Big pay day has Kiwis flocking to shearing
Shearers are picking up the clippers again, lured back to the industry by a massive 25 per cent wage increase. By Ben Bootsma and Jamie Searle.
SHEARERS are flocking back to the industry after a wage increase has seen them earn as much as $800 a day.
Many are returning from Australia to take up lucrative jobs, while others are being enticed to ditch their day jobs and pick up the shears.
One recent convert, Patrick Clegg, said shearing was a better way to earn good money than his previous job as a stock agent. He switched to working full time in his family shearing business last month, knowing pay rates, nationally, had gone up.
Before the increase, some shearers might have been getting about $1.70 per crossbred ewe and now might get about $2.20. For marino ewes, it had been between $2.20 and $2.25 but now can be as much as $3. Experienced shearers can get through up to 400 sheep a day.
Clegg, of Te Anau, finished up at PGG Wrightson in Darfield, Canterbury, on January 18, and started in the family business three days later. Clegg managed to shear about 80 sheep on each of the first three days and about 200 on his fourth. His partner Erica Robertson is joining him in the wool-handling team and they are planning to buy their first home and travel overseas in two years. ‘‘If we work hard, we can make more money [faster] than before,’’ Clegg said.
The New Zealand Shearers Contractors’ Association president Mark Barrowclough said there had been a noticeable rise in shearers and shed hands coming back to the country.
As well as increased wages, fulltime shearers and shed hands were now entitled to annual leave and holidays.
Spain and Smith shearing contractors co-owner Martin Smith said he was happy to give employees entitlements they deserved. The company had taken the costs of the changes upon themselves. ‘‘We took them on board, we sort of had to.’’
McConachie Shearing Ltd owner Jamie McConachie said it had been much easier to attract staff since the wage increase,