Pubdate: Wed, 04 Jul 2012
Source: Hawke's Bay Today (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2012 APN News & Media Ltd
Contact:  http://hbtoday.co.nz/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2947
Author: Lawrence Gullery
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

JOB BENEFIT FOR BAY LINKED TO DRUG TEST

The president of Federated Farmers believes a move to drug-test 
beneficiaries has some merit while a major Hawke's Bay apple producer 
believes it would help keep people in jobs and ease the labour 
shortage in the primary industries.

Hawke's Bay farmer and Federated Farmers national president Bruce 
Wills said initially he was upset that the media climbed on top of a 
"five-second comment" by Deputy Prime Minister Bill English at the 
organisation's annual meeting in Auckland.

Mr English suggested some people on the unemployment benefit should 
be tested for drugs to make sure they were capable of taking up job 
opportunities.

"It was just in response to a question one of my staff asked Mr 
English, about what the Government was doing to move New Zealand into 
employment.

"The five-second comment was all the coverage we got on television so 
I guess we weren't discussing anything else important."

Mr. Wills said the comments had "picked up the pace" this week. "And 
even though it was a bit of a side comment, from my view it has some 
merit. The reality is this country relies on agriculture as a big 
export earner but it seems bizarre we can't find enough New 
Zealanders to work on farms.

"We have a huge problem in the South Island alone where we have 1500 
Filipino people working on dairy farms because Kiwis don't want the 
work, yet we have an unemployment rate of 6.7 per cent.

"Or maybe it's because New Zealanders are hard to employ as they 
often fail drug tests."

Mr. Wills said Filipino people had earned a reputation as being "hard 
workers" and "didn't do drugs".

"It's not as if the pay rates are bad. They are attractive. The dairy 
guys are earning well above the minimum wage.

"There are some people that have a real need to receive a benefit and 
I have no problem with that, but there are others who haven't even 
got a vocation or focus and it makes me grumpy to think there are 
people failing drug tests excluding themselves from being able to work."

Hawke's Bay's Apollo Apples director Bruce Beaton said the company 
already used random drug tests and had completed two this year.

"That is something that we are very aware of as we have a lot of 
machinery and equipment, so we want to make sure our place is safe 
for the people to work.

"I would say it would be of benefit to have drug tests for 
beneficiaries, anything that would prepare people, to get them and 
keep people in jobs would be good."

Mr. Beaton said the other side to the issue was the fact there were 
not enough workers to meet the peak of the harvest season.

"There are not enough people coming forward to work, which would 
enable us to harvest the fruit at the right time. "We employ, in the 
peak of the season, around 850 to 900 people. A third would be RSE 
workers, the rest are Kiwis as well as a few internationals.'
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom