Slim pickings - reporting the shortage of labour for fruit, veges
With borders closed, a severe shortage of people to pick fruit and vegetables could create serious shortages and high prices this summer.
Politicians, growers and media personalities have all sounded off about it in the media - but the people who actually do the work are almost entirely absent in coverage of a problem brewing long before COVID-19.
Just weeks ago, courgettes were in the news for hitting almost $30 a kilogram in the shops, but these would only be good for compost because they couldn’t be picked on time.
What a waste
Since 2007 thousands of workers from offshore have been imported for seasonal work picking fruit and vegetables under the scheme.
But now that they have been locked out by the COVID-19 border closure - like the foreign backpackers who also did the job - it’s become clear horticulture depends upon them.
In recent weeks, sector representatives, have issued increasingly dire warnings about crops going to waste and eventual shortages over summer unless the borders are opened to overseas labour.
Heaps
Heap’s story went viral on social media and sparked anguished talkback radio sessions but his unpicked crop wasn’t a new story - just another episode in a long-running one about our food supply and supply-and-demand tensions in the labour market.
And the media coverage of it has been dominated by the growers.
Heap is a long-standing and vocal supporter of the RSE scheme.
In 2017, he told The Northland Age he considered quitting the business because the government wouldn’t let him bring in more than nine workers from Thailand “with the skills and stamina” to pick his crop.
He also told the paper he had been told he “would have to take Pacific Islanders.”
But he wasn’t keen citing “a potential clash of cultures.”
He had “given up all hope of employing locals” because they weren’t reliable.
Last year Heap told TVNZ’s 1News restricting seasonal foreign labour was a “effectively a restraining mechanism not just on us as individual growers, but on the industry in its entirety”.
Berry blues
That report in August last year warned: “Kiwis could be paying more than double the price for strawberries this summer as one of the country’s biggest growers fears she will be forced to shut down her business.”
That grower was Francie Perry of Perry’s Berries in Wiri - and back then her lobbying for more foreign workers got a quick result.
In September - when the election campaign was heating up - Francie Perry told TVNZ News: “It’s really simple.
“No overseas workers, no pickers - no work for anybody.”
A warning that her strawberries could rot on the ground this summer alarmed John Campbell on TVNZ’s Breakfast show two weeks later in mid-October.
When he raised that with the finance minister, Grant Robertson told him it was “a two-way street” and “there’ll need to be a little give and take around things like rosters, supporting people with transport and wages as well” to get New Zealanders in the jobs with the borders closed.
In mid-September Stuff reported trade minister David Parker telling a Southland Chamber of Commerce event: “I am a hardass there. “Compete for labour.
“That’s my first and strongest message.’’
That part of the story has had a lot less media attention.
When Francie Perry pleaded for additional workers to fill shortages in September, she also found herself facing questions about the fine print in Perrry’s Berries’ jobs ads.
Bonus
“Most of the work available is paid by bonus piecerate – where you are required to produce enough to earn at least the current minimum wage to retain your position.”
She told Newstalk ZB it’s not just a question of money but also skills and work ethics.
Source: RNZ Pacific