The SEMMA team wishes to thank our members who have taken the time to respond to our recent surveys. It is only through your participation in our surveys and industry round-table discussions that we are able to accurately convey to our governments at both State and Federal level how the pandemic is impacting manufacturers in the South East.
SEMMA has held recent meetings with both Federal & State MP’s and has also provided a submission to the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 to ensure that they understand the impact and the actions which need to be taken to create a resurgent Manufacturing sector. Our submission has also been provided to the COVID-19 Commission, led by Neville Power.
We know from speaking with other industry groups that our members’ experience is typical of the pain experienced by manufacturing SMEs in other parts of the country.
Follow-Up Survey – May 2020
- 75% of our members have experienced reduced revenue; up from 70% in March.
- In March, 49% had already had to act on reducing headcount/reducing number of work days; another 18% expected to have to take similar action in coming weeks.
- It appears that Job Keeper has had a positive effect as the number of businesses reducing headcount/workdays in May is 48%.
- 81% now report impacts on orders/sales; up from 66% in March.
Job Keeper
Following on from receiving this data we conducted a mini-survey on the Job Keeper Payment program. We asked just one question concerning the impact of the planned demise of Job Keeper at the end of September:
- 60% of our survey respondents had successfully applied for Job Keeper.
- 66% of our respondents reported that they would be impacted to the extent where they would struggle to retain staff.
- Of these, 34% reported the impact would be “Major – Without the Job Keeper it will mean we have to stand down staff/reduce hours/implement redundancies”.
Our recent advocacy efforts have been dedicated to the recovery of the manufacturing sector, as we convey to MP’s the importance of extending Job Keeper support for our manufacturers.
Click here to view the detailed survey results.
