Does the hiring man need binoculars?

Alliance has persuaded Immigration New Zealand that it needs to hire 100 workers for its Lorneville plant. So now it can.

The co-operative has put rather less effort into persuading Southlanders, so reaction to the news is nothing if not mixed.

It’s no small thing that the Government department says the company stumped up with the supporting evidence that there just weren’t enough Kiwis or people with residence class visas to be trained to do the work.

So this is a case where we have a winner, pure and simple?

Maybe, as a snapshot of the here-and-now situation.

Whether this truly needed to be the here-and-now situation is different question.

Much of the sting in the meat workers’ union case is that Alliance hasn’t been truly open to gaining, training and retaining a more local workforce.

The company would dispute that, and it produces an intimidating figure when it says that labour shortages and absenteeism combined are costing it $20 million a year. Can’t be having that.

Alliance also cites an acceptance rate of 84 per cent for candidates who meet medical criteria including passing a drug test.

The union, however, talks of 700 Southlanders turned being away from the plant last season.

Does this make them make them a pack of terribly infirm, drugaddled no-hopers. Not necessarily. These jobs, Alliance says, ‘‘can be physically demanding’’. But the union invokes the spectre of, among other things, age bias with only one of the 100 most recently hired workers being over 50.

Implicit in its reproach is that the when it comes to local recruitment, Alliance is more willing to look elsewhere – specifically its long term partner, the giant Chinese outfit Grand Farm – as a source of willing workers of, shall we say, reasonable expectations about their own entitlements.

Immigration NZ’s job is surely, at least in part, to ensure that overseas recruitment isn’t used as a restraint on wages and conditions, but as the necessary solution to problems. And yet, the closeness with which Alliance keeps some of its cards remains a discomfort, even so.

Apparently it’s ‘‘too early to say’’ where it will be sourcing the workers. Or their accommodation needs.

But these people will be needed between January and May, which strongly suggests there’s a difference between it being too early to say, and too early to know full well. The timing of the news of the 100 jobs co-incided with a significant piece of unassailably good news for Alliance.

Also on Thursday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was opening Alliance’s new $15.9 million venison plant. In itself a thoroughly welcome expansion. At peak capacity it’s employing 70 people. These are added to more than 2500 jobs at the peak of the processing season. So it’s hardly as though the co-operative is making a massive-scale shift away from local workers. But that doesn’t make it altogether insignificant.

This decision, says the department, is not to be seen as a precedent, smoothing the way for overseas recruitment to become the path of least resistance for the company in future.

It shouldn’t be.

Apparently it’s ‘‘too early to say’’ where it will be sourcing the workers. Or their accommodation needs.