Demands for seasonal workers in Australia are increasing

Rich and poor share the harvest

April 28, 2008

Demands for seasonal workers in Australia are increasing. Hamish McDonald reports on a successful scheme in rural New Zealand.

ONE ON each side of a vine-row, Stephen Melake and Jacob Mauruan set a cracking pace, snipping off bunches of tiny purple grapes, tossing them into plastic baskets, then jogging to the next plant. Behind them is a trail of full baskets.

It has been a hard morning already in the Fishtail vineyard, covering a hillside looking over a rugged valley in New Zealand's South Island. The autumn sun is still strong, and a stiff wind sends up clouds of dust from the vehicle tracks, whitening the crinkly hair of the two young Vanuatuans. But, after a quick lunch break, they are not letting up.

In just a few years, operations such as Fishtail have transformed this Central Otago area into one of the world's biggest producers of pinot noir, along with Burgundy in France and Oregon in the US, adding a large volume of the fine red to New Zealand's long-established output of white wines.

Previously, grazing land here was almost worthless. Then an introduced virus killed off the rabbits that were eating the slopes bare, farmers churned up the underlying schist with backhoes, and investors began paying $NZ30,000 a hectare for the cachet of setting up their own vineyard.

But there was a catch. The flow of seasonal workers from NZ and Australia who used to pick the grapes, the apples and pears, and the stone fruit of Central Otago tapered off as both economies neared full employment. Backpackers with working holiday visas from Europe and elsewhere filled the gap but they tend to party hard and leave without warning mid-harvest.

Enter, workers from Pacific island nations under a seasonal labour scheme introduced by the NZ Government. After a short pilot scheme last year about 5000 mostly young workers from Western Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu - including Mr Melake and Mr Mauruan - have spent six months in New Zealand's orchards and vineyards.

With encouragement from the World Bank, the Rudd Government has been considering a similar scheme after it was rejected by the previous prime minister, John Howard, although Mr Howard's minister for foreign affairs, Alexander Downer, recently admitted he supported it.

This week the Australian Workers Union, one of the Federation-era institutions that had forced the deportation of the indentured Pacific Island workers known as "blackbirds" from Queensland's canefields, dropped its opposition, too - as long as no Australian workers were displaced, and seasonal workers were paid full local rates.

The National Farmers Federation also came out fully in favour this month, in a report forecasting a shortfall of 22,000 unskilled workers in Australia's $7 billion-a-year horticultural industry as the drought ends.

It proposes a trial over the next harvest season, starting about October, putting 500 to 1000 islanders in each of three locations such as Emerald in Queensland, Mildura and Swan Hill in Victoria, or Griffith or the Northern Rivers in NSW. Ultimately it thinks up to 10,000 could come from countries in the Pacific and South-East Asia, with the conditions set by the union.

"Farmers are desperate for workers," said the federation's workplace relations manager, Denita Wawn. "We hear stories of $100,000 to $150,000 in lost production because it's not picked, or not picked at the right time, and about labour turnover costs going up from $10,000 a year to $100,000."

New Zealand's experience should be encouraging to critics who on one side worry about workers jumping their visas or becoming socially disruptive, and on the other fear that employers and middlemen will exploit them.

Josaiah Iaken, 27, a father of three from the village of Tanyeba in Vanuatu's volcanic island of Tanna, was among the 45 recruited from his country for the pilot scheme. He and 41 others have returned, along with 188 they helped choose.

Before he heads home next month, Mr Iaken will go up to Blenheim to meet a further 40 men from Tanna who will arrive to do winter pruning and backhoe work in the wine region of Marlborough. "I'll be showing them how to buy food and use electric stuff because some of them won't know," he said after attending Sunday prayers at the Presbyterian church in Cromwell. "It's the first time they'll be in a big country like this."

Mr Iaken believes he will have saved about $NZ5000 ($4200) when he leaves, after paying off the $1500 advance for his airfare and settling-in costs, and living a quiet life in farm-worker hostels. He looks forward to coming for a further five years or so. "I want to build a good house for my family and put in a solar panel so my kids can have lights to study and read books," he said. "After that, I want to start a small business, maybe buy a rental house in Port Vila."

Next morning Mr Iaken and five other Tanna men are finishing the harvest at the Burn Cottage vineyard, where the manager, John Callaghan, is full of admiration for their spirit. "They've found it very hard," he said. "It's relentless work and it gets very cold down here. I don't know how many old football jumpers and fleeces I've handed over. Even tough Kiwis find it hard."

The knowledge that good workers will get regular seven-month visas is a powerful incentive to knuckle down and avoid trouble. Some problems have come from alcohol but few repeat the experiment.

"They all want to please, and see themselves as ambassadors of their country - to get a warning is pretty serious," says Basil Goodman, the managing director of Seasonal Solutions, the co-operative venture of Otago growers that handles recruitment, work allocation, payroll, tax, accident insurance, banking and accommodation. "Out of the present 230, only one or two won't be invited back."

A large part of the pastoral care for the islanders comes from the "hostel mums" running the accommodation, who help with problems as diverse as forgotten PIN numbers, finding supplies of taro, and homesickness. "At first one or two were aghast at having 'black men' in their hostels," says Dr Manjula Luthria, the World Bank's regional economist based in Sydney. "By the time they left, the mums were crying and saying they were the best people they'd ever had."

As well as injecting the workers' cash savings and remittances into their villages, the scheme has created linkages that will help economic development back home.

A group of 32 workers from the village of Lolihor, on the island of Ambrym in Vanuatu, raised more than $NZ10,000 from busking with ukulele, tea-chest bass and voices outside Cromwell's bookshop and farmers' market at weekends. Rotary clubs and churches raised more funds for village improvements. Locals for whom overseas meant Britain now plan visits to Vanuatu to see the homes of their guest workers.

Craig Howard, a manager at Seasonal Solutions, has been giving impromptu weekend training in computers and welding. Dr Luthria wants to expand this, possibly through courses at the local polytechnic college in subjects such as business planning and tourism.

In New Zealand it is no longer a pilot scheme, but a fixture. And now there is a new worry. NZ pays its pickers $NZ12.10 an hour, plus 8 per cent holiday pay. In Australia seasonal workers get the minimum wage, about $13 an hour, but piece rates can lift weekly earnings as high as $1000. Although Australia, for political reasons, would be looking more to the north, to Melanesian countries and probably East Timor, New Zealanders worry that their pioneering work will end up benefiting their big neighbour.

"New Zealand is very conscious of the fact that wages here in Australia are higher and that, if this door opens up, there'll be, as Ross Perot said, this great sucking sound," Dr Luthria said.