As locations of interest and close contacts balloon, some essential businesses are struggling to find enough staff allowed out of their bubbles to come to work. And it’s only going to get worse.
Pity whoever puts staff rosters together at Countdown Auckland stores. As of Tuesday, the supermarket chain had 17 stores on the Government’s ‘locations of interest’ list.
There were more than 1400 staff members isolating (up from 1000 on Monday), and six stores are closed because there aren’t enough staff to run them.
And Kiri Hannifin, Countdown’s general manager of corporate affairs and safety, expects it to get worse.
“We’re managing this as best as we can,” she says.
But it’s hard.
“We are recruiting and training but this is a very unusual situation and we are working as fast as we can.”
By Tuesday lunchtime, the total number of locations of interest on the Government list had risen to 420, up from 320 on Monday. Aside from Countdown stores, there were other supermarket chains, petrol station operators and bus companies - all organisations deemed essential and where working from home isn’t an option.
Then there are all the other essential businesses - from transport and port companies, to rubbish collectors and health centres - whose staff might have been at a location of interest at a time when someone who later tested positive was there.
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson announced 15,400 “known contacts” at his briefing yesterday; these people have to self-isolate for 14 days and get three Covid tests. On Monday that number was 13,000.
But it isn’t just known contacts who can’t go to work. Their family members or flatmates often have to self-isolate for 14 days too.
Then there are all the people who can’t work because they can’t get childcare (all daycares and schools are closed under Level 4), or who are particularly vulnerable to Covid - or have symptoms and are waiting for a Covid test result and have to stay home.
Then there are those with a cough or a cold. Even if you’ve tested negative for Covid and feel fine, no one is going to turn up for work in these Covid-rampant times coughing and sneezing.
That’s a big chunk out of the workforce.
Transport industry struggles
Ken Harris is managing director of ContainerCo, one of the biggest shipping container handling businesses in New Zealand. The company stores, cleans, repairs and leases containers and as such is an essential part of the supply chain of imports arriving into the country and goods, particularly primary produce, being exported out.
Like many others in the Covid-disrupted international transport and supply chain sectors, ContainerCo was already super busy before the lockdown.
Now, 10-12 percent of Harris's Auckland-based workforce are out of action - self isolating, waiting for a test or vulnerable.
He worries about the impact of the lockdown on an already stressed sector.
“We are struggling to have full teams on deck, to stay on top of the work,” Harris says.
ContainerCo wouldn’t be alone across the industry having its workforce impacted by the numbers of people having to stay home, says Harriet Shelton, supply chain manager at the Ministry of Transport.
“That’s probably a fair assessment of the transport sector workforce in general; there would be some areas where it is worse,” she says.
It was already hard getting enough staff in the sector, Shelton says, with low unemployment and a strong construction sector taking people from the labour pool.
Workforce shortages and capability was a key area set to be addressed in a series of industry workshops the ministry had ready to roll out, as part of preparations for a discussion document on national freight and supply chain strategy to be published next year.
“When I heard about the lockdown, I was gutted.”
Food manufacturers bearing up
Further down the food supply chain, the worker shortages aren’t hitting the manufacturing sector as hard as they are the supermarkets, says Food and Grocery Council CEO Katherine Rich.
Unlike retailers, whose doors have to be open to all-comers, food factories have increasingly been putting tough measures in place to try to ensure Covid doesn’t get onto the premises.
(As an example, Rich says, at a recent visit to the Auckland headquarters of fisheries company Moana, she got temperature checked twice as part of normal visitor registration.)
"The general public will be tolerant of a lot of things, but if there’s any hint of a problem with the food supply, things can go pear shaped quickly.” Katherine Rich, Food & Grocery Council
But Rich worries what could happen if the number of workers lost from the workforce because of Covid isolation protocols goes up too much.
The Pacific Island workforce is a significant part of the food manufacturing industry, and it’s that sector of the Auckland community that has been hardest hit by the present outbreak.
Over 50 percent of cases in the latest outbreak are Pasifika, meaning they will also be over-represented in the number of people having to self-isolate. “At the moment, the number of people having to be stood down and stay home has been bearable, but I worry there might be a tipping point where it could impact on New Zealand’s ability to feed people,” Rich says.
“One of the things everyone in the food industry knows is the general public will be tolerant of a lot of things, but if there’s any hint of a problem with the food supply, things can go pear shaped quickly.”
Overseas, dozens of US meat plants were forced to close temporarily last year because Covid got into their workforces. And Rich has been calling for butchers to be allowed to open in New Zealand to ease the pressure on the meat supply chain.
In New Zealand, where food manufacturing operations can be relatively small, sometimes just one or two people can be critical to a company staying in production, Rich says.
“Generally though, our food system is robust and resilient.”
