Temporary workers plan a recipe for disaster

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand has attacked plans by employ­ers to bring in migrant labour into the seafood indus­try after mass lay­offs in the same sec­tor.

A week after Sealord con­firmed it would axe 323 jobs from its Nel­son mus­sel fac­to­ry, two South Island seafood com­pa­nies Tal­leys and Aotearoa Seafood have applied to import 100 migrant labour­ers.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says that the use of tem­po­rary labour being import­ed from over­seas threat­ens local employ­ment.

“It is utter­ly dis­grace­ful that at a time when we have ris­ing unem­ploy­ment and surg­ing liv­ing costs, employ­ers are being allowed to knock the bot­tom out of the labour mar­ket.”

Mr Han­son says the key prob­lem with find­ing work­ers was based around the poor wages paid in the local indus­try.

He says he is dis­turbed that Immi­gra­tion author­i­ties seem to have no under­stand­ing as to the social effects of the import of tem­po­rary labour.

“It is no exag­ger­a­tion to say New Zealand is strug­gling with social prob­lems caused by the lack of secure per­ma­nent jobs and some kind of career struc­ture and future for young peo­ple.”

Mr Han­son says the use of short term work­ers import­ed from over­seas dis­rupt­ed local employ­ment con­di­tions, and opened up the over­seas work­ers to exploita­tion.

“This is not the way to get a sta­ble employ­ment sit­u­a­tion or a sta­ble soci­ety.”

Mr Han­son says the Mar­itime Union has pre­dict­ed that under free trade agree­ments the use of tem­po­rary labour being import­ed across bor­ders would increase to dri­ve down wages and con­di­tions in a “race to the bot­tom.”

“Not only are jobs being export­ed to poor coun­tries to take advan­tage of pow­er­less work­ers, now the reverse is hap­pen­ing with the cross bor­der use of tem­po­rary work­ers being import­ed to dri­ve down wages here.”

Mr Han­son says tem­po­rary cross-bor­der labour was very dif­fer­ent to immi­gra­tion, and empha­sized the Mar­itime Union was an inter­na­tion­al­ist Union that sup­port­ed work­ers of all nations.

“In this case it is clear the prob­lem lies with immi­gra­tion author­i­ties and employ­ers.”