The writing has been on the wall for quite some time but it seems as though in the last few years the floodgates have opened.
Finding experienced people is becoming quite a task.
In some cases it is not just a lack of experienced staff but a lack of anyone.
In a trade once renowned for how hard it was to get a job because of the abundance of willing workers, how have we found ourselves this situation?
We are recognised around the world as the place where the best shearers come from. If something is not done soon it will cease to be the case.
There are many contributing factors.
There are fewer sheep because of more dairy cows and other advances in agriculture, horticulture and viticulture.
Increased time is spent in vehicles to and from work because of fewer sheep in the immediate area resulting in more time away from home and family each day.
Larger and more vigorous sheep have resulted from the pursuit of more milk, increased lambing percentage and and more speed of weight gain in of lambs.
There’s a lack of funding for comprehensive training to consistently upskill the workforce and pay has dropped relative to the cost of living, resulting in a lower quality of life and a generation not keen on sweating to make a living.
From the mid 1980s until now there has been a similarly slow and steady decline.
Depressed wool and lamb prices, droughts and tough competition for space from dairy, large-scale cropping, grapes and, more recently, bees have been just a few of the contributing factors in this downward trend.
Worker numbers have followed sheep numbers down.
There’s a new generation in our country who choose to work smarter not harder or they don’t want to work at all. Options for school leavers are more numerous. Gap years can turn into never coming back and university degrees can mean big money. Couple this with the understanding that to have a better quality of life, people need to spend more time with their families and less time at work.
This means we are less keen to be gone early and home late. Working seven days a week can be inconvenient for many.
Industrious and intelligent farmers have spent the last 20 or more years squeezing more and more production out of their animals to survive. It has put them at cutting edge of sheep and beef around in the world.
Lambing percentages continue to climb as do fine wool weights because of advanced breeding techniques. It has also created larger animals that are more difficult to handle and slower to shear.
Workers are injured or unable to work in the industry for long because of the more powerful animals.
This creates high staff turnover and more need for the younger or lesser skilled workers to step up sooner, potentially before they are ready.
As piece-rate workers, shearers have essentially taken a pay cut since they cannot shear as many sheep.
Australia has become a really strong pull for our workers. Pay rates are higher.
Work is consistent with most able to do 10 or 11 months without moving too far from home. They four 4.5 days and have a better lifestyle.
Many of Australia’s advantages are impossible here because of the season and unsettled weather.
Most have to wait for a cut out day or the weather to intervene for a day off and then that could be on a day when the rest of society is at work or the children are at school.
Shearing gangs in NZ, therefore, tend to socialise in their own circle. Lack of integration into local society because of the irregular work patterns can cause social disconnection that leaves workers feeling isolated and lonely. The transient nature of seasonal work adds to this with workers sometimes being away from family for months on end.
The industry is struggling to find a training model that fits. The old Wool Board used to take care of it and we had a training set-up envied the world over. Since the scrapping of the levy there has been less funding for training, resulting in a slow decline of skills.
Wool harvesting is a very highly skilled and specialised job that has been done for a long time and it is doubtful the basics of it will change any time soon. Our labour force is valuable to our farmers and it is important that we keep their skills and knowledge here and used.
How we do that is a very important question and one that needs to be asked and answered now before it is too late to stem the flow.
