global movement towards the lowest cost structures for their operations.

‘‘But that doesn't mean I am not as shocked at this as everybody else. If there is a glimmer of goodness, [it] is that employers are calling out for a workforce with the skills of F&P.''

His office would be available to provide constituents with assistance and he was sure Social Development and Employment Minister Ruth Dyson would instruct her department to provide support.

National Party list MP Katherine Rich, of Dunedin, said the news came as a terrible blow to the workers, the Taieri and the wider Dunedin community.

Dunedin North MP Pete Hodgson, a cabinet minister, noted that 90 jobs in the company's engineering and product development division would remain based in Dunedin, NZPA reported.

‘‘Now is the time to partner with the university and polytechnic to make sure we can retain and develop our innovative engineering sector,'' he said.

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