By Melissa Davies
Another supermarket has been inundated with people trying to find jobs.
Back in January, 1000 people lined up for an opportunity to work at a Countdown supermarket in Manukau.
Eight months later it is the turn of a New World supermarket in Auckland, where nearly 3000 hoped to find jobs.
After nearly two years of searching for a job Sosa Falefatu has finally bagged one as a checkout operator at New World.
“This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. I was so excited because I’ve been applying for every job. Never got any job but now I got it,” he says.
Ms Falefatu has reason to be excited, considering 2500 applicants were turned down for a job at the new Mount Roskill supermarket.
It's in Labour leader Phil Goff's electorate. He was fuming when he worked out the sums.
“So that's 2700 people lining up for the 150 jobs available in a supermarket, and I had to ask well, where is John Key's recovery for the people in my electorate?” he says.
Foodstuffs, which owns New World and Pak n' Save, says the caliber of job seekers is high and their numbers keep growing.
“I think it's a sign of the times. Go back two or three years when we opened a new Pak’n Save in South Auckland [and] we had 400 - 500 people applying for jobs,” says Murray Jordan, managing director of Foodstuffs.
In January this year, more than 1000 people lined up for jobs at a new South Auckland Countdown.
But people are shopping for jobs and little else. Mr Goff says employers are hurting too.
“They say it's tough, workers don't have money in their pockets, they're not spending,” he says.
The National Distribution Union says the majority of people who applied for work at the supermarket already have jobs but either need a second job to make ends meet, or the average pay rate at New World ($13/hr) is better than what they're currently earning.
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