Tag Archives: labour shortage
Hundreds of workers flown home to Pacific despite fishing firms’ pleas
Tongan, Samoan and ni-Vanuatu horticulture workers have been redeployed or flown home, to the disappointment of the country’s biggest fishing companies who had asked for help filling hundreds of jobs in their processing plants. Between 200 and 500 workers still had time left on their Recognised Seasonal Employer visas, at the end of fruit-picking season in Nelson and Marlborough. Sealord and Talley’ wrote to the immigration minister asking that workers be given the chance to transfer over to better-paid seafood jobs, to help address a big labour shortage at the start of New Zealand’s lucrative hoki season. >click to read< 09:32
Buyers setting catch limits, processors struggle with labour shortages, ‘Lots of lobster, but we can’t bring them in’
“Pretty good catches so far. But almost everybody’s on a quota right now,” said Gerard Whalen, a long-time fisherman in Naufrage in eastern P.E.I. “We’re seeing lots of lobster, but we can’t bring them in.” “We just can’t get rid of them,” added Lucas Lesperance, who docks a few boats down from Whalen. Lesperance said he’s pulled up about 1,000 pounds of lobster some days, but his buyer has only been accepting 600-700 pounds. According to P.E.I.’s Seafood Processors Association, that is the big problem across the industry. Executive director Jerry Gavin said Island processing plants — which rely heavily on temporary foreign workers — are about 200 workers short this season. >click to read< 17:23
Prawn trawlers sit idle as fishermen turn to 457 visas for labour
It’s a boom season for the Carnarvon fishing fleet with colder water than usual in Western Australia’s protected Shark Bay spawning a bountiful king prawn and scallop catch. James Clement, marine biologist, former AFL footballer and head of the biggest trawler fleet licenced to fish Shark Bay, owned by ASX-listed company Mareterram, isn’t celebrating just yet. Despite the plentiful high-priced prawn harvest pouring into Mareterram’s Carnarvon wharf and packing sheds — the Shark Bay prawn season runs from late March to October — Mr Clement is having trouble keeping his 10 trawlers at sea for their 21-days-a-month continuous fishing time. A shortage of reliable labour and experienced fishing crew is hampering Mareterram’s total prawn catch, with issues including stress, inexperience, drugs and alcohol forcing some boats to return to port early mid-month to offload jittery crew before the scheduled full moon 10-day lay-off. click here to read the story 10:43
Chronic labour shortage hobbling Meteghan lobster plant
David Deveau is doing everything he can to find and keep local workers for his modern lobster processing plant in western Nova Scotia, but it is a battle he is losing. “We do have great local people here. I love them all. I respect them all,” said Deveau, CEO of Riverside Lobster International in the Meteghan area. “I don’t have enough. I just don’t have enough.” Deveau’s company now operates five buses daily to bring workers in from Digby and Yarmouth. Workers are paid about $13 per hour and enrolled in a defined contribution pension plan and get health benefits. The plant, which employs 300 people processing 27,000 kilograms a day of fresh and frozen lobster, is chronically short between 20 to 30 workers. Read the story here 09:52
