Inability to secure staff is driving businesses to the wall and worsening health crisis. Photo / 123RF
Inability to secure staff is driving businesses to the wall and worsening health crisis. Photo / 123RF
OPINION:
"Employees wanted, please inquire within" - never in recent history have we seen those words so frequently emblazoned on almost every shop window we walk past.
New Zealand is in the midst of an unprecedented workforce crisis. The Reserve Bank states that there are now double the job vacancies than there are unemployed people in New Zealand. This isn't even taking into account the skills of those unemployed and whether they're able to fill those jobs. Without question, we need to be attracting people to our shores to fill our jobs.
Last week, I spoke with a business owner whose company places temporary workers with Kiwi businesses that need staff. If he could find 100 more people to work, he says he could place them all tomorrow. But there aren't enough willing workers.
Businesses are hustling as best they can. One business owner I spoke to said he's now offering petrol vouchers on top of wages just so he can keep operating on any given day. His company relies on staff physically turning up. And he's enduring more cost and more stress for the same amount of work. But what's the alternative when there are no other workers? Shutting up shop?
But people can only hustle for so long before the personal and financial toll becomes too great. The stress being placed on the cafe owner working months straight unable to catch a single kid's netball game or the hotel manager putting on gloves to clean rooms and wash the dishes night after night isn't tenable.
A kindhearted resident at a retirement village I visited recently told me how hard it is to see the nurses she knows and cares for working so tirelessly, non-stop. While the nurses do their best to look after the residents, they don't have enough time to look after themselves as well.
Other businesses are choosing to cut operating hours and therefore cut profits. Unfortunately, that's what the restaurant I went to on Friday night is doing. They advertised for months and had no response, so they're reducing opening hours. They're not alone.
Everywhere you look, people are being stretched thin – farming, construction, hospitality, education, healthcare. I spoke to a few retirement and aged-care facility CEOs and it's tough to hear what they're facing.
They provide care, security and support to older Kiwis but are massively understaffed. More than 1000 beds have closed in care homes across the country because there's not enough people to look after them. Ward closures put pressure on our overcrowded and overworked hospitals and nurses. We already have a crisis on our hands in healthcare and if we're not careful, it will only get worse.
So what's the answer? Well in a ridiculous plot twist, the Government's answer to the nursing shortage is to partner with Shortland St to promote nursing while it stubbornly refuses to put nurses on the fast track of the immigration Green List.
New Zealand is in the midst of an unprecedented workforce crisis. Photo / Getty Images
If the Government was to speak to the business owners who are suffering from these shortages, they'd get a stark idea of the issues that are occurring within our immigration system, and see that reform is needed at a policy level to get our Immigration department operating like it should be.
Someone recently told me at a public meeting that they've been unable to return their business to pre-Covid levels because Immigration New Zealand is too difficult to deal with and needs to be convinced that they've exhausted all options in New Zealand first. "It's like they're trying to run our company for us."
It is ridiculous that businesses need to prove to immigration that there are no workers during an unprecedented workforce shortage. It's just an unnecessary layer of paperwork. Everyone can see there's a shortage, we don't need to prove it.
Unnecessary paperwork, time-consuming bureaucracy, poorly thought-out regulations – these are all common themes when discussing Immigration New Zealand. It's obvious that our immigration policy needs real change.
The new "Green List" residency scheme provides a fast-track to residency for some professions, but other professions that are needed for labour shortages like electricians, plumbers and nurses are left out in the cold. Those that are eligible for residency are held back by leisurely visa processing times and the still-frozen Skilled Migrant Category.
Act says we should provide all occupations on the "Green List" a fast-track to residency by removing the "work to residence" divide.
We should also simplify the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme by abolishing labour market tests and wage rules, and make it easier for migrants to move between accredited employers.
It's not acceptable that our businesses suffocate while our immigration department floods their premises with paperwork and fails to meet deadlines. The Government has had more than two years of effectively zero immigration, yet the problems and backlogs persist.
Other countries are addressing the problems, and they're winning the war on talent. Australia has significantly reduced the regulations around granting visas and is on a drive to attract the workers we also need to be appealing to.
We need real change to turn the decline around and make our country the preferred destination for ideas, talent and investment.
• Brooke van Velden, MP, is the deputy leader of the Act Party.
