Pandemic a chance to re-think NZ's reliance on migrant workers, and their treatment

The Maxim Institute study also found that they system allows too many workers to be exploited.

While industries usually reliant on temporary migrant labour struggle to find workers as the Covid-19 pandemic continues, unions say it’s an opportunity for the country to re-think how it treats migrant workers and address local skill and labour shortages.

Alongside several organisations, the Unite Union supported an open letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern which stated: “While you have told the country to stay at home many of us have worked … I think now you understand that we are essential to New Zealand.”

It added: “We are not asking you to allow new people to come here because New Zealanders now need jobs, but those of us who are already working are needed as well to keep the businesses running … we can train the New Zealanders now looking for work.”

Unite Union national secretary Gerard Hehir said the letter was written out of migrant workers’ “fear of the situation and what was going to happen”. It called for change on long-standing issues regarding an increasingly difficult path to residency that was often closely tied to an employer, putting people at risk of exploitation as they were less likely to speak out. 

Because of this, he said the migants’ jobs themselves needed to change, with the pandemic providing an “opportunity to take stock” as international travel dried up. About 30 to 40 per cent of the union’s members were migrants on temporary visas or working towards citizenship.

“How do we change those jobs fundamentally, to make them higher pay and a more reliable income?” he said.

“Either we actually transform these jobs to make them so that we don’t need to bring workers in and get the skills [locally], or we at least need to take the people who are already here [and] willing.

“These workers are often willing. They will shift and they will train. 

“For most of them, the chance at a path to residency and citizenship, you know, they’ll walk over broken glass. They really would.”

Despite the opportunity, Mr Hehir said he was worried about "tough on immigration" stances often seen during the lead up to an election, especially as unemployment rose.

He said treating migrant workers as “second-class citizens” to be brought in when required then booted out when they weren’t wasn’t new.

Mr Hehir said the same unequal treatment was evident during the pandemic, even though some of the workers had been in New Zealand for years.

“A lot of them have just lost their jobs. If these were New Zealand citizens, what the Government effectively told them, ‘you go and queue up at the food bank’, we wouldn’t put up with it,” he said, with some people unable to access benefits because of their immigration status .

Dennis Maga, FIRST Union general secretary and founder of the union’s migrant-led section, said he’d heard similar stories. As commercial flights out of the country stopped, some were stranded in the country.

“One of them contacted us. They only had $60 in their pocket,” he said.

Mr Maga said some migrant workers also reported employers misusing the Government’s Wage Subsidy Scheme or changing their pay and hours. 

“Some of them will be vulnerable to exploitation because a lot of them will be desperate to find a job.

“I think some employers, especially the rogue ones, will be using this opportunity to pay them under the table.”

However he, too, was cautiously hopeful for some change after the pandemic.

“But I think we have to manage expectations because of the potential high unemployment,” Mr Maga said.

“Some of them may lose the opportunity to renew their visa, and eventually, they have to go back to their country of origin. 

“But we are also seeing that some other industries, particularly the health sector, for construction and the agricultural sectors, they will continue to rely on migrant workers because these are not skills you can actually learn overnight.”

But he said this should come alongside an investment and training of local talent.

Shuffling labour around — easier said than done

Researcher Julian Wood, from conservative think tank the Maxim Institute, said the country was now seeing some of the effects of its decades-long reliance on lower and higher-skilled migrant workers to plug labour and skills shortages.

Mr Wood said the “sharp transition” to a post-Covid-19 economy was a chance to move away from the status quo.

“Rather than returning to what we had in the past, I think we can start looking at long-term solutions. Part of that is training and upskilling people in New Zealand.”

Mr Wood said solutions could look like the Government attaching a training condition to infrastructure projects or removing student loan limits to encourage re-training.

"Let’s invest in people here. Some of that will be migrants who can't leave, but a lot of it will be shifting New Zealanders from one sector to another.”

Mr Wood published a paper in February which outlined some of the consequences of the ongoing use of temporary workers. It stated that some downsides included making some vulnerable to exploitation and dampening local wages. It acknowledged some benefits with the current system for people looking to support their family overseas.

However, Mr Wood said shuffling labour around was easier said than done. 

"These jobs, traditionally, were undertaken by migrants — jobs that weren't hugely desirable for local workers. 

“They didn't pay as much as people wanted or they were just difficult jobs or they were in the wrong places or work was seasonal."

He said Covid-19 gave industries reliant on temporary migrant workers a chance to better their work conditions and wages as they try to adapt their existing recruitment strategies — such as helping with travel costs, providing accommodation and pastoral care — to target Kiwis and migrant workers already in the country. 

"The world has changed. So, if you're looking at even just employing someone, for example, you might have to increase the wage,” he said.

“At the same time, you're going to have to spend more money on training people. You're going to have increased costs recruiting people and then you also might have increased costs around pastoral care.

"A lot of these things can be repurposed for local workers to help [them] get over this initial shock of shifting."

This investment would come at a cost for businesses, Mr Wood said. But, he added it could also have flow-on effects in encouraging further efficiency and productivity solutions, especially as wages rose.

“There will be a lot of tension out there at the moment — people have been made redundant and people are shifting around ... how we treat migrants in this period is kind of a bit of a litmus test to who we are.”

The pressure continues

In the meantime, migrant worker-reliant industries continue to feel the pressure.

For the dairy sector, industry organisation DairyNZ said by the end of September, 2500 visas of migrant staff currently working in dairy farms were due to expire.

DairyNZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle said even if all migrant dairy workers already in the country were retained, the industry would still be looking at a shortfall of about 1000 employees for the coming season starting in June.

“We are going to need to take a two-pronged approach to address the staffing shortfall that will include both retaining our migrant workforce and recruiting new Kiwis into our dairy sector,” he said.

Alongside Federated Farmers, it asked the Government to extend visas for its migrant staff “while Kiwis get onboard and up to speed”. 

Meanwhile, the horticultural industry said seasonal labour shortages could threaten the country’s food supply, RNZ reported .

In Parliament, a bill amending immigration legislation in the light of Covid-19 had its first reading on Tuesday. The bill aimed to give the Government powers for 12 months to change people’s visa status as a group instead of a case-by-case basis. This could include extending visas, relaxing employment conditions or stopping people overseas from making applications while the country’s borders are closed.

Some work visa rules had already been relaxed last month, including allowing people to change their roles or hours.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment estimated in August last year about 1 in 10 of the population was in the country on a migrant visa. This included residency, student and work visas, with about 193,000 people on the latter.

SHARE ME

More Stories