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Pacific Island "Guestworkers"

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kennas said:
Yes, my comment was slightly unthoughtful. How would aboriginies from northern Australia get down to the grape and fruit growing areas? And, how would they cope with being with their families? Impossible.

Sorry, touching on sarcastic now, and should be in another thread maybe. Or, perhaps it's linked. Pacific Islanders cross the shore to pick fruit, while aboriginies stay in Arnham Land, etc.

Maybe I'm not looking at this clearly right now, sorry.
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I have to echo your somewhat sarcastic tone here, Kennas.
And yes, of course if the airfares etc are intended to be paid for Pacific Island workers then they would likewise be paid for indigenous people to travel from their communities to where the work exists.

Nunthewiser has probably made the essential point (leaving out the bit about robbing grannies!) that harvesting work is mostly paid on productivity.
So if you can hack the physical demands and are motivated, then you can make money.

Who pays the airfares? Not sure but I got the impression that it was the government, so therefore, yes it would be a subsidy to the farmers.
Isn't that better than letting the fruit and vegetables rot on the ground because no one will pick them?

Hell, the government (we taxpayers) subsidise other industries so what's a bit more? Better than pouring money into car manufacturers who produce cars no one wants to buy any more.

Spaghetti, I accept your point about the downside. But if people are willing to leave their homes and families to go and work in the mines for extended periods, then it doesn't seem that fondness for the homefront is the determining factor.

I've spoken with plenty of people who follow the harvesting around Australia. It becomes a lifestyle for them. They like the outdoor work and say they can make really good money. It's always possible to find a reason not to work if you don't want to and the government says it's fine to sit at home.
 
Well Julia we have tried to get work at mines and fruit picking and do not even get to interview stage.

So jobs are not there for taking. Certainly not enough to cover expenses while on the road. I did it for nearly 3 years and though partly covered by the road show we did ,we still spent an obscene amount of our own money.
 
Well, I don't know, Spaghetti. I'm not discounting your experience.
But I hardly think the government is going to be going to all the trouble of importing workers from neighbouring countries if there is nothing to do when they get here.
 
Well I think it is they want those that can be easily exploited.

btw another interesting tidbit from this morning phone call with harvest trail, there was some work near Bowen I think, but they were looking for locals.??
 
Spaghetti said:
Well Julia we have tried to get work at mines and fruit picking and do not even get to interview stage.

So jobs are not there for taking. Certainly not enough to cover expenses while on the road. I did it for nearly 3 years and though partly covered by the road show we did ,we still spent an obscene amount of our own money.
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Believe me , the works there m8 , its just these days it pays to show initiative and go to the employers directly , i have just come from geraldton WA and they hiring ppl from the pubs , quite strange actually . i moved to tassy now and work all over the huon valley in the fruit industry , know of work in gympie and bundaberg picking tomatoes , capsicums etc and similar in different seasons that dont appear at the job offices , its there m8 ya just gotta want it and be willing to go direct and ask
 
As much as I dislike lazy and shiftless people, I can well understand why anyone would shun doing harvest trail work.
I live near one of the major vegetable growing regions in Australia. The local farmers rely heavily on seasonal workers from overseas....mainly South Koreans, with a sprinkling of Indians, Irish, Japanese and Taiwanese, and sundry other assorted races. They will also employ Australians.....except that very few Australians are willing to do the work.
And I can't say I blame them.
A few months ago I helped out a local farmer for a few weeks when he called me and said he couldn't find enough tractor drivers for his broccoli harvest.
Broccoli is harvested by people who walk through the crop, following a tractor that carries large plastic bins on a rear-mounted boom. Work starts at daylight during winter and goes until mid to late afternoon. Six days a week, sometimes seven if the farmer has to fill a big order from a supermarket.
It's an awful job for the cutters.....their clothes get soaked from the dew on the crop, they walk all day, constantly bending to cut off the broccoli heads at ground level, then straightening up to toss them into the bins on the tractor. They're always wet and cold, particularly if it rains.....broccoli harvest doesn't stop just because it's raining.
Rain coats and other wet weather gear are bulky and impractical for them, due to the physical nature of the work.
There was just one portable loo for 30 odd workers, and if management got a bit slack in moving it as necessary, we were sometimes up to a 1km from this toilet. Not too much of a problem for the blokes...they can just open their fly and relieve themselves pretty much anywhere, but a real problem for the sprinkling of females among the cutting teams. (A word of warning here....make sure you wash any broccoli you buy in the shops......I saw more than one bloke who was none too careful with his aim when nature called!!)
No drinking water provided, and no room on the tractors for the cutters to carry drinking supplies. No penalty rates of any kind - same rate of pay on weekends as week days.
How much an hour? I wouldn't do this sort of work if you paid me 50 or 60 an hour, but the cutters were getting between $7 and $22 an hour. They started off on $17 an hour, but after the first two weeks the farmer decided it was working out too expensive, and he changed them to a contract rate of $22 per bin. In a heavy-yielding crop they could cut enough broccoli to fill a bin in about an hour. Other times it took up to three hours.

Small wonder that Australians are unwilling to work for such low wages under such appalling conditions. Small wonder that the farmers have to get overseas labour to fill the void.
One of my kids is doing harvest trail work while she fills in a couple of years prior to starting uni. She's currently picking pumpkins at Bowen in north QLD. Works six days a week for roughly $700. She's on $18 an hour but many days they only work part days due to weather, or if they run out of ripe pumpkins. Here again the work is horrifically hard, walking and bending all day long, no additional pay on weekends.
Last year she picked apples and grapes in NSW. Grapes were OK and she earned pretty good money. Apples were not so good....she earned less than $100 a day on contract rate, and even the fastest and most experienced pickers who have travelled the circuit for years, were earning no more than average wages.
 
nunthewiser said:
Believe me , the works there m8 , its just these days it pays to show initiative and go to the employers directly , ... that dont appear at the job offices , its there m8 ya just gotta want it and be willing to go direct and ask
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No wonder they can't find employees then...why don't they use all these new technologies for advertising vacancies, like newspapers and internets etc.?
 
i think they do use these services too spagetti , i dunno , just through personal experience im quoting , i too travelled round oz for a few years but didnt have a problem finding work even on my last trip 6 /7 years back i was offered work but id seen the light by then and ran as fast as i could . i havent got an answer , just know that theres a lot more work out there if you bypass the agencys in that line of work
 
Timmy said:
No wonder they can't find employees then...why don't they use all these new technologies for advertising vacancies, like newspapers and internets etc.?
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Yes true, no sympathy from me that they cannot find labour. The government sets up a hotline and they only advertise award rate vacancies on the job search site and few of those.

So they have themselves to blame perhaps. Poor business management.
 
Guest workers would fix the problem but we would need to do a head count at end of season to make sure they are all sent back otherwise it would be worse than the cane toad problem.
 
nunthewiser said:
i think they do use these services too spagetti , i dunno , just through personal experience im quoting , i too travelled round oz for a few years but didnt have a problem finding work even on my last trip 6 /7 years back i was offered work but id seen the light by then and ran as fast as i could . i havent got an answer , just know that theres a lot more work out there if you bypass the agencys in that line of work
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Well seems a picture emerges that the better paid jobs do not need to be advertised. The backpacker hostels and local pubs are al they need to fill the jobs. Hence there is no shortage of people willing to work for fair pay.

Robert Tom : Some growers are not good at growing or maintaining a crop ,and they do not attract workers...these are the ones that will benefit most from the guestworker scheme.
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So seems the ones that advertise may well be the ones that have poor operations and require low paid workers to survive. So we are aiding inefficient business essentially. Or perhaps those with crops adversely affected by weather. So no job can be given to a guestworker that has not already been offered to an Australian. If they advertise like this then there will be plenty of guest workers out of work.

I tend to believe the guest workers will have logistical support ensuring ongoing work and transfers so not not think it will resemble anything offered to Australians. You simply will not drive for days and pay high petrol prices for work at $14 for two weeks.
 
One practice that goes on is for groups of workers to get together and contract to take off the whole crop for a farmers.Thats OK ,but their structure leaves a lot to be desired.They are usually Cambodian or similar ethnic groups with limited English.They have a boss man with passable English that negotiates with the farmer....the Boss man gets his cut off the top and workers are paid varying rates according to their experience etc...two years ago some were being paid as low a $8 an hour...not one was earning the minimum hourly rate...No superannuation either.
These groups seem to have most of the picking,pruning etc in Adelaide Hills ..some in Sunraysia that I knew about.
Good for the boss man and the grower...no good for the workers.
I know that there are plenty of local workers that are excluded from seasonal picking by these arrangements.
 
robert toms said:
One practice that goes on is for groups of workers to get together and contract to take off the whole crop for a farmers.Thats OK ,but their structure leaves a lot to be desired.They are usually Cambodian or similar ethnic groups with limited English.They have a boss man with passable English that negotiates with the farmer....the Boss man gets his cut off the top and workers are paid varying rates according to their experience etc...two years ago some were being paid as low a $8 an hour...not one was earning the minimum hourly rate...No superannuation either.
These groups seem to have most of the picking,pruning etc in Adelaide Hills ..some in Sunraysia that I knew about.
Good for the boss man and the grower...no good for the workers.
I know that there are plenty of local workers that are excluded from seasonal picking by these arrangements.
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This reminds of the group out Emerald way. No english but a eastern European accent my spouse could partly understand. They were probably paid a low wage but then expenses taken out and they were left with $30-$40 for the week. They lived four to a room. Fancy living in such close quarters with people you work with? Yet better for them than be isolated in a foreign country. Not sure Pacific Islanders will tolerate this. The company ferrying them around made most of the money. Workers could not even afford to escape. Slightly better than jail...just!
 
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