Another business big wig who'll be expressing concern about jobs at the 'Jobs Summit' is Joan Withers, the chief executive of Fairfax Media in New Zealand.
Last year under her stewardship, 160 jobs were axed within Fairfax New Zealand - part of 550 jobs that were axed within Fairfax on both sides of the Tasman. Withers has described this as 'head count reduction'.
However it hasn't been all gloom and doom at Fairfax. Some people have done alright - namely the top executives.
Between 2006 and 2007 the top Fairfax executives were rewarded with a 45 percent increase in bonuses alone. The total in bonuses for the top eight executives went from $A1.5 million to $A2.2 million, on top of a 7.7 percent total increase in salaries for the top executives.
Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little appeared on the scene briefly when the redundancies were announced last year.
"Fairfax's proposed redundancies will be a huge blow to already strained newsrooms and to New Zealanders' democratic right to be properly informed about their country's major issues," warned our man Little, the Mr Blobby of the New Zealand union movment
No doubt the axed workers would also of been worried about the little matter of no regular pay packet as well.
Little, a man unfamiliar with the concept of 'industrial action', promptly retired into the background leaving Withers to get on with the job of sacking the Fairfax workers with the minimum of fuss.
The sackings don't appear to have helped the Fairfax owners though with the media group yesterday reporting a net loss of $A365 million for the six months to December 28.
Withers is staying silent about any further cuts only to say '"we are always looking to utilise the infrastructure we have got."
Ms Withers would not confirm media speculation that the company is considering sharing sub editing between its Australia and New Zealand arms - which would probably mean further job losses.
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