Outgoing Waikato Federated farmers dairy chairman Craig Littin revealed that trade unions were picking apart farm jobs placed on Fonterra’s Farm Source website.
Littin told farmers at the group’s annual meeting that unions were doing simple calculations around listed salary, hours worked and days off and posting them on social media.
He urged farmers to take into consideration the total job package and think really hard about how the advertisement was perceived. He reminded the farmers to keep accurate time and wage records to ensure staff never fall under the minimum wage.
Littin said it was too easy for Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly to look online at the vacancies and then post any ads that were offering poor or illegal wages on her Twitter account.
Kelly was unapologetic with her stance. Most of the jobs on Farm Source were without remuneration but those that put detail of the jobs in were often paying below the minimum wage for the number of hours worked.
«There are heaps of jobs on there with hours that were far too dangerous and too long,» Kelly said.
These included jobs where workers were expected to work up to 80 hours a week, which Kelly called «crazy».
«Some of them are paying $11-12 an hour and all I do is tweet them.»
Kelly said she would look about once a fortnight on the website and every time she looked there were jobs with these hours and wages.
The biggest offenders were those looking for assistants and herd managers. The herd manager position was listed on the Ministry of Immigration’s skill shortage list and some of the advertisements for those roles were close to the minimum wage.
Kelly believed migrants coming to work on dairy farms should be halted until the industry lifted wages on these positions.
«We would like the [Immigration] Minister to say to Federated Farmers and farmer organisations we are freezing all migrant permits on dairy farms until you can show 95 per cent compliance.»
«We are very concerned about wages in the farming sector, particularly dairy farms.»
Waikato Federated Farmers provincial president Chris Lewis said it was hard to disagree with some of Kelly’s claims made on social media, particularly when some of the ads looking for a manager were only paying $18 an hour.
«If you employ a manager at $18 an hour, don’t whinge to the Feds about the performance. A good manager should be getting $30 an hour.»
The warning was backed by national sharemilker employers chairman Tony Wilding. He said the recent audits reflected badly on all farmers.
Many of the vacancies were offering poor wages and many of the variable order contracts being offered to sharemilkers did not meet the standard of a manager he said.
People were using contracts to bypass employment responsibilities and paying them less than a managers salary.
«It’s appalling and it reflects badly on all of us.»
He feared the contracts would attract the scrutiny of the MBIE.
Source: Stuff
