Quota could increase to 16,000 over the next two years.
Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway has increased the cap on the number of visas granted to temporary seasonal workers, but half of the promised increase is conditional on growers improving conditions for workers.
The Recognised Seasonal Employer quota will increase by more than 3000 to 16,000 over the next two years. This includes 1550 in the 2019/2020 season and another 1600 in the following year.
But Lees-Galloway said the second increase was conditional on employers’ improvements to worker accommodation, and making the job more attractive to Kiwi workers.
A growing sector
He told NBR the horticulture and viticulture sectors were “absolutely thriving and projecting significant growth” but still faced challenges around improving wages, conditions, exploitation, and housing.
The country’s horticulture export revenue jumped 13.7% to $6.1 billion in the year to 30 June 2019. It’s expected to grow by another 3.8% to $6.3b in the current financial year.
When the scheme was established in 2006, the number of visas was capped at 5000.
“I’m confident that by increasing the number of seasonal workers that they can source from the Pacific that will help them get the security that they need, that they’ve got workforce to get the fruit off the trees, and also help to create good jobs for people working across the country,” Lees-Galloway said.
“The employers tell us if they know the people are coming they can provide the accommodation.”
A fifth of the workforce
Despite the increase to overseas seasonal workers, primarily from the Pacific, that the changes enabled, Lee-Galloway maintained that the seasonal worker visa scheme only provided 20 per cent of the growers’ workforce.
He listed Hawke’s Bay, the Bay of Plenty, Auckland and Otago as some of the regions most reliant on the visa scheme, despite a large population of unemployed youth.
He said growers could now be confident in building more worker accommodation that would in turn attract more Kiwi workers to the rapidly growing sector, and further increases to the cap would be judged accordingly.
“We’ll be looking at improvements in wages, we’ll certainly be looking at the amount of worker accommodation that’s being built,” he said.
The right direction
Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman said the Government was moving in the right direction with the initial increase.
“RSE workers are playing a key role in the horticulture industry’s continued growth in response to rising export and domestic demand,” Chapman said.
The scheme paid seasonal workers from the Pacific more than $50m in the past season.
Employers and Manufacturers Association chief executive Brett O’Riley said the changes would be “a significant help” to growers.
“Our members have long been frustrated by the difficulty in attracting local workers and a shortage of overseas workers to process their crops, especially in the Bay of Plenty.”
He said the requirement for the industry to prove it was making these jobs more attractive for local workers might be a little difficult to do, but the condition on employers to provide adequate and suitable accommodation for foreign workers was a fair requirement.
Too little too late
Act leader David Seymour called the announcement “too little, too late”, especially with the harvest of strawberries beginning next month and growers still awaiting allocations from the latest announcement.
“Last year, growers reported up to a quarter of their crops rotting in the ground and lost export orders due to labour shortages caused by the lack of workers.
