Tuesday, April 03, 2018



Another company after cheap migrant labour

In the past I've argued that we should not be rewarding companies with poor labour practices by subsidising them with migrant labour because kiwis won't take their shit jobs. And today we have a perfect example of the problem, in the form of Ritchies' Coach Lines:

The Government should reject a national bus company's request to fill 110 bus driver jobs with migrant workers, a bus driver union says.

Ritchies Transport Holdings made a request to Immigration New Zealand on March 3 seeking permission to hire overseas labour to fill 80 bus and coach driver roles for Auckland, 15 for Dunedin and 15 for Queenstown.

Because bus drivers are not on the Government's skill shortage list, Ritchies must obtain permission from Immigration New Zealand in the form of an Approval in Principal to fill the vacancies with overseas workers.

[...]

Bus drivers did not want to work for Ritchies because it was known as a low paying company, [First Union transport and logistics secretary Jared Abbott] said.

It recently won a number of new contracts which were tendered at a price so low it required drivers to be paid a wage which was not attractive to local talent, he said.


The market solution for a company which can't find workers at the pay and conditions it is offering is to offer more. If they can't afford to, then well, maybe they shouldn't lowball their bids. Instead, these scum are sticking their hand out and demanding foreign labour so they don't have to pay a proper wage. That's not acceptable, and they should be rejected. If they're not profitable without a subsidy, then they're not profitable at all, and they deserve to go out of business.