BusinessNZ chief says workforce burnt out, warns 'people will die' if immigration system remains clogged
Sunday, 30 October 2022
BusinessNZ chief executive says the workforce is nearing dangerous levels of burn-out, caused by a lack of skilled workers to fill job openings.
A major immigration spike took place before Covid-19, but net migration numbers have since turned negative.
Doubts have also been raised about whether Immigration NZ is up to the task of assessing the large numbers of visas needed.
A major business lobby group warns lives will be put at risk if more workers are not brought in to help assist a burnt-out workforce.
BusinessNZ’s chief executive Kirk Hope told the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment(NZAMI)’s annual conference at Eden Park in Auckland that the country’s workforce was fatigued and overworked.
“It’s about the people that are here, and we know from the work that we do with businesses all over the country – boards, managers and their employees – that the workforce is frayed,” he said on Friday.
“It’s starting to get burnt out, it’s starting to get tired, things are going to occur in the very near future and people will die – that’s a fact – immigration has a role to play in alleviating some of that pressure.”
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MC for the event Mark Sainsbury pushed Hope on whether he was actually saying a shortage of workers would lead to a greater number of deaths.
Hope pointed to large vacancies in heavy industry, along with well-publicised shortages in the healthcare system, as examples of places where workforce shortages could lead to casualties.
“If you think about heavy industrial work where you’ve got vacancies of up to 20% – that’s got risk written all over it.
“Those things alone should be ringing alarm bells.
“They’re certainly ringing alarm bells in the business community, but they should be ringing alarm bells for policymakers because they’re having a very real impact already on working New Zealanders and businesses.”
Massey University professor Paul Spoonley said there was a major spike in migration just before Covid, but since then population growth had reached record low-levels, cities were losing people and net migration had turned negative.
“What Covid has done is that it has reinforced a labour crunch that began 10 years ago, and as our demography changes it will become more acute, and more like parts of Europe.”
Spoonley said other countries around the world were experiencing similar issues.
He gave the example of the United Kingdom, which would be short of 38,000 nurses even if it was successful in meeting its goal of recruiting 50,000 nurses from overseas.
Spoonley said Britain had now moved on from recruiting within the Philippines to recruiting nurses from Kenya and Nigeria.
However, Spoonley said serious questions should be asked about whether the immigration bureaucracy in New Zealand was up to the task of processing visa applications efficiently.
“Our neighbours, who are South African – he’s a vet, she’s an engineer – could have been here for years, [but] could not get a permit to stay – now why is that happening?
“We need desperately to make sure that our government departments, that are the frontline in all of this, are doing the job on behalf of all of us.”
Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment associate deputy secretary Catriona Robinson also spoke at the conference and said the processing of visas had improved.
Robinson said the department was committed to processing work visa applications in 20 working days, job checks and employer accreditation in 10 working days.
“We at MBIE absolutely recognise how important the immigration system is,” Robinson said.
“And we also recognise that what every user of the system really wants out of a regulatory authority like MBIE is firm, fair and fast visa decisions.”
Labour and New Zealand First both came to power in 2017 promising to cut net migration.
Labour wanted up to 30,000 fewer migrants and NZ First wanted a net migration total of 10,000 people per year.
The coalition cut the residence programme when it came to office, meaning fewer residency places were granted to temporary migrants.
However, this didn’t stop the inflow of people, it only meant more people on temporary visas were left waiting for residency in the longest residency queue in history.
By the time the borders closed, the Coalition Government’s year-on-year net migration numbers were almost double what they were when it came to office.
Rolling year-on-year totals show annual net migration was sitting at 54,518 in November 2017, but by March 2020 it had soared to 91,680 – the highest number since 2001.
But since then annual net migration had plummeted into negative territory – the figure for June 2022 was -11,478.
Hope said the last time net migration went negative was after the Global Financial Crisis, and it took a lot of hard work to get migrants to return.
He argued changes to immigration rules had made everything harder and more complicated than it needed to be.
Hope wasn’t the only one to criticise the way things were going.
Some of those criticisms were realised when a new set of immigration changes were sent out by email just as the conference ended.
Immigration advisers at the conference asked Immigration Minister Michael Wood why the industry was no longer being consulted-on changes before rules came into force.
In previous years, immigration advisers were consulted on the wording of immigration rules, and the industry has argued this helped minimise unintended consequences flowing on from rule changes.
Wood, who gave a speech at the conference, said the immigration system did not allow him to provide copies of immigration instructions – the technical term for immigration rules – in advance.
“One of the interesting things about instructions is that the moment I put my signature on [an] instruction the instruction comes into effect.
“And so there is a slight challenge there. I can’t confirm and issue an instruction, and give advance notice, by definition, it’s live once my pen goes on paper under the law.”
This was disputed by some at the conference who argued it could simply be done by signing an immigration instruction and specifying it would come into effect at a later date.
Wood also said the emergency phase of the pandemic meant the Government had needed to make some changes without consultation.
However, Wood said his expectation was that this would change now that things had stabilised.
But Wood warned more consultation would mean a slower pace of change.
“There’s no free lunch, there’s a trade-off there in terms of the ability to make decisions and then get things moving in the system.”
Wood said that while he guaranteed the Government would listen to different views he gave no such assurances that they would follow the advice given.
“It doesn’t mean that we’ll agree at the end of the day, but we will, in good faith, listen.”
Later that afternoon, immigration advisers were confronted with the same thing they had complained about – what some advisers have termed a “Friday 4pm surprise” – a notice containing detailed changes that would be coming into force on Monday.
“Ahiahi mārie, Amendment Circular 2022-61 is attached,” an unnamed representative of Immigration New Zealand wrote in an email to immigration advisers on Friday afternoon.
It was an email containing the text of the official updates that would be made to immigration instructions around sector agreements.
“These changes are effective on and after Monday, October 31, 2022.”