The past two years have locked in a shortage of skilled workers which meat processors are attempting to overcome in a range of different ways, at a time when demand for red meat has led to unprecedented profitability.
This profit would be even higher if companies had enough staff to produce a full range of high-value products, but they are finding themselves forced to focus on making the quickest and most efficient use of the available workforce. In some instances, this means plants being unable to put on a second shift.
Ironically, this situation has also led to a flatter seasonal kill profile, reducing the autumn peak and extending the season, which appears to favour the processors in another way – it alleviates the need to pay the traditional level of premiums to obtain supply. The emphasis is now on matching livestock supply to the plant capacity that produces optimum efficiency and profit, rather than maximising market share.
All processors spoken to confirm the extremely tight labour situation and its causes: continuing covid disruptions, immigration restrictions, an additional week of sick leave, higher absenteeism, workers leaving the industry for lifestyle reasons and a smaller worker pool in rural communities. In theory, the immigration reset provides for an additional 650 immigrant workers, but this is a drop in the bucket spread across the industry, while the qualifying criteria appear to raise the average hourly rate paid with the unintended consequence of New Zealand workers remaining in unskilled jobs at a lower rate.
There is general agreement immigrant workers should ideally just be a top-up, with the majority of the workforce being employed locally, but this will require serious training and development of a career structure which makes the meat industry an employer of choice.
The age of longstanding and intergenerational meat workers supplemented by students at peak times is over and the industry must offer an attractive employment structure that stands up to competitive analysis.
The Meat Industry Association estimates a daily shortage of 2000 workers with absenteeism, exacerbated by covid and the extra week’s sick leave, resulting in capacity at 70% of the normal level.
It has developed a careers strategy with input from members that encourages undergraduates and post-graduates to apply for a scholarship, while meat works staff are encouraged to take up an apprenticeship which will qualify them for supervisory roles.
This strategy is not going to solve the immediate problem, but each of the meat companies is busy trying to attract more workers in the short term, while developing individual strategies to tackle the longer term shortage.
Greenlea chief executive Tony Egan emphasised the importance of the nationwide agribusiness curriculum in schools, which has been running for seven years with graduates starting to join the industry in addition to the future farmers’ programme, providing education pathways for students who are interested in farming as a career.
Alliance has a number of initiatives to address the labour shortage, although none of them can yet overcome the pressure of the seasonal peak between January and May.
The company partners with the Ministry for Social Development to access regional labour pools, as well as recruiting from the Cook Islands and South Auckland and running a referral incentive scheme to encourage existing staff members to attract friends and family.
“The other factor that will have an impact on the meat industry’s future employment opportunities and structures is automation. “
Alliance also has more than 3000 people in its training organisation, which offers the opportunity to gain NZQA certification and upskill its workforce to enable staff switching between plants.
The company reached an agreement with the Meat Workers Union in 2018 about switching capacity on and off to match livestock flows while retaining the ability to transfer workers from one department or plant to another or even between islands as required.
It now runs five of its seven plants throughout the year with only Lorneville and Nelson being seasonal, which provides more regular and consistent employment.
Like its neighbour, Silver Fern Farms is working very hard on retention and career development by supporting staff wellbeing and providing enlightened frontline leadership.
Chief people officer Matt Ballard maintains people now have choices about how they can live a well-rounded life, which means the meat industry must outcompete other industries to attract and retain employees by a combination of leadership programmes, offering attractive career structures, paying competitively and getting better at the essentials of safety and wellbeing.
Workplace surveys provide positive feedback about the key factors of leadership and retention of staff, which Ballard says is a feature of SFF’s mindset to be a global food company with strategic alignment between farmers, employees and the market.
The other factor that will have an impact on the meat industry’s future employment opportunities and structures is automation.
There is general agreement this area of innovation has not yet been sufficiently adopted by NZ processors, because of the lack of sheep meat and beef carcase uniformity compared with pork and poultry and the capital investment required.
Alliance general manager manufacturing Willie Wiese says the co-op has installed automation necessary to run beef and venison on the same chain, to produce bone-in lamb shoulders and operate the warehouse at Lorneville.
There isn’t enough automation available to convert the slaughter floor, but the technology exists to reduce the amount of muscular skeletal labour to be carried out by an ageing workforce.
SFF’s Ballard sees great potential for automation to provide small incremental improvements across all plant operations which may only result individually in saving or redeploying one or two workers.
What is absolutely certain is that none of the present initiatives, whether recruitment, training, immigration, or automation, will be sufficient to plug the large hole in the workforce.
New capacity will be useless without staff to operate it, so the options open to the meat companies are limited.
The new procurement wars may not be waged over livestock, but people.
