New Zealand agricultural employment relations, migration, and 'pledge washing': The new recipe for the 21st century

Abstract

This Working Paper continues a series of articles published in Sociologia Ruralis in 1987, 1995, and 2007 reviewing the evolution of rural employment relations in New Zealand. It analyses research driven changes to public policy on the use of migrants to combat the ongoing labour shortages in New Zealand’s rural sector. There is a comparison contrasting the effects of these changes in the horticulture/viticulture sector and in the dairy farming sector. For the former a publicly acclaimed migration scheme resulted. For the latter an employer driven charter, which has been described as a ‘pledge wash’, was the outcome. Attention is drawn to the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 which it is argued may have far more significant effects on dairy farming than employers have appreciated. It concludes by revisiting four key questions posed back in 1995 looking at them again after a further twenty years.