Mike Hosking: Time seems ripe to start lifting wages

Why aren't unemployed locals putting their hand up to work during the kiwifruit harvest? Photo / Northern Advocate

Well over $2 billion worth of business, forecasts of $4.5b in a handful of years.

A good piece of fruit selling at $3.50 in the Asian markets.

PSA and its doom-laden forecasts nothing but a memory, a range of new colours and varieties showing ingenuity and marketing cleverness, and as we sit here this morning yet another record season getting picked.

Twenty million more glorious trays than last season of kiwi magic set to be shipped off to a voracious international market.

Except it, like so much of the produce this country produces, sits on the vine in danger of rotting, because yet again labour or lack of it is the issue.

For as long as I can remember, whether it's apricots, apples, cherries, grapes or kiwifruit, the call goes out for more people, more hands, more help.

The Government this week has declared the Bay of Plenty a labour shortage zone. Its loosening up of visa restrictions, means tourists and imports can do the work that clearly

If life on welfare doesn't drive you out the door and into work we

need to be asking why.none of the locals want to.

And in that, at least in part, is an issue.

Every time I raise this issue, two solutions get put forward. Both seem relevant.

One, where are the locals? Where are the people without work putting their hands up? And if their hands aren't up, where is the welfare department rounding them up and asking them that, given we pay for them to do nothing? Maybe pulling a bit of fruit off a vine might not be too big an ask.

The National Party has two different answers to this.

When in power, Steven Joyce used to say the unemployment rate is so low in parts of the country there is no one fit enough to pick. But I note now National is no longer in power, Simon Bridges is suggesting the local unemployed should do it, thus implying unemployment has risen significantly since he left Government, which of course it hasn't ... so which is it?

And two, the pay, and this is the bit that's always slightly bothered me.

I get endless correspondence along the lines of why would I pick fruit, why would I work full stop for minimum wage or "crap wages" as they put it.

This indicates a laziness we should all be worried about.

It indicates a certain attitude towards contribution and life.

And it might indicate a welfare system that is just a bit on the generous side.

If life on welfare doesn't drive you out the door and into work, we need to be asking why.

If the gap between welfare and a wage is so small, then we have welfare wrong ... or do we?

Is it perhaps possible we need to pay more for work?

Is it possible that something in the economic equation right now isn't working.

Unemployment is 4.4 per cent; it's basically full employment.

We have dealt with labour shortages now for years in any number of industries. Manufacturing, construction, hospo ... all desperately short of workers.

Yet look at wage inflation ... non-existent.

Last week's figures had it barely registering, what did make an impact was the $2b rest home pay equity deal. Take that out, we are as flat as a pancake.

So work galore, a massive labour shortage, and yet, as any economic supply and demand graph will show you, wages should be rising and they're not.

Why not?

Could it be employers are holding out hoping they can patch the gaps?

Could it be they rely on the Government loosening the visa restrictions ? Or could it just be when you're selling a piece of kiwifruit at $3.50 you might just have to pay a bit more to get it off the vine in the first place?

You might have to, instead of hoping for the best on $17 or $18, start shelling out $21 or more and actually attract labour to your door.

Isn't that the point of economic expansion and success, the money and profit gets spread about the place?

Maybe the ball's in the employers' court; maybe it's time we shake off the low wage economy tag, and start handing out the dosh; maybe it is time for a pay rise.