Aussie dole bludgers too lazy to Work

[nero_bolt]

Job snobs: Aussie dole bludgers too lazy to pick up $250 a day picking fruit

YOUNG, jobless Aussies are lazy and unwilling to break their welfare dependence, ­according to leading wine producers and citrus growers who are becoming ever more reliant on backpackers to stay in operation. 

Despite an urgent need for unskilled workers, regional Australia is struggling to ­attract young people from the city despite youth unemployment in Western Sydney peaking at 17 per cent, forcing growers in the nation’s food bowls to look overseas.

Wine growers in the Hunter Valley who still rely heavily on fruit pickers, claim there has been no interest from ­unemployed youth in Sydney to earn easy cash — up to $250 a day — picking grapes, as the region prepares for today’s official start of the 2015 harvest.

So it is backpackers or bust, with several operators claiming without the injection of foreign workers, many wine producers in the Hunter Valley would cease to exist.

‘‘We would probably be stuffed without them. The problem is, our unemployed don’t have to work, it’s too easy for them, plus a lot of them come with baggage; real problems,’’ winemaker and former chairman of the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Association’s viticulture committee Ken Bray said.

‘‘They are too reliant on welfare and don’t want to go where the jobs are.’’

While most of Drayton Wines grapes are picked by a mechanical harvester, manager John Drayton said the winery still uses backpackers to pick from older vines.

He, like Andrew Pengilly from Tyrrells Wines, rarely gets ­interest from locals or those struggling to find work two hours away in Sydney.

‘‘Should unemployed youth be coming up here to pick? Well, I’m a bit old school. Yes of course. A lot of people are saying that up here,’’ Mr Drayton said.

‘‘But that is the feeling about the whole society. People are ­unwilling to work.”

Across the state’s Riverina, the food bowl of NSW, the need for unskilled workers continues undiminished, despite it qualifying for the Howard government initiative to give foreigners an ­extension to their working visa if they work three months in rural Australia.

While the need for workers grows, the appeal for ­unemployed city residents appears non-existent.

‘‘There are definitely a lot of opportunities in rural Australia, but it seems people think the change would be too stressful.

“We don’t have fast food joints open 24 hours a day, or big shopping centres,’’ Griffith orange grower Vito Mancini said.

‘‘Just come out for a month, try it out. Don’t say there is no work about, because there is plenty.’’

Fellow Griffith farmer David Dissegna said: ‘‘The unemployed don’t want to do this kind of work. We would be in dire straits without foreign workers.’’

Fruit growers are not the only business owners lobbying the government to relax 417 visa restrictions, ahead of the tabling of the Northern Australia Development whitepaper next month.

In regional Queensland backpackers are keeping towns afloat.

‘‘We’ll give a job to anyone who’ll pull on a pair of work boots and have a go,’’ McKinley roadhouse owner Aidan Day, 65, said.

The number of working holiday visas has grown by a third since 2008 and visas for 18-to-30-year-olds are being fast-tracked to 48 hours.

 BACKPACKERS UP FOR HARD WORK IN OZ

IN Germany Denny Spaeth sits ­behind a desk working in a car manufacturing plant, but in ­Australia he is a man of the land, driving a forklift and heaving ­pumpkins out of the ground.

Mr Spaeth and girlfriend Jennifer Herde, a kindergarten teacher, are among the flood of European backpackers who earn travelling money working as fruitpickers. They are not afraid of a hard day’s work.

The couple arrived in Australia in August and worked for two months in Ayr, near Townsville, picking pumpkins, watermelons and squash. Mr Spaeth was able to earn $23 an hour driving a forklift.

The couple will spend the next month pricking grapes in the ­Hunter Valley. Mr Spaeth said they had loved their time Down Under and working on farms was hard but satisfying work.

“It’s life experience. You learn a lot about yourself and it would not be bad for young people,” he said.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/job-snobs-aussie-dole-bludgers-too-lazy-to-pick-up-250-a-d...

[cherry*135]

The Daily Telegraph and the OP needs to balance that story with this one.

7 Jan 2015

Easy entry for skilled foreigners

Companies would be allowed to bring employees to Australia for up to a year without applying for 457 skilled worker visas under a migration-rule revamp being considered by the government.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection is proposing a new temporary entry visa for foreign workers that would not require the candidates to pass language or skills requirements. Nor would employers have to prove they cannot find an Australian to fill the position.

The proposed “short-term mobility” subclass of visas would be available for “specialised work which may include intra-company transfers and foreign correspondents”, says a proposal paper obtained by The Australian Financial Review.

Fly-in, fly-out commuters, global partners or specialists who need to ­provide short periods of work or consultation to a company would be ­covered. The visa would allow for multiple entries.

The paper is part of a review announced in October and billed by the Abbott government as the biggest re-examination of skilled migration in 25 years. The government wants to cut red tape and give companies more flexibility to grow and compete for talent. ­But the changes would upset unions, which are mostly hostile to foreign labour.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/easy_entry_for_skilled_foreigners_NAsgC6BDewljc4CgdCEgEI

[cherry*135]

The picker of crops sought.


FRUIT picking is not for the faint-hearted or those looking for a high-paying job.

"It's not for everyone," Hillwood's Miller's Orchard manager Justin Miller said.

Many fruit producers across the state are struggling to find people to pick their products.

The Costa Group in the North-West is finding it hard to get people to pick an array of berries, while others are in the same position.

Mr Miller, who finished harvesting cherries last week, said his family's orchard used one employment agency to supply Asian workers on 457 visas to do a majority of his cherry picking.

It also relied on European backpackers for picking apples and pears.

"We don't have many Australians put their name down for picking, more the packing side," Mr Miller said.

"Even though we go through Joe for all our cherry pickers, a lot of the pickers are Asians or European backpackers.

"I don't think Australians want to do that kind of work - they are probably a bit lazy, to tell you the truth."

Mr Miller said fruit picking was perceived to be boring and low-paid, it could be fun with some pickers earning up to $250 a day - depending on how good they were.

He said pickers earned $21 an hour on a piece rate, depending on how much they picked.

"It is physically challenging when you do an eight-hour day, it is repetitive work, it's no hard - it is just sticking at a job for a period of time," he said.

"Generally we start at 8am and finish at 4.30pm but when the weather heats up on days where the temperature reaches 32 degrees, you have to stop picking.

"At 28 or 29 degrees, you don't want to be out picking in it, but sometimes you have just got to because you have got to get the fruit of so we try and start early.

"Overall, some of them are making well over the wages and some aren't making wages.

"When I said they make average wages plus, wages are $21 an hour.

"On an eight-hour day, they are earning $170 plus mark on average, some people are earning $250 and some people only earn $120.

"In an eight-hour day an average person would pick 140 to 200 kilograms."

Mr Miller said the fun came from camaraderie and working in groups of about seven pickers.

He said most pickers averaged between 18 and 25 years.

"It is a fun thing, whether it is cherry picking, apple picking or whatever. We have teams working in gangs," Mr Miller said.

"With our apple pickers we have mostly Europeans so we employ a lot of Germans, Dutch and French, and we provide an area for them to camp, a toilet and shower and they have a ball.

"They have little parties and when they are out picking, they have a laugh."

Mr Miller said a good fruit picker required a good, fast technique.

He said it was sometimes difficult to ensure the stem remained on the fruit, otherwise it was classified as a second-grade product.

During the March-May apple picking season, Mr Miller calls backpackers who register their name with the orchard, but said it was a frustrating process.

"We get all their numbers and names, then when it comes time for picking, most of them have left the state or won't answer their phone - it's hopeless," he said.

"But once you get people with apples, they usually stay here to the end.

"I try to go through one person with cherries because the season is so short [two weeks] but with apples, you sort of build up to it."

Mr Miller did not have an answer on how best to get more Tasmanians picking fruit, but said farming perceptions needed to change to get younger people involved in agriculture.

He said perceptions behind fruit picking could also be a deterrent.

"One thing you can do to get people involved in farming is to make it more appealing to young people," Mr Miller said.

"Farming is not all about breaking your back, a lot of it now is high tech farming using less labour and more machinery.

"But people don't realise that, it doesn't have to be hard work all the time."

http://www.examiner.com.au/story/2808733/the-picker-of-crops-sought/

[gleee58]

The Costa Group in the North-West is finding it hard to get people to pick an array of berries, while others are in the same position.

These are the people who last week said they had 1500 applications to get through but their admin person was overwhelmed by the amount of applications and could not deal with them so they had a whinge about Aussie vs OS workers instead.

[nero_bolt]

[debra9275]

here's more on that Gleee

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-05/fruit-producer-accused-of-shunning-locals-over-busy-harvest-se...

One of Australia's biggest fruit producers has been accused of shunning would-be harvest workers in Tasmania.

[donnashuggy]

Can you post a pic of your pickings nero?

[aps1080]

""At 28 or 29 degrees, you don't want to be out picking in it, but sometimes you have

just got to because you have got to get the fruit of so we try and start early."

Start at 8.00am ?

Christ, start at 6 - 7 am and get it over with.

28 or 29 ? I don't like the heat but that is not unbearable for a country like Aus.

[jean2579]

Nero, there is a very true old saying that every worker is only one or two pay cheques away from being the unemployed person they pillory.

[***super_nova***]

Fruit picking actually requires skill to earn reasonable income.  I have done it as a student back in the 1960s, and I have also helped stringing up hops, as well as picking them on relative's farm.   I was very fit and not frightened of hard work, but found it physically extremely demanding.  And I never made the sort of money that professional pickers did, but they were people who just travelled around the country following the seasons.   Fruit picking only lasts few weeks when a particular fruit is being harvested, it is seasonal, it is not a reliable income.

[siggie-reported-by-alarmists]

I'm pretty sure I've seen investigations into farmers who employ people, take them out on a farm in the middle of nowhere, on the

promise of good pay.....However, they must have the cost of accommodation and food taken from their pays. The accommodation is

sharing a matress on the floor with 10 other people.  These foreign works were putting around $6 a day in their pockets if they were

lucky.......