Campaign on workforce shortages bears fruit
The Federated Farmers campaign to convince the government it needs to open the border for dairy workers has borne fruit.
On June 8, the government announced it would allow 200 skilled staff in – a very welcome relief, but short of the 500 requested, which was itself well under the number actually needed.
Farmers from all over the country responded to the call by Feds national board member Chris Lewis to write to the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Agriculture and Immigration to talk firsthand about the stress of long hours spurred by serious workforce shortages (see opposite).
With many hundreds of dairy vacancies advertised and unfilled, and the calving season just around the corner, the government’s decision will help some of the workers stuck overseas return to their jobs on Kiwi farms.
Chris says it’s heart-wrenching to read about the struggles people are having every day to keep their farms running in the face of workforce gaps.
ACT leader David Seymour, guest speaker at the Feds Manawatu-Rangitikei AGM last month (see page 11), said pastoral farmers and horticulturists have in a way been made an extension of the Ministry of Social Development.
“To quote Shane Jones, it seems like it’s become your role to get the nephs off the couch.”
Our available labour market was too small for employers to be able to run successful businesses without a level of migrant workers, Seymour said.
In amidst huge backlogs of residency and visa applications, complicated by pandemic fall-out, families are being separated for months, and years.
JOEY’S STORY:
RUSSIAN TRIP MAY BE BEST CHANCE
Janamjot Singh Ghuman – Joey to his friends in New Zealand – is looking at travelling from India to Russia and living there for a fortnight, just to improve his chances of getting back to a job waiting for him in Southland.
Joey came to New Zealand in 2011 to study agriculture and liked our farming systems. He later worked for five seasons on Steve Bailey’s dairy farm in Te Puke, and followed that up with a two and a half year stint on Rex and Lesley Brown’s farm in the same district. He won the Bay of Plenty Dairy Farm Manager of the Year Award in 2019.
He went back to India and in January 2020 got married. By February, COVID-19 was on the rise. He came back to New Zealand, hoping his wife would be able to join him a few months later. But, as we all learned, ‘‘things changed big time’’ on
the pandemic front, he says.
He achieved residency at the end of 2020, and hoped that would help with reuniting him with his wife. He tried three times for a partners of residents visa for her, to no avail.
Earlier this year he was offered a job on the Southland farm of Mike McDonald and Kathie Lucas, contract milking 450 cows. Immigration NZ and every advisor he talked to suggested his best course was to go back to India, stay with his wife for a month, then he had a better chance of being able to bring her home.
Reluctantly, he left in February and landed a booking for Managed Isolation Quarantine for his return. His wife was finally granted a visa on April 1, and they had flights booked for April 20, when COVID-19 went through India like wildfire and travel was suspended.
Joey says ever since then it has been a nightmare of emails, cancelled bookings and uncertainty.
He has applied for a visitor visa for Russia on advice that if he stays there for 14 days, it may be easier for him to get back into NZ.
Mike McDonald says the background checks with former employers he carried out indicate Joey is ‘‘an exceptional farmer’’. While desperately trying to get back himself, Joey nevertheless arranged cover for the contract position in Southland until he could do so. Mike, 71, came down from Nelson and got on the tractor and shifted fences himself for a fortnight
to relieve pressure.
He is angry and baffled why Joey was advised to return to India and travel back with his wife, when simple logic and pandemic risk reduction suggests his wife getting on a plane from India and going into MIQ here was the best course.
All concerned are stressed out disrupted with the situation.
Mike says another excellent migrant manager on another of his farms in Southland employed a young Kiwi to give him a start but is still two staff short, with calving on the horizon.
‘‘You just can’t get nearly enough staff to milk cows in Southland. It’s a pretty dire situation (with clamps on migrants).’’
MARK’S STORY: HE’S GOING HOME
and
Mark Purugganan loves his farm manager role on Bridget and James McNally’s Maheno property, and enjoys the Oamaru lifestyle. But he has ‘‘lost hope’’ of being reunited with his family and will go back to the Philippines.
Mark has worked in agriculture roles here for nine years, the last three and a half with the McNallys. Bridget describes him as ‘‘high calibre, highly skilled and a great worker’’. The couple had been helping him apply for residency, but delays seemed endless.
His wife took their five and two-yearold sons back to the Philippines because
they have severe excema and the warmer, more humid climate helps. The idea was that Mark travelled to visit them every six months or so.
And then the pandemic intervened. The last time Mark go to see them was December 2019.
His wife’s visa eventually expired, and there’s a huge backlog of renewal applications. Reluctantly, Mark is giving up his work here to go back to the Philippines.
Bridget says despite serious dairy workforce gaps in Otago, they’re hopeful of finding another farm manager. But it will probably be someone attracted from another farm in the district, ‘‘so I just feel it’s shifting the problem on to someone else’’.
Despite paying a lot of tax, skilled workers like Mark aren’t eligible for Kiwisaver, pay top dollar for doctor appointments and miss out on other benefits.
‘‘I thought we were meant to be a country of diversity and inclusion but people like Mark are not treated as Kiwis, even though - surely after nine years? they are.’’
Bridget says if his wife and sons had been allowed back to New Zealand, Mark would have been spending and investing his income in New Zealand, helping our economy. As it was, he was sending most of his pay packet to the Philippines.
The system just seems back to front, she says.