6.1.Seasonal workforce features

The company estimated that around 75% of seasonal workers in the packhouse are female. The majority of staff are Maori. About 10% of staff have English as a second or other language. About 50% of staff return each season.

In the packing season, when employment is at its peak, a high proportion of staff travel significant distances to Te Puke from the Eastern Bay of Plenty. On a packing season day shift, Trevelyan has approximately 20% of people from the Te Puke area, 20-30% are travellers (backpackers and tourists), and 50% travel from the Eastern Bay of Plenty area. On a night shift, approximately 10% of people come from the Te Puke area, 10% are travellers, and 80% travel in from the Eastern Bay of Plenty.

The company has a close relationship with Work and Income and employs a large number of Work and Income clients in the packing season.

6.1.Recruitment process

Trevelyan uses a simple recruitment process. Applicants complete a job application form, and are interviewed either by the packhouse cool store manager or by one of the seasonal work staff liaison people.

6.1.Training process

At the beginning of the season, every seasonal worker attends an induction briefing at the packhouse. They have to complete this training before they are called up for a shift. The induction covers company standards and employment conditions, health and safety, and orientation to work information. It normally takes two to three hours.

Seasonal workers then receive on-job training to learn the tasks they have been employed to do. The supervisor (who is also a seasonal worker) does this training, which involves oral instructions and on-job coaching. Team members work in close proximity to each other, so the supervisor is able to monitor what they are doing.

Most people work at an acceptable pace and level of accuracy after a week of on-job coaching.

6.1.What issues concern Trevelyan?

The company employs a large contingent of people who live a long way from Te Puke, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Transport can be an issue. There is no public transport available from the Eastern Bay of Plenty to Te Puke, so workers must drive to work. The company reported that local law enforcement targets roads leading to packhouses in the area, ticketing vehicles for expired warrants of fitness and registrations. Workers have no choice about using their vehicles to get to work, but the fines are significant in relation to their weekly pay. This is a demotivating factor.

A number of the seasonal workers have outstanding court fines and child support payments. The company is required by the Ministry of Justice and Inland Revenue to deduct payments from seasonal workers' wages. For some people, the net result of these deductions is that they receive less pay than they would receive if they stayed on a benefit. This has caused some people to stop working.

Trevelyan reported some concerns about the "life skills" of some staff. Specific examples:

• High rates of absenteeism - Seasonal workers regularly do not turn up for work. In many cases, they do not advise the company that they are not coming. Absenteeism peaks later in the working week.
• Nutrition - Packhouse work is physically demanding, and people need to start the day on a full stomach. Some arrive at work without having eaten, and do not have any food with them. Trevelyan provides free morning tea three times a week (savouries, scones and muffins), breakfast once a week for the day shift, and hot soup on cold evenings for the night shift.

Employees from non-English speaking backgrounds have some communication issues. In most cases, someone else in the company has sufficient language skills to translate.

Like all packhouses and cool stores in New Zealand, the company must comply with the British Retail Consortium[3] (BRC) standards. The company handles compliance with BRC by covering the standards required in induction and by supervisors monitoring compliance.

6.1.Work demands

The packhouse has a range of different roles for seasonal workers. The biggest demand is for relatively simple jobs - packing kiwifruit, stacking and moving boxes, and so on. People start in these less complex jobs. If they show initiative, they may be trained to do more complex jobs such as documentation or supervision. If people are not able to cope with a job, the work can be "divided up" to simplify it even more until the worker is able to cope.

Work in the packhouse is urgent and pressured during the picking/packing season. Kiwifruit that have been harvested must go into the cool stores as soon as possible. There is no time for additional training activities.

6.1.Foundation skill gaps

Some workers, especially those from NESB backgrounds, do not have English language skills to understand oral instructions and explanations.

Concerns were expressed that some workers lack the ability to manage themselves. Some are unable to arrange transport; others do not advise the company when they are not available for work.

6.2.Seasonal roles

Many roles in the kiwifruit packhouse are seasonal. Seasonal roles at the packhouse visited included:

• graders - grade and sort fruit
• packers - pack fruit into trays/boxes
• tray supply - compile packaging and provide stocks of trays and boxes to the packing area
• stackers - stack boxes of fruit onto pallets
• fruit reception - receive fruit coming into packhouse
• fork truck drivers - load fruit off and on trucks and move pallets around cool store and packhouse as required
• packhouse manager - manages all operations within and around packhouse
• assistant packhouse manager - assists with managing operations around the packhouse
• supervisors - supervise the work of others in all areas
• bin dump operators - supply fruit to the sorting tables
• quality controller - checks quality standards are met, ensures compliance with quality systems
• labeller - label boxes
• documentation - records on pallet card which grower and how many trays from that grower are on pallet
• EAN (track and trace) - responsible for documentation and co-ordination to record where fruit has come from and where it has gone to
• load out staff - load fruit onto transport to leave the packhouse
• staff liaison - advise staff of shift times, take calls from people unable to work (HR role)
• tea staff
• security staff.

This profile focuses on the foundation skill tasks required of graders, packers, tray supply and stackers, as these are the most common seasonal roles.

6.2.Foundation skills required

Each skill has been annotated to show if it is used frequently (at least hourly), critical to the company, and complex in terms of the amount of technical information.

Note: Seasonal roles in documentation demand higher levels of reading and writing skills. Staff may be required to use the computer system. Staff are usually carefully selected for these roles from the existing staff pool, and given special training.