Request for overseas staff
The Alliance Group is applying for more overseas meat workers to work in Southland, to help ease significant labour shortages and absenteeism that is costing the co-operative about $20 million a year.
Alliance recently submitted an application to Immigration New Zealand to bring in 40 skilled boners and slaughtermen for the Mataura plant.
This follows an application in August to recruit 100 overseas employees for the Lorneville plant near Invercargill.
An Immigration New Zealand spokesperson said a decision had not yet been made regarding the application, and were unable to advise how long this would take. The application was strongly opposed by the New Zealand Meat Workers Union.
National secretary Graham Cooke offered no comment on the Mataura application but said the union was working with Alliance ‘‘on alternatives to procure labour for the 2018-2019 season’’. Alliance people and safety general manager Chris Selbie said there was a ‘‘well-documented shortage of skilled and unskilled candidates for the industry and other sectors in regional New Zealand’’.
Alliance was using recruitment firms to source workers, as well as other methods, a spokesman said.
The NZ Meat Workers Union Otago-Southland secretary Gary Davis acknowledged there could be a shortage of local workers for Mataura but would not know for sure until he had seen ‘‘who has put their hand up’’ after the recruitment drive.
He believed more work needed to be done to attract and retain Southland meat workers.
Last week, Alliance’s senior management team and Ministry of Social Development and Immigration New Zealand senior representatives met to discuss the worker shortage and to explore ways of working together to source more local employees.
Davis said he hoped the discussion would prove productive.
‘‘They have to look at the structure of employment. There needs to a lot more planning around the plant. There are the people, but they need to have the right person fitting into the right job.’’
Last season, 1000 people had applied for jobs at the Alliance Lorneville plant, and only 400 Southlanders had been successful, hence the union’s strong opposition to the Lorneville application.
He hoped there could be more flexibility in working hours for single parents and those on benefits so that they would be able to work at the plants, and more recruitment at secondary schools to attract young people into the range of jobs the meat industry offered.