Law’s David Seymour Meets With Angry Northland Zucchini Grower About Worker Shortage

There is debris everywhere and the shoe of the leader of the Law, David Seymour, has just pierced a rotten marrow.

That is what happens when a zucchini is not harvested. It grows to the core. There is no money in it.

For zucchini grower Brett Heap, this is what he wanted: one of those Wellington politicians to come to Waipapa in the far north to witness the reality of what is happening in the places where fruits and vegetables are grown.

This harvest season, those are the places struggling to find workers because New Zealand’s borders are closed and the annual seasonal foreign workforce of 14,000 is excluded.

Seymour’s visit, a three-and-a-half hour drive from Auckland, came the day after the Herald revealed that Heap had let the zucchini fields go to waste because he couldn’t import the 11 workers he hired each season from Thailand. .

As a result, Heap had to strain to recruit locally, and even with a 60 percent crop of the usual, those who had worked for him struggled to fill the gap in their experienced workforce.

Seymour said: “There is nothing worse than seeing someone defeated, not because of their fault or because of a natural disaster, but because of unnecessary restrictions imposed by someone else.”

“The government knew the season was coming, they knew there would be a labor shortage, they knew there were options for people from Covid-free countries to do private MIQ for low-risk people in remote regions – we knew all of that.

“The government did nothing and now we have courgettes rotting in the fields.”

He said the government needed to work with private companies and should have anticipated the problems and found solutions before now.

“The government has left people like Brett Heap questioning whether their business has a future because after this season, you can understand that they don’t want to do another.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was questioned by announcer Mike Hosking at NewstalkZB about the labor shortage at harvest time.

Ardern said there was no shortage. “We have the people. We just have to get them to the right place.”

She said there were 6,000 foreign workers still in New Zealand from last season. “We want to make sure that we are relocating them across the country.” He said that work was being done to do that.

There were also 14,000 people on work holidays who had their visas extended, he said.

Heap’s claim that he was unable to get good help prompted an angry public response, but he has not retracted.

Heap pays a minimum wage of $ 18.90 an hour plus 8 percent of vacation pay for those starting work. In the past, it paid experienced and skilled workers $ 23 per hour plus vacation pay.

The difference, he says, is the nature of the seasonal work and the variable nature of the harvest. A cold day means that the zucchini grows slowly. Hot weather supercharges growth. “It can go from a harvest of one tonne a day to five tonnes the next day.”

It means you need workers to work seven days a week, 14 hours a day, when the zucchini are growing.

“For seasonal work, you’re either all-in or you lose the pot. If you’re all-in, you’re making $ 3,000 a fortnight.”

There is also a degree of expertise involved that is often not appreciated: zucchini must be harvested to a specific weight or it is not sold. It must be removed from the plant carefully.

Additionally, those who harvest the plant operate at ground level. It’s a painful and backbreaking job that, Heap says, New Zealand workers aren’t suited to.

For those who say “pay more”, Heap tells them: “The payment has nothing to do with it. This is a ghost that they have been raising for years and years.”

“It all comes down to stamina. [Local workers] I just don’t have it. And you should pay attention to detail and be proud of your work. This is what CSR workers contribute. They are engaged.

“They have a goal and they want to achieve something. That is not here. They have taken everything from New Zealanders.”

“The ethic that pays off is the work ethic and you have it or you don’t. You apply to work or not.”

Heap’s zucchini season is coming to an end. You don’t need workers for this season and you wonder if there will be another.

“I have lost a lot of the harvest. With this harvest, I will be lucky to break even.”