WWOOF gets tough on cheap labour use
The Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) scheme says it constantly turns away prospective hosts seeking freebie labour.
‘‘We’d turn away one a day,’’ WWOOF New Zealand director Andrew Strange said.
Out of more than 2000 hosts on its register, about 10 a year were removed for failing to meet the organisation’s standards, either for ‘‘inappropriate behaviour or not providing a learning experience’’, he said.
His comments follow Labour Inspectorate claims that thousands of young travellers were exploited by Robinwood Farm on the outskirts of Christchurch where they worked for company director Julia Osselton’s firewood and gardening businesses.
Described as an organic WWOOFing property on its Facebook page, Robinwood was recently ordered by the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) to pay two workers wages and holiday pay arrears.
The ERA was told the workers were fed food gathered from supermarket waste bins and slept in a small unheated storage room under the stairs.
Strange said Robinwood Farm was refused official WWOOF host registration in 2013 because the property was not ‘‘organic’’.
When he discovered Osselton’s Karamea Holiday Homes business had registered with WWOOF under a different name, it too was removed.
Osselton refused to comment when The Press visited the run-down property in Old Tai Tapu Rd yesterday.
New Zealand hosts about 11,000 WWOOFers annually and Strange said they received few complaints from workers.
‘‘We now reject more [host] applications than we accept because a lot of people are coming to us saying, ‘we need help doing this work’, and we say ‘that’s not what this is about, it’s about learning’.’’
According to a WWOOF newsletter, if the host was alongside the WWOOFer teaching them and varying their activities, that was unlikely to be considered employment.
But if the WWOOFer was shown how to do a task and was left to do it every morning for a week, ‘‘that is beginning to look like an employment situation’’.