NZers 'won't work for minimum wage'

Did anyone else see this story?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10517251

It makes me think of something though... wont the imported low-wages workers, once they've had a taste of NZ and see how everyone else is doing, demand more? Or better jobs?

Isn't this a doomed to failure idea completely from an immigration point of view?... getting low-skilled migrants for industries which often move offshore eventually anyway and leave those workers (who they wont upskill for anything else) stranded as beneficiaries or worse?

R

there's nothing new about any of this

I just thought it was topical since some company (a seafood company??) said the other day they were going to apply to import 100 or so overseas workers for their processing plant to save money. It's doomed to be a nightmare down the track...

R

no doubt cheap chinese labour thanks to the fta

Give em two year working visas then send them home.

Works for the British

NZers are heading the way of the UK - Lazy and expectant of instant high salaries. This is why hard working NZers have traditionally done so well in the UK. But its changing and we are rapidly losing the hardworkers and being left with... others.

Immigration at a sustainable rate is important if at the very least, to do those jobs that dont have a tv show about them.

Migrant workers could be part of the solution but once you rely on that you are stuck with it - all that knowledge/skill flys back to their home country with them at the end of the term.

WTF? Of course they will? Like everyone else? Where's the issue with people wanting better jobs - that incentive is pretty much the entire underpinning of the modern capitalist society.


No! There are hugenumbers of low-paid jobs that NZers don't want to do in this country - saying "well gee some of those companies may eventually move offshore" doesn't change that at all, particularly when only a percentage of them might, the vast majority will stay. Cleaners, gardeners, fruit pickers, fisheries etc etc - they ain't going offshore pal.


Simple story - there are low-paid, low-skilled jobs in this country that need doing. If the population here won't do them, you have to bring in offshore workers.

That's the point though. Someone working in a low-skilled job.. no matter how long they do it they are still low skilled. But, the thing that changes is everyone around them - cars, clothes, houses, holidays... things they'd likely not think about so much as unskilled arrivals.. but would do increasingly once they were here and their expectations started to change. That would be the beginnings of a really difficult to fix problem I think.

R

Perhaps our employers, who have pocketed massive profits over the most sustained economic boom since the 1950's, ought to stop bitching and just start paying higher wages?

Yes... bingo. I think they're so used to reaping unsustainably high profits they can't handle paying staff more - thinking they'll be punted out of the market by competition who don't. Surely importing low-skilled foreigners is a dead-end solution with tons of potential problems down the track.

R

New Zealand employers are wedded to a low-productivity model because they are loath to invest in technology and machinery at the cost of profits. They would prefer to hire another warm body than invest in raising their existing workforce's productivity. To a certain extent it is hard to blame them - New Zealand has veered between command economy cronyism and capitalist cronyism since WW2 and we don't have any real entrepreneurial capitalist culture in our managerial class here. But MMP seems to have brought a level of stability to our economic policy framework, and one can only hope that the 20 year old's of today will not know of any other sort of environment, and will present a different attitude over the next two or three decades.

That's a pretty broad brush to paint with FB.

Perhaps it is NZ workers who are a significant reason NZ is unproductive (as some reports suggest).

Whats the big deal with immigrant workers? we should be a proud nation to embrace others and give them a better life.

Not like most un-skilled OR skilled in some cases people in New Zealand bother getting off their lazy bum anyway. Take a look at all the dole bludging and mums living on the DPB cause they can, why not give jobs to people that actually want to do them, and will do them well...

You only have to go for a drive around Auckland to see why we have to import people....cause half of NZ doesn't want to work because our social wefare system is 'awesome!' giving them a free life.

And if it's cheaper for the employer sweet as.....how much do you expect to earn 'packing boxes' anyway.