Kiwis key to our wine industry

Flanked by rural Marlborough’s grapevines before sunrise, 34 overseas workers in their hi-vis vests are illuminated by headlights from the company car, jogging on the spot to get their blood pumping and stretch their muscles against the autumn chill.

The workers are in the country on the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme, a huge labour force doing critical hand pruning over winter. Among the group are beginners, who worked in New Zealand during summer, stuck in the country because of the Covid-19 pandemic closing borders.

Thornhill Horticulture and Viticulture supervisor Francis Law said it takes a couple of seasons before workers start to realise how much money they can make. They’re likely to make minimum wage to start with.

‘‘It’s when they see others go home and have money to spend, they realise what they could be making,’’ Law said. ‘‘If they go all out and work hard all day, they can make $35 an hour.’’

The RSE scheme was introduced to the horticulture and viticulture industry in 2007, designed to fill labour shortages with workers from the Pacific, who can work in New Zealand for up to seven months at a time.

Law had been working in New Zealand’s vines since 2005. He said fewer and fewer Kiwis were taking up the work, and if they did, they often didn’t last long.

Marlborough’s economy relies heavily on the wine industry, which makes up close to 20 per cent of its GDP, according to the Marlborough District Council’s economic forecast.

The Government promised workers who lost their jobs after March 1 weekly ‘‘income relief’’ payments of $490, or $250 for part-time workers. This was nearly double the jobseeker benefit.

Online chat was quick to suggest that those unemployed seek work in Marlborough’s vineyards, where pandemic restrictions on foreign labour would cause job gaps.

The Economic Action Marlborough (TEAM) group, set up by the council in response to Covid19, looked at ways to offset the economic impacts of the pandemic, such as developing new job opportunities and redeploying workers not needed by their company into a similar role, like in the primary industries.

Getting Kiwis into the wine industry, especially winter pruning, was proposed by the council to central government as a priority solution.

Tetley Brook Estate vineyard manager Shavin Chandra tried to hire Kiwi workers this winter to prune vines. Because of border restrictions, Chandra could not get his RSE workers into the country for winter pruning, so he advertised for workers within New Zealand.

‘‘I got responses from backpackers, but not a single Kiwi,’’ Chandra said. Instead, he decided to go through different contractors, who supplied him with RSE workers already in the region.

The sun had not yet dawned when Law taught me how to prune, in my tool belt, gloves and hi-vis. The 6am start had been a bit of a battle for an office worker who had snoozed her 7.30am alarm three times the day before.

Luckily, we dodged a frost. I needed to leave three vine canes and two spurs, Law said. The rest, I needed to prune. That meant cutting off the branches with the lopping shears, not so different from pruning my mother’s rose bush in my childhood, although that time the bush never grew back. I’m confident Law’s instructions kept this plant alive.

It did take quite a bit of thought. There were canes coming from all directions, and I had to seriously think about which to prune and which to keep. Law said it would get easier after a while, like clockwork. Well, it definitely didn’t get easier in the one morning I tried – I didn’t walk out an expert.

While older vines, like the ones we were working on, were often complicated, they did pay slightly better than others. Each vine at this vineyard was $1.05, but the wires also needed to be lifted, the vine stripped and the cane wrapped.

But I was slow. After a tutorial, a chat with Law about the work and completing about 20 vines, I looked up from my spot, and realised everyone around me had already pruned a whole row of about 160 vines.

In the interests of meeting deadlines, I was there only half a day. I hadn’t done even a fifth of the work others around me had done.

I’ve worked on my feet before. I actually enjoyed it as a break from desk work, although I was pretty happy to return to my comfy office chair.

I was exhausted. But, it can be done. RSE workers prove time and time again the learning curve is not impossibly steep.