During the 20011 kiwifruit season I was employed as a canteen assistant at Eastpack, and prior to and subsequent to the main season worked as a toilet cleaner and apron washer. The pay was $13.50 and $13.75 per hour.
While there I met most of the permanent staff and a number of teh seasonal workers working on the night shift.
The canteen is there to provide a range of hot meals and sandwiches and cakes for teh employees, and has to make a profit, but I felt, and feel that with two shifts of over 300 workers daily, seven days a week during the months of April through to June or August, that more could be sold, and greater profits achieved by a simple change of strategy.
The key to this is keeping the profit margins high, while providing a simple fare which suits the requirements of the workers.
At teh beginning of the season the tea and coffee provided free in three breaks per shift was served through machines, however the cost, at approximately 17c per cup proved to be too much, and an older system of making tea and coffee in teapots was reverted to. No biscuits were served at smoko breaks, but I felt that the minimal cost, of perhaps two buscuits, per person, from a packet costing perhaps $2 for about 30, or between 10c and 13c per break, no more than 45c per person per day, and no more than $500 per day would have had a positive impact on staff morale.
The feeling is that teh company is really demanding its pound of flesh, and rather than offering gratitude for a job well done, staff feel as though they are expected to be grateful for having a job at all, even if teh pay is minimal, as it is throughout the industry, and that if they do not like it, somebody is always willing to replace them, even if it means flying in workers from a third world pacific country, which is what happens. In the past workers have been reluctant to work for these wages.
At the end of the 1980's a grade would earn double or more the minimum wage, $22 or more. Now their wages are significantly less, the minimum allowed under the law.
It is natural that employers try to keep costs to a minimum, and there are limits to how much extra performance can be earned by offering higher wages. Workers are expected to work hard, and do, often at full pace, with short bursts of frantic pace. This is tiring after 10 hours, and standards are bound to fall due to fatigue, and I wonder if teh actual performance records show a drop of of quality at teh end of a shift. Often I was so tired that I simply could not persuade myself to go the extra mile once more at the end of the day.
However ther is another philosophy, or two which could lead to production improvements, but they are unlikely to succeed if teh only incentive offered in minimum pay. There is also little point in offering extra hours as a reward because a fresh worker would probably have a higher output if that was possible.
Working on teh grader is a lot harder and requires more concentration and eye hand coordination than driving at the legal speed limit for eight or ten hours a day. Having worked an eight hour night shift for the season in 2008, I would compare it to driving at 120 to 140km/hr for the shift. One has to look for a range of defects, not just three or four, teh optimal number, but perhaps eight ot ten different ones, one each and every fruit, with not enough time to take a second look at them as they pass. Other jobs are physical, and constantly fast, at a higher pace than it is natural to work.
Having grown up on a farm where there is a lot of physical work, I was taught at an early age to pace myself, and not work at a sweat and not go at things like a bull at a gate. This is an unaffordable luxury in today's packhouse, and I am certain productivity and quality are suffering as a result, making costly repacks an inevitable fact. Although these provide much needed extra work at the end of the season, low wages are being traded off for longer periods of employment, and the workers know this even if the owners (growers) and management don't. It is human nature to try to get what one think one deserves.
The process could be started by asking the experienced workers what they think they are worth, and rewarding them appropriately for loyal service, rather than forcing them to work one more season before replacing them as they drop out of teh industry. That is simply good management.
In the seafood industry I heard of one manager who resigned when asked to force his staff to work harder. The boss demonstrated teh pace he expected his workers to work at, but was told, "That is fine for an hour or even a day, but your staff work here day after day, week after week, on mimimum rates."
Another worker I met who worked in a men's clothing store in a national chain, who was an excellent salesman and very understanding of his customers needs told me he was leaving and going to work in a bakery for significantly higher wages because all the store could offer him as a reward was ajob in management which he did not want. We are talking about $13.50, $14, and $17 per hour as a maximum possible rate of earnings. This is hardly realistic for a worker with several year's experience.
A philosophy exists which says that the cost of producing an item is what the price should be, and that it is no use every worker competing against every other worker for a job, when it is really the low wages which is causing teh lack of demand in the economy to start with. We should not squander the potential our agricultural sector offers us by killing off the goose which lays the golden egg.