Worker shortage crisis needs industry-wide action

Thursday, 30 November 2017

The Marlborough wine industry is expected to need an extra 2000 workers in the next two to three years. (File photo)

Marlborough's ongoing worker shortage has become a 'crisis' that can no longer be tackled by businesses on their own, experts says.

Business consultant Tony Smale said industry-wide action was needed five years ago, and warned the problem would only get worse if something was not done.

Business consultant Tony Smale said an advertising campaign was needed to attract workers to Marlborough.

Smale said every business in the region had to put their hand up and collaborate, possibly on a national advertising campaign.

'People will come to a town maybe the size of Nelson at a stretch, but coming to Blenheim, they see as a barrier and it's ignorance more than anything else, because our performing arts scene is so incredibly active in Marlborough.

*Vineyard worker accommodation critical to Marlborough's $1 billion grape industry

*Expansion of Marlborough wine industry depends on finding enough labour and overcoming accommodation shortages**

'Health, education, restaurants, performing arts are the sort of things that people look for. If they're moving to Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch they don't even bother looking because they already know it's there.

'People make an assumption that those won't be available in small places like Blenheim, the reality is they are, we face an awful lot of biases, prejudices and misconceptions,' Smale said.

According to Statistics New Zealand, Marlborough was projected to have 5000 more retired people in 12 years.

Companies needed to 'get their head around' the forecast growth in retired people, Smale said.

'We've talked as a country about our ageing population for some time, the argument has always been around there is going to be less young people [in Marlborough] to pay superannuation for the ageing population but nobody's actually got their head around what is actually happening.'

Wineworks group human resources manager Sue Whiteley believed an integrated multi-industry, multi-disciplinary approach was needed to deal with the worker shortage.

'The wine industry can't function in isolation of all the other industries that are playing in the top of the South Island because actually we're all competing for similar talent, whether you're working in forestry, construction, winery or wine works, there are similar types of people that are needing to be employed,' Whiteley said.

Wineworks had 46 positions vacant in Marlborough, Whiteley said.

'This time last year we were at 256 staff across our whole organisation [in New Zealand], we're now up to 430,' she said.

'The size of the business has increased considerably and that's not because of anything we're doing, it's because of what the wineries are doing.'

The Marlborough wine industry was expected to need an extra 2000 workers in the next two to three years.

Attracting the right people was key, Whiteley said.

'We've looked at employing different people from different walks of life, we've looked at whether we can do job-shares and some of these things are yet to come in line but they're there and waiting in the wings. The challenge we're faced with is that there are just not enough people to employ.

'So if we put an advert out, we can expect to get a reasonably good response, but the responses are primarily from people who are not eligible to work in New Zealand,' Whiteley said.

Whiteley also called for Government support to help deal with the shortage.

'We need support from legislators and our ministries to be able to do that, it's not something employers can do in isolation,' she said.

Smale said the shortage in the wine industry meant more overseas workers were needed, but people should not be worried about rising costs of infrastructure.

'People will say, 'oh my rates will go up', but the reality is that there will be more people to share the burden.

'From an economic point of view I can't see any downside from having more people, it creates more opportunities for our kids to stay in the region.

'There can only be good things from producing wealth, we could argue how that wealth is distributed but that's an argument for another day,' Smale said.

Whiteley said the key message was 'simply needing more people'.

'We need to fill the bucket, the bucket is continually empty,' she said.

Whiteley and Smale were talking at the third Wine Marlborough Labour Summit in Blenheim on Tuesday.