They use contractors who pay min wage and offer split shifts. So the downtime no-one is there. They are all clocked off.
I wonder if that's the same for CNS. I thought the check-in staff were VA employees.
In any case, I'm sure it's still something VA control. A contractor can still offer split shifts but roster staff on for the whole day. For my CNS experience, given the next flight was scheduled to depart at 16:30 which means all pax are supposed to be checked in before 16:00, check-in opening just 1 hour earlier at 15:00 is a recipe for a delayed departure (which turned out to be the case) and the plane was chockers.....not a single vacant seat and to compound that, people for the next flights were turning up to check in as well!
Just a very real example of very poor management which resulted in pax waiting in a hot queue for some time and a delayed flight departure which then made it a rush for connection flights in BNE. I was in J and we were asked to remain seated to let connecting pax out first so they didn't miss their flights. BNE was exceptionally busy so I'm not saying the whole delay was the fault of the check in failures at CNS, but it certainly wouldn't have helped.