Students invited back for NSW harvest – Fiona Hall

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2021 edition of AFG, available online here.

Fiona Hall, NSW

Finding workers for last summer’s harvest was ‘a disaster’ for NSW cherry grower, Fiona Hall, although her idea to employ 20 private school leavers from Sydney in the packhouse worked well.

The students camped at a local hall with some of their parents, who cooked meals and supervised the rosters. While it was exhausting for the teenagers working 12 hours a day, six days a week, Fiona says they got a lot out of it and she’ll look to repeat the exercise this summer.

She had already thinned the cherry crop in anticipation of the labour shortage but says an attempt to employ locals was ‘a bit of a disaster’.

“We had a really high turnover. People would leave in the middle of the day or wouldn’t turn up for the second day, which just puts so much pressure on resources to induct and train and do the
paperwork for more people,” Fiona says.

“We advertised on social media and had plenty of starters, but not one local stayed for the entire season. I guess for them to go from no work to long hours is a big ask, especially to back it up
day after day.

“At the peak we were calling in contractors who were getting in sub-contractors, and we were so desperate that when we had a wet day or two, we pulled pickers out of the paddock to pack through
a night shift.

“It affected our quality for sure, we just weren’t doing the job on the fruit.”

Fiona paid over and above the hourly rate and tried incentives like putting on barbecues and sometimes breakfast for workers. ‘Grey nomads’ were brought in for short periods and had an excellent work ethic, particularly in management, she says.

With harvest likely to start in November, Fiona is thinking she may employ two teams through a contractor for grading and packing in five-hour shifts, so that people can be given a day off. She’s
also talking to a provider about setting up portable accommodation to enable all teams to stay on farm.

Covid-19 could work for or against NSW growers in terms of available labour, Fiona says.

“I’m already getting feedback that a lot of grey nomads are still in Queensland and won’t be able to cross the border for harvest. But if NSW remains in lockdown it may fall our way since the blueberry pickers who usually go north may not be able to,” she says.

Read more labour stories from around the country here.