KEY POINTS:
Farming leaders are looking to redundant domestic workers to fill seasonal labour gaps, potentially replacing short-term migrant workers from the Pacific.
Fonterra chairman Henry van der Heyden, who will chair a session on seasonal work and primary industries at today's Jobs Summit, said the recession created a chance to overcome longstanding seasonal rural labour shortages.
"Our challenge in this moment is to identify those opportunities to fill the gap," he said.
Meat Industry Association chief executive Tim Ritchie said the sector was looking at innovative ideas, such as helping people to work in meatworks for the six-month season and on fishing boats in the other six months.
Both meat and fish prices are holding up well internationally despite the collapse of other commodity prices.
"People still eat in a recession," said Eric Barratt of Auckland-based fishing group Sanford.
"It's been difficult to get staff in some areas, such as Marlborough, where there is high seasonal demand for viticultural workers. We continue to have quite a number of short-term, working-holiday staff."
The former Labour Government started a scheme to bring in up to 5000 workers a year from the Pacific Islands to work in horticulture and viticulture for up to seven months at a time.
Mr Ritchie said the meat industry started talking to Labour, and had continued talking to the new National Government, about a similar scheme for the meatworks. The industry said last March that it would need about 1000 seasonal migrants each year.
"It's a bit different to the horticultural industry because the people coming into all of our plants have labour agreements, so it's not a means of cheapening the job," Mr Ritchie said.
He said the industry would keep discussing a scheme with the Government because it could still be needed when the economy picked up again.
"But it's not going to be necessary to have in the next six months," he said. "Clearly, our first preference is to employ New Zealanders. That's very much the objective."
Mr van der Heyden said dairy farmers were already bringing in "quite a few" overseas workers, mainly from the Philippines and South America, under general immigration policies which permit migrants if New Zealanders can't be found for a job.
Meanwhile, Mr Ritchie said the major meat companies were working together on a five-year, $15 million project to develop automated sheep slaughtering technology as another way to overcome the labour shortage.
"Although reducing the need for people, the real benefit is that it's going to make tasks easier," Mr Ritchie said.
"At the moment, a lot of the tasks do rely on brute force. It will make it easier using mechanical aids and open yourself up to having a larger pool of people that can work in the industry, including women."
