Concern some RSE workers being taken advantage of, despite damning review
Worker representatives say vulnerable Pasifika people are still being taken advantage of, over two years after a damning review of our Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme found conditions amounting to ‘modern-day slavery’.
Of course the RSE is exploitation!
NZ is built upon a low wage economy.
When bosses say, ‘locals don’t want to work these jobs’, what they really mean is, ‘Locals won’t do back breaking work for a pittance’.
We are scratching our heads as to how we positively influence the Pacific as China encroaches, well how about actual wages for the workers we import and exploit under the RSE?
Talking to blokes inside the packing sheds in Ōpōtiki, they tell me locals are losing jobs and bosses are drafting in RSE workers instead.
The migration exploitation rules are garbage because NZ loves exploiting migrant labour!
We are addicted to it.
We say locals are too lazy for these jobs when really what we say is locals won’t allow themselves to be exploited as easily as migrant workers.
There is of course a solution here.
Universals Union membership for every migrant worker crossing the border.
That way domestic workers know they are not competing against exploited labour.
That way migrant labour can’t be exploited without the Union stepping in.
We need economic resilience, we need community resilience, we need radical reform to strengthen sustainability.
We need more Left Universalism.
We need to lift the tax yoke off working people, beneficiaries and the middle classes and we need to put it on the Banks, the Corporations, the Billionaires and the mega wealthy.
We need more Democratic Infrastructure, not less!
Why do we need these things?
Because the climate is shutting down and we face a bleak future where Billions will suffer and die thanks to catastrophic climate change.
This change will be forced upon us whether we like it or not.
This demands more connections, more bonds that bind us together to emotionally, socially, economically and politically survive what is coming.
Māori communalism is going to teach us a lot.
Here are some thoughts on what the Union movement should be considering:
The Right to Strike: A 10 day nation wide national strike would achieve more for working people than a dozen elections. We don’t have the right to strike in this country for God’s sakes, stand on your feet or live on your knees!
Iwi backed new Supermarket: Bring in a 3rd player into the supermarket duopoly that is Iwi backed with a focus on cheap prices for consumers, best prices for producers and high wages and work conditions for workers. Take 30% of the Supermarket Industry by force (allowed under the Commerce Commission powers) and use this as the backbone for a new food security system.
Mārae Civil Defence: Use Marae as the backbone of Civil Defence throughout NZ with resources based there alongside new building grants to strengthen those Marae.
Ministry of Green Works: We need to be able to build our own sustainable infrastructure, we need social housing builds and we need vast upgrading of the existing infrastructure to be adaptable to climate change.
New Mental Health First Responders: A whole new branch of first responders to deal specifically with mental health issues to talk people down and seek help rather than calling then Police and arresting people.
Artist Benefit: As part of a degrowth Capitalism model, pay Artists to make public art, use that art as a means to deal with the wondrous grief caused by the destruction of the planet.
Māori Parliament: An indigenous Parliament that amplifies Māori political voices.
Universal Student Union: Allow Student Unions to be the incubators for tomorrows politicians and stop students simply being cash cows for corporate education.
Universal Migrant Union: Stop migrant worker exploitation with universal union membership.
Retirement Village Unions: These scumbag retirement villages abuse their elderly and sick clients, universal Retirement Village Unions would stop them being exploited.
Pensioner Unions: Give our elderly a voice!
Sugar Tax to fund free dental.
Financial Transaction Tax to target speculators
Free Public Transport to lower emissions and make an impact on the wallets of the poor.
Wealth Tax aimed at the super wealthy
Inheritance Tax only realised after death
First $20 000 tax free for everyone
Lower GST to 10% to take the tax burden off the poor
Nationalise Early Childhood Education to lower the cost for working mothers and fathers
Without vision the Union Movement is dead.
Solidarity Comrades.
Comrades – join a Party that loves to Party
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Now now now Martyn. This isn’t ‘modern day slavery’. It’s ‘modern day blackbirding’. There’s a DIFFERENCE (semantic).
‘Backtracking work for a pittance’ – well, you want cheap fruit and veges don’t you?
Here’s a few facts about the labour cost of apples, to take an example.
Piece rate per bin is on average $32. It can range from $15 to $45 depending on whether the apples are for juice or export.
Weight per bin is 350kg.
Average weight of apple is 180g.
So, let’s say an experienced worker picks 8 bins per day.
This is 2800kg of apples, or roughly 15,000 apples. You need to pick one every 1.8 seconds. You get paid 1.7 cents per apple.
I don’t know about how tight you are, but you’d have to have a pretty spiteful streak to moan about paying 2.5 or even 3.5 cents extra per apple to make the work attractive to kiwis.
Another reason why they hate kiwis is because the RSE workers pay an extortionate rate to share a dorm with a number of other workers, so the orchard owners claw back a significant portion of the wages as rent.
Thanks Rangi, it’s good to see some real information about the situation. It seems that those with wealth are usually reluctant to pay those working for them a decent wage as they consider it a direct cost to them instead of taking the wider view that it is creating a better society that helps them also.
Denial of the right to strike is by any other name, forced labour.
The distinction between that and slavery isn’t great.
Rangi has it completely right.
Back in the 1980s when I first started working in orchards fruit growers were becoming millionaires and the Fruit Growers Federation organised to keep wages as low as possible. Members who wanted to pay more were pressured by their fellows to keep rates low( ‘The Grapes Of Wrath’ by John Steinbeck is fiction but it has an accurate portrayal of such tactics by landowners).
When export fruit prices fell growers bitterly complained they would not be able to afford a new Range Rover after all, that their big-game launch in the Bay of Islands might have to be sold, that their wife was unhappy that the planned Pacific Islands cruise was on hold, the struggle to pay for their children’s private school.
They could tell you about their early struggles, on land with established fruit trees that they inherited, under the burden of generous export incentives and cheap credit, to finally give them the reward they richly deserved from their grandparents hard work.
With their workers sleeping on the floors of rented rooms and in their vehicles, washing in cold water, cooking in kitchens shared with ten others, fruit growers complained they found it difficult to recruit and retain staff.
And like all champions of the Free Market system when times are tough they trumpet; ‘The government should help us!’
Thanks Stevie for another real world example of life. The sense of entitlement among those who already have enough never fails as they are immune to the suffering of anyone else.
The list of should haves is an Iwi Supermarket so why have Ngi Tahu set one up .They have a portfolio worth millions in farms and land so if the returns were there they could set one up on their land and supplied with their produce.
Who would sit in a Maori Parliament and how would it be paid for If the TPM are an example of what to expect then it would be of little value to the average Maori.
Maybe Ngi Tahu have noticed the difficulty in establishing a supermarket where the 2 major players have established supply chains and the ability to lower prices so that any competition can only sell at a loss? It might surprise you to learn that supermarkets sell more than produce also although it would be better for many people if the range was reduced somewhat. I think that TPM would be a lot better than the current CoC although I have my hopes in a better place.
Horticultural work is labour intensive. No surprises that those in the game have a business model that exploits RSE workers and backpackers, more so than they could locals. I suspect the industry does employ locals, but not as pickers. And if local workers in the shed, not far off the minimum wage but surely they’re covered by domestic labour regulations.
Some employers may well be fairer than others but as for the RSE workers it certainly looks like exploitation – cheap labour and hard workers who turn up day after day.
” The migration exploitation rules are garbage because NZ loves exploiting migrant labour!
We are addicted to it.
And that is another reason the union movement was formed in 1916.
” Back in the 1980s when I first started working in orchards fruit growers were becoming millionaires and the Fruit Growers Federation organised to keep wages as low as possible ”
So that the same parasites as now ….
” When export fruit prices fell growers bitterly complained they would not be able to afford a new Range Rover after all, that their big-game launch in the Bay of Islands might have to be sold, that their wife was unhappy that the planned Pacific Islands cruise was on hold, the struggle to pay for their children’s private school ”
While….” their workers sleeping on the floors of rented rooms and in their vehicles, washing in cold water, cooking in kitchens shared with ten others, fruit growers complained they found it difficult to recruit and retain staff ”
The Hobbits might be muppets but when it comes to hard work they know when they are being exploited. They just don’t have the fire in the belly like they once did to fight for fair labour rights and to prevent more of the immigrants so desperate they will accept being exploited all in the name of greed , selfishness , inhumanity and mythical productivity…another neo liberal greedy catch phrase.
The paradox of course is that the oligarchy and its less value millionaires are protected in this economic system. But their slaves are not. Which is why Luxon , Willis , Seymour , van Vampire the current Minister of exploited workplace relations , Hipkins , Sepuloni and the rest of Savage’s LINO party will never support working people’s rights in Aotearoa.
The union movement is almost dead with the exception of a few like the PSA. LINO’s FPA went timidly toward offering protection but it was never going to be enough to counter the power of established entitlement and corporate power that LINO were committed to protecting and be seen as business friendly when it was their turn to safeguard the status quo.