Mataura Licensing Trust staff quit over Covid-19 rule abuse

Mataura Licensing Trust staff are being yelled at, assaulted and called ‘‘every name under the sun’’ by customers as they try to enforce the Government’s Covid-19 restrictions in hotels and bottle stores in the Gore district.

Trust president Horace McAuley said staff were leaving because of it, which meant the trust was in ‘‘crisis mode’’.

‘‘People just need to lay off, just lay right off. We have staff being called Nazi’s because they’re asking people to wear masks, and that is completely unreasonable.

‘‘The abuse is the most difficult part of all of this for us to manage, and people are leaving hospitality simply because of that, and we’re not going to tolerate it.’’

Enforcing the Covid-19 rules that were in place now, and uncertainty about what rules were coming, was causing a ‘‘considerable amount of stress’’ for staff and management.

It runs 10 hotels and two bottle stores in the Gore district, but last week it announced it was closing the Longford Tavern on December 4, and the future of the Thomas Green was unknown after December 17.

Senior manager Glenn Dickson said the trust was issuing more ‘‘blueys’’ [bans to customers] for abusing staff than it had in the past.

‘‘Customers are definitely more aggressive because they have to wear face masks and sign in, and we have to remember that customers are under more stress as well, but our staff are just trying to do their jobs, and they don’t deserve the abuse they are getting.’’

‘‘Wearing a facemask means it’s harder for our staff to judge a person’s intoxication levels or how old they are and that’s leading to some difficult situations.’’

Dickson said about 10 staff had left, but some were in key positions which would be difficult to replace.

At the Thomas Green, the manager, assistant manager, duty manager, head chef and sous chef were all leaving, he said.

However, the future of some staff employment was still unclear.

The trust had 110 staff and ‘‘a handful’’ had indicated they were not going to get vaccinated to comply with the Government’s mandate for hospitality workers, Dickson said. ‘‘There’s a process to go through with those people, and we’ll be going through that process,’’ he said.

McAuley said the trust had always paid ‘‘well above the going rate’’ but attracting staff had been difficult.

‘‘Other industries are paying more, so they get the staff. We just put $200,000 into our wage system, so our people are pretty well rewarded.

‘‘Part of the problem is that we used to work with the high schools to give school pupils employment but careers evenings have been cancelled because of Covid, and younger people don’t want to work from 4pm until midnight when their friends are all out and about.’’

The trust had an emergency meeting on Thursday night to discuss its staffing issues and how it would operate under the new Covid19 mandates.

Not knowing which ‘‘traffic light’’ the southern district was going to be operating under was causing real uncertainty and it was difficult to plan, McAuley said.

‘‘Hospitality seems to be one of the top targets the Government has picked out, but there is also a real lack of clarity around what will happen on December 3,’’ McAuley said.

‘‘We need to know what’s happening on day one – we need to know who is responsible for what, and how that all works. At the moment we don’t know.’’

‘‘People just need to lay off, just lay right off. We have staff being called Nazi’s because they’re asking people to wear masks, and that is completely unreasonable.’’

Horace McAuley Mataura Licensing Trust president