[image]
[title]In early December of 2021, following two turbulent years of restrictions and an urgent campaign to hasten the vaccine rollout from a shuffle to a sprint, it seemed Australians were finally on the home stretch of the ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown. With nearly 95 per cent of the adult population double jabbed in NSW, business owners were relieved to have reached what many believed to be the final throes of the pandemic.
“The start of December was great, and you know, revenues were not quite back to the revenues of old, but they were at a point where we were seeing glimmers of hope. We felt there was this bright future ahead of us,” says Kenny Graham, co-owner of the Mary’s hospitality group. “But yeah – then the wheels fell off.”
The state’s record in maintaining relatively low numbers of infections, hospitalisations and deaths, even through the Delta surge, was shattered in the final weeks of 2021 by the arrival of the Omicron variant. But it wasn't just this new strain’s relentless transmissibility that led to NSW clocking in some of the highest daily infection rates in the world.
Within days of assuming leadership of the state on October 4, Dominic Perrottet's move to soften some settings in the Berejiklian government's reopening plan made it clear that his priority was repairing the economy as quickly as possible. Indeed, the former state treasurer’s push to jumpstart NSW’s business recovery was welcomed by many industries impacted by the pandemic, even if Perrottet's enthusiasm for lifting restrictions occasionally overreached his own powers.
But has Perrottet’s dogged commitment to keeping the state’s economy open at all costs been the fiscal renaissance he'd hoped for? With just a handful of health restrictions reinstated despite tens of thousands of daily cases, the ‘living with the virus’ strategy – also known colloquially as ‘let it rip’ – has been punishing for public-facing businesses. Thousands of staff were forced to isolate in the first weeks of the Omicron outbreak, either due to sickness or potential exposure, which in turn caused labour shortages and supply chain bottlenecks that forced the state government to reclassify the definition of a 'close contact' to be less binding.
We were seeing glimmers of hope. We felt there was this bright future ahead of us. Then the wheels fell off
But the weeks since Omicron arrived on our shores have also been especially tough for the hospitality sector, which had already been suffering from a shrinking workforce even before the current surge, thanks to two years of on-again-off-again lockdowns and the loss of an influx of migrant workers.
Customers are equally scarce at present. As cases have skyrocketed, more and more people are choosing to avoid public venues like bars and restaurants by choice rather than by mandate – a trend that led to thousands of cancellations over the usually booming Christmas and New Year period, as well as a slump in bookings during the first few weeks of 2022. Data from ANZ and CreditorWatch are already showing a significant dip in spending from mid-December, and this rings anecdotally true with bar and restaurant owners who are now bearing the brunt of the so-called 'shadow lockdown'.
“Seven-day operation is not even normal right now, let alone possible,” Graham says. “[The drop in bookings] is part of the reason we've made the decisions to keep venues closed part of the week or keep them shut altogether and just pool our limited resources. But also, even if a member of the team is not the definition of a close contact right now, but they feel sick, and they know they've been in someone's company who is positive, I'm not going to make them come to work. That's entirely inappropriate. No business should be putting profit over the health of their staff.”
In an Instagram post in which he confirmed he had tested positive for Covid-19, hospitality heavyweight Neil Perry shared how challenging it has been to keep his Double Bay fine diner Margaret open due to staffing shortages.
”We have had to close… hoping to keep the roster strong enough to do other shifts. However, in this crazy situation, you never know. I thought we would have certainty this year – how wrong could I have been. If only the government was being proactive in bringing people in to support the industry, but no, we are just all going through hell,” he wrote.
Hospital, supply chain and supermarket workers were considered frontline staff during lockdown, but waiters, baristas, bartenders and door staff in bars, restaurants and cafés are now just as at risk of exposure. One Sydney hospo worker told Time Out anonymously that placing such a weight of responsibility on people who had never anticipated working under such draining conditions was driving many experienced professionals out of the industry.
“For me, [going through this experience] has been the beginning of the end of my time in venue, I think. Not only have we been expected to perform roles outside of our general job description and training, but I cannot remember in 20 years of this job ever being treated so poorly by the people we are serving. After the first lockdown, people were so happy to be out and about, and it was an absolute joy. The same cannot be said for the following two or three lockdown re-openings. I have seen so many negative reviews where the customer says, 'I understand you're short-staffed but...', which I think says it all about how much understanding is left in people.”
The mass exodus of talent from the sector has created its own crisis, as an increasingly inexperienced workforce has eroded customer confidence in once highly regarded venues, Time Out has been told. “As with so many venues, we have had to hire some pretty green staff, and this isn't the first look into this industry that you'd want to give to someone who potentially wants to make a career out of this," said the hospo worker. "Burnout is high. Staff are anxious about the cases increasing, knowing our venue is certainly seeing a lot of impact from that recently, and we are bracing for a significant rise in this over the next few weeks. This was always an industry where I could find my joy – but I think it’s finally been exhausted out of me.”
I cannot remember in 20 years of this job ever being treated so poorly by the people we are serving
However, some restaurateurs believe keeping the economy open, even with rising case numbers, is the lesser evil. Mark Labrooy, co-owner of Three Blue Ducks, says rolling lockdowns pose a greater threat to the future of the sector. “I'm not totally against this whole idea of opening up and letting it rip, what I'm against is closing the industry down again and again. You take the IT industry, mining and the banking industry and you put all of it together, it doesn't even come close to the body of people that are attached to hospitality. And we just don't have the ability to work from home. My guys can't pull a coffee from their lounge room and fucking post it off to a customer,” Labrooy says.
“Our staff, they're just losing sight or losing faith in the safety of the industry. Of course they’re worried: ‘I don't have job security, what the fuck am I gonna do? I could have a job one day and then be terminated or laid off the next?’ So it's pretty tricky. We have to remember, there's still a world out there.”