Workers say mental issues often ignored

Employers told to take more responsibility

Kiwis say employers need to take more responsibility for workers’ mental health, withdramatic changes predicted to employment in 2018. Newstalk ZB listeners yesterday shared their experiences with employers and mental illness.

One person said a coworker was demoted after asking for counselling when a relationship ended.

“I know of one guy [ who] went through a bad relationship breakup and asked to get counselling . . . he was demoted and told to get over it,” said the person, who worked in earthworks as a machine operator.

There was “a lot of mental illness with some workers and we are pushed harder and harder to do the work faster and faster”.

One dairy farm contract milker, who had worked on eight different farms, said, “I tell you now, big landowners don’t give a crap about how many hours the workers work. Farm landowners are the most greedy people in the world, they expect you to live in crap [houses] and work long hours.”

Another listener said it should be up to the employer to “keep an eye on their staff’s well-being”.

“Someone who is depressed does not have the wherewithal to ap- proach a boss.”

But another listener was less sympathetic, saying there was a “massive problem” if workers needed “some kind of mental health therapy to help them cope going back to work after two weeks off over summer”.

The discussion follows a plea in the Herald by the mother of Huntly farmhand Colby Harris, who died in a suspected suicide last month, aged 21.

Gail Harris said: “What needs to change is expectations of these young people . . . In the last year he had given up all the things he liked to do because the hours were too long. He was absolutely exhausted.”