Stormer999

Forgive me for liking the country I know call home and wanting to defend it. It seems I am obviously on the wrong Forum...Maybe it is time to join all of my fellow ex posters and just settle down and enjoy my new found happiness and divorce my readings from others who dislike what the country and people have to offer.

LoCarb

Poor people, unemployed people, solo parents, people on benefits.

Kotare

Relax - I just come on to occasionally rebut some of the falsely negative comments often driven purely by political viewpoints. Potential migrants need that balance or they would run screaming from the hellhole in the Pacific that is NZ (of course that would limit the migration rate so perhaps I am wrong :-)

jmh

Hard working unskilled labourers and factory workers are still heading off to Australia which pays it's low skilled workers higher wages. Some reports from clients of mine say up to 30% higher. I guess we have to replace them somehow.

jmh

I'm inclined to agree. It's spooky how the headlines in both countries are so similar. Crime, booze, immigration etc.. In fact, so spooky I can't help wondering whether there really is a hidden hand ruling the globe.

LoCarb

Got it in one. Roll on TPP.

LittleGreyCat

Well, I'm not totally clear on this but if they are advertising for people who are lazy and on drugs to fill in for the locals I might give it a go.

LittleGreyCat

Sigh back at you.

The UK (amongst many other countries including NZ and the USA) has the same perennial problem.

Low paid seasonal work is the mainstay of agriculture; picking apples in NZ or picking cabbages in Lincolnshire.

Back in the day the migrant work force used to be sourced from the local cities (as for hop pickers in Kent) or used to travel the country following the work (such as the herring gutters who followed the fleets around the coast).

There is no such pool of cheap labour in the UK these days, and presumably not in NZ either. It is not possible to live and buy a house and raise well educated kids just on low paid seasonal work. In the UK people are generally in permanent low paid jobs or on the dole and housing benefit. They also know a lot more about their rights, about H&S at work, about the minimum wage and maximum working week.

The solution is to import cheap labour from somewhere with a low cost of living and probably a low standard of living as well.

In the UK this tends to be Eastern Europe and Portugal.

In NZ this looks to be the Pacific Islands.

Either increase the wages of the work force and accept that production costs will rise and the cost of produce will rise, or accept that the agricultural (and some others) economy is reliant on cheap labour. If the imported labour can be exploited because of their vulnerability this keeps costs down even further.

This is a global problem not a specific NZ one; the only thing specific to NZ is the source of the pool of cheap easily exploited labour.

Back in the day (before the welfare state and cheap international travel) industry relied on locally exploited cheap labour on starvation wages. Mining companies even had their own currency which could only be spent at the company store.

These days in First World countries there is little supply of cheap and vulnerable labour locally (thank $Deity) so people turn a blind eye to the exploitation of immigrant labour because their food is cheap.

So the sentiment is almost correct; immigrant slave(ish) labour is required to maintain the economy because the locals are too well educated and savvy to be exploited in this way. Not because they are lazy druggies.

Kotare

Slightly off topic (again). I liked this quote from a local candidate in the imminent Mayoral elections.

'It is learned skill to be able to say there is an answer - and the answer is 'No'. People might not like the answer but they appreciate getting it straight'.

MrsFychan

wasn't it Norman Tebbit who was misquoted as telling the unemployed to "get on their bikes" but it still made an impact.

then you had the youth scheme in the UK, can't remember its name, where they were pay below minimum wage to work. My son was on one such scheme and said it was slave labour and once the 6 weeks were up no offer of "real" employment just move on and the next lot came in.

My daughter here in NZ has a job she is under 16 so there is no law for her being on minimum wage, it only counts when she is 16 yet she is doing the same work as all the others and is paid less because of the 16 years old rule, how is that fair?

I have a friend working in the new Kapiti express way/Transmission gully and they have the Pacific Islanders working, or not as she tells it.


But to be fair its not just the lower paid jobs where the problem lies, it seems very hard to get rid of anyone in a job once they have it, even if that cannot do the work. MrF has seen first hand the difficulty of getting good people into roles that are filled by people that are just not up to it.
The attitude that jobs for the "boys" (meaning friends of friends etc) is very prevalent in NZ and that needs to stop.

Give a living wage, not minimum wage, look after the people in jobs and upskill them if necessary. Make it easier to claim welfare for the people doing seasonal work so it is beneficial to work away from home for the months they are away. If they have done seasonal work and can show that they would be back again give them a higher benefit when waiting for work than those that seemingly not bothered.

LoCarb

Freezing works/meat works never have trouble filling seasonal vacancies because they pay good wages.

SSky

It was about $25 for a full apple crate (That's a huge crate that you could hitch on the back of a tractor) when I did it, back breaking work and the seasoned workers were very scary, if you accidentally picked an apple from their side of the tree there was outright war.

Kotare

If growers paid a much higher rate they would go out of business (as the citrus growers are around Keri). Less orchardists, less NZ jobs. I know, lets start erecting tariff barriers like in the 1950-70s to keep out those nasty imports. Then we can start a thread 'Rip off apples at $2 each'

Damn, if we erect tariff barriers other countries won't accept our exports..... and so on ad infinitum.

SSky

The apple picking was about 11 yrs ago now so maybe the pay may be slightly better but I honestly doubt it.
Tomato picking was $12.50 an hr, another seasonal job I did, you went home yellow from all the tomato plant sap and dehydrated from working in a glass house but you had a nice healthy tan.
Dairy farming was another seasonal job I did for $19 an hr and free petrol, meat for the freezer and milk which sounds awesome but you have to get up at 2am and go back again a 2pm ... 2 milkings a day. And you freeze in the winter. Dairy ended my love of working in the rural industry, not the shite hours, it was the jersey bull that attacked me in the milking yard and left me unable to walk for 12 wks that really did it and ACC did not come to the party for all of those 12 wks until my MRI proved my injury.
Seasonal work sucks, but if you're a migrant and you want money you will do it gladly with a smile on your face for a while at least until you find something better.
Retail is another industry that pays rubbish money $16.50 an hr to take loads of abuse from managers and supervisors and do everything from cleaning to book keeping.
Key is just a rich man who has never ever had to dirty his hands in any of these industries, he won't have a clue. I can't wait to vote him out.

Justcol

You've had two opportunities to vote him out already !!

He made a decision to better himself and support his single parent mother after watching her struggle to pay off debts that were left to her by his father. Lived in a caravan for a while, then a state house,left alone at night while his mum went to work. A hard life doesn't always involve doing low paid work.


Decided as a kid that he would a) make a million dollars and b) become prime minister. walked away from a chance at potentially one of the biggest jobs in the world, Global CEO of Merrill Lynch.


Under his leadership two global recessions practically pass by NZ without causing a ripple or any major job losses, NZ economy rates as one of the most stable in the world. Despite all the protests, no one is drilling for oil or digging up DOC land, he wasn't responsible for the Rena disaster or the Christchurch earthquake, although the way people whinge about it you'd think both events were all his fault


Vote for Andrew Little if you think he can do better, its a democracy after all, but don't start bleating on about how crap he is a year or two down the line when the greens and the racist NZ first and Mana party are calling all the shots