We’re not lazy, just a bit picky

Ionce had a job picking up sticks. Iwas working on a Canterbury farm and, having the week before planted 250 trees in the wrong place, was relegated to the lowest task possible. Looking at the vast paddock I was expected to clear, I asked my boss why there wasn’t some sort of farm machine that could do the job. ‘‘There is,’’ he said, ‘‘it’s you.’’

Hard jobs have been in the headlines a lot recently. The closure of New Zealand’s borders has revealed Kiwis don’t want to do them, the inference being we’re too lazy to roll up our sleeves and get stuck in.

Because of that, thousands of keen workers have received temporarywork visas to do those jobs we’re too precious for, even as we experience the largest quarterly unemployment rise since 1986. We’d rather be the proverbial beggars than choosers, it seems.

I’ve had a lot of hard jobs in my life but nothing so physically tough as farm work. As well as the sticks, there was the dead-body-run, replanting of wrongly planted shelter belts, and the endless mucking-out of pens. Driving the tractor was pretty sweet but digging it out after it got stuck in the filth was not, nor was the realisation that deer were nothing like Bambi and were genuinely out to kill me. The people were much the same.

Once, when trudging through the mud, I was so relieved when the boss stopped the quad and yelled ‘‘get on the back’’, but it turned out he was talking to the working dogs, not me.

While it wasn’t the first time I’d had to take up hard work to make ends meet, the brutal physicality of the job was a shock. Despite that, it was right next door to my house, I was well paid, and lovedmy employers. In other words it was worth it, and that makes all the difference.

Right now it’s physical jobs much like the one I did that apparently can’t be filled by people who permanently call Aotearoa home. After relying forever on backpackers and seasonal workers, the horticulture and viticulture industries are particularly desperate for staff and suddenly incredulous that nobodywants their employment. With jobless New Zealanders numbering 151,000 last month, the fruit-picking industry appears to be wondering when we became so scared of hard work.

Fruit growers have gone so far as to say they’re in crisis and millions of dollars worth of crops will wither unpicked, while one vineyard company says it’ll have to employ 120 Kiwis to match the productivity of his usual 40Ni-Vanuatu workers. Ouch.

While there are those who’d make us out to be a shiftless bunch, equating the number of unwanted jobs with unemployment rates is unfair and offensive to anyone out of work. It’s also just plain wrong. Those fruit-picking and vegetable-heaving posts going unfilled are the same ones Kiwis have never wanted to do.

New Zealanders want permanent jobs based in our own communities. Wewant job security, decent conditions, and not to have to spend months in the sun breaking our backs for what’s often minimum wages.

Just because those industries have previously been able to find people from overseas to do the jobs doesn’t mean the jobs are worth doing.

The pandemic has provided the perfect opportunity for those employers to spend their quiet summers reflecting on just that they’re offering, and just what workers are worth.

And as for the fruit going unpicked on vines this Christmas? Pfffft, most Kiwis could never have afforded it anyway.