Forest Industry Contractors Association (FICA) chief executive Prue Younger says initially the industry had been seeking about 500 additional staff for silvicultural training through a covid scheme run through the Ministry for Social Development.
The scheme provided $2.5 million in subsidies to support employers and employees.
“We ended up with 250 through that subsidy, and it included payments to contractors who maybe had part time employees,” she said.
“Some contractors had hoped to get maybe 15 new staff, but instead got 10, but they have turned out to be good quality staff.”
The course includes formalised unit standards and to offer further work-ready standards that Competenz, the Industry Training Organisation (ITO), launched this year. It promises to give the sector a valuable injection of young talent over the coming years.
“It has been successful enough for us to want to continue the conversation about training for next year, given there is also possibly greater uncertainty next year about income support and jobs.”
The industry had also been seeking seasonal workers for tree planting and Younger says so far there did not appear to be any significant shortage of people to complete this season’s planting programme.
“If anything, the hold up has been more at the nursery end than on the ground,” she said.
She says in the longer-term the industry has been looking at dropping staff numbers in high risk areas, with mechanisation being able to replace people.
“This was not so much the case 18 months ago, but covid has made us look at how we operate, with a push to get people off the slopes. We will be looking at quite a different profile for forestry workers in a few years,” she said.
