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The meat industry wants to bring in seasonal workers from the Pacific Islands to meet a labour shortfall caused partly by up to 80 per cent of local applicants failing drug tests.
The industry has begun tripartite meetings with the Government and unions about a scheme similar to the new, recognised seasonal employer scheme for horticulture, which allows horticulturists to bring in up to 5000 workers from the Pacific for up to seven months a year.
Meat Industry Association adviser Robyn Deacon said the labour shortfall in the meat industry was smaller _ about 1000 in a workforce of 24,000.
But the industry faced the same challenges of finding seasonal labour in near-full-employment rural areas. The meatworks' recent shift to drug testing all job applicants had heightened the problem.
Hamilton-based Affco, which runs 10 meatworks from Moerewa in the north to Awarua near Invercargill, started testing three years ago and said the number of job applicants who failed the test varied from area to area.
"At times it can be as high as 80 per cent," said human resources manager Graeme Cox.
Christchurch-based Anzco Foods said the numbers failing its drug test were "on the increase". "It can get as high as 80 per cent ... " said human resources manager Heather Burton.
The country's biggest meat company with 25 works, Dunedin-based PPCS, reported a lower rejection rate of 24 per cent of job applicants and said some were rejected for reasons other than the drug test.
The other big chain, Invercargill-based Alliance Group with seven plants in the South Island and one at Dannevirke, uses a saliva test which picks up drugs used only in the previous two days, in contrast to the other three companies, which use urine tests. Alliance human resources manager Kerry Stevens said: "It hasn't been an issue for our company or a reason for the labour shortage."
NZ Meatworkers Union president Mike Nahu said the union opposed bringing in migrant labour and believed the main reason for the peak labour shortage was not drugs but the trend to open and shut killing chains when stock numbers rose and fell.
"I just had a call 10 minutes ago that one of the sheds is laying its night shift off.
Years back, even if you were on the bottom chain, you still operated for an eight-month season. Now you might get one month."
