The past few years have been good to dairy farmers, with record payouts pumping billions of extra dollars into their pockets. So you'd think that when they're doing well, they'd be sharing that bounty with their workers, neh?
Yeah right.
Southland dairy farmers are complaining about being "exploited" by farm workers demanding "ridiculous" wages. What's "ridiculous"? About $50,000 a year, or between $16 and $19 an hour for the quoted 50 and 60 hour week. What do they want to pay? $35,000 a year - between $11.20 and $13.50 an hour. In other words, the minimum wage or below.
For some reason, they're surprised they can't find workers under these conditions. I mean, who would turn down the opportunity to get up early in the morning and work long hours in the middle of nowhere (with all that that implies for social life, conversation, and the possibility of finding a non four-legged partner) for a pittance, when you could earn more under better conditions in the average shitty office job? Clearly, not the bumpkins who run Southland's dairy farms. And so, as usual for New Zealand employers (and the primary production sector in particular) they're whining to be allowed to import foreign workers to undercut wages, rather than paying the going market rate. They shouldn't be allowed to. In a market economy (and for better or worse, we have chosen to handle employment, wages and condition through a market, subject to some basic limits of decency), if you can't find workers, the solution is to offer more money. And if you can't or won't do that, then your business isn't really profitable, and you should be doing something else with your time.
