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If you were to take all the hyperbole at face value you’d be forgiven for believing that the Governments Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme was a raging success. Propaganda is one thing, the facts on the ground something else.The scheme according to the Labour Department “facilitates the temporary entry of overseas workers mainly from the Pacific to plant, maintain, harvest and pack crops in the horticulture and viticulture industries to meet labour shortages”.
Simple really, kindly NZ horticulturists, with the assistance of the Government acting as an employment agency offers work to pacific peoples to met labour shortages. Everybody wins.
Yeah Right - a great beer advert but little else.
Workers Rights activist Byron Clark laid bare the facts of the case in a presentation to the weekly WEA-WRC series What About the Workers. Underpinning his talk with the work of Swedish political scientist Lina Ericsson, Byron illustrated a scheme that amounts to little more than a return to the days of “blackbirding”.
Lina, from Jönköping University, conducted her research with migrant workers in rural New Zealand under the (RSE) scheme for her thesis ‘The Ni-Vanuatu RSE-Worker: Earning, Spending, Saving, and Sending’. Her field work uncovered a number of domestic and international labour law violations, conclusions shared by research by Swinburne University which concludes that the significant difficulties arising from (RSE) scheme “cannot be dismissed as teething problems”.
Among others to add their voice to the cries of concern are the NZCTU, International Trade Union Confederation and Presbyterian Church.
You can hear Byron interview Lina here and download her thesis here. (PDF)
The WEA-WRC series What About the Workers is held weekly at the WEA (59 Gloucester Street Christchurch). Soup, bread, tea and coffee at 5.30, talk and discussion begins at 6pm
