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Democracy & Justice Research Flagship - Projects

Pacific labour and Australian horticulture

(3 associated projects)

Project Code: ARC Linkage grant (January 2005-July 2006)

This 18-month research project will investigate the costs and benefits of increasing labour mobility between the Pacific and Australia by studying the feasibility of a seasonal labour program to employ agricultural workers from Pacific Island nations in the Swan Hill/Mildura region during periods of peak labour demand. The project links two apparently disconnected problems – gaps in the Australian rural labour market and unemployment in Pacific Island nations:

  • Seasonal labour shortages hinder the expansion of Australia's multibillion-dollar horticultural industry because primary producers have trouble securing sufficient workers at peak harvest and planting periods. Growers employ illegal or semi-legal workers and are susceptible to immigration raids, which disrupt highly time-sensitive farm activities such as fruit harvests. Illegal employment undermines the rule of law, leaves workers vulnerable to exploitation and results in foregone tax revenue.
  • Pacific Island nations have labour surplus economies. Unemployment and a lack of income inhibit social and economic development, restrict educational opportunities for children and contribute to social unrest and lawlessness.

This project will investigate whether these apparently separate problems could be addressed through a single policy measure – namely increased labour mobility between the Pacific and Australia to allow Pacific Islanders to fill seasonal gaps in the horticultural labour market.

It takes a pragmatic, policy-oriented approach and forges an innovative dialogue between a leading international development agency (Oxfam/Community Aid Abroad) and two local government authorities responsible for economic development in one of Australia's key horticultural regions (the Sunraysia Mallee Economic Development Board and the Economic Development Unit of the Swan Hill Rural City Council). Specifically the research project will investigate whether:

  • remittances and skills transferred to the home country by Pacific Islanders employed in Australian horticulture would produce positive outcomes such as better health and nutrition, improved job prospects and increased educational opportunities for both boys and girls
  • bringing seasonal workers from the Pacific would enable primary producers to expand production and/or export volumes
  • a seasonal labour scheme could reduce illegal labour and provide a mechanism to regularise the status of Pacific Islanders who currently work in the region without authorisation
  • such a program can be implemented without displacing existing workers, driving down wages and conditions or denying job opportunities to unemployed Australians
  • such a program can guarantee the dignity, rights, health and safety of migrant workers.

Research Team

Investigators: Mr Peter Mares, Mr Nic Maclellan and Mr Scott Ewing


Publications and Other Research Outputs

Working papers

Conference papers

Submission

Report

Article




Labour mobility in the Pacific

Research Team

Investigators: Mr Peter Mares and Mr Nic Maclellan

The World Bank has commissioned Peter Mares and Nic Maclellan to contribute to a project on labour mobility in the Pacific. The World Bank is currently producing a report on labour mobility and Peter and Nic will provide a chapter looking at the potential for creating a viable model for Pacific Islanders to enter the Australian agricultural labour market on a temporary (seasonal) basis. Peter and Nic will travel to Fiji for a workshop with government and regional officials in Suva on 30 November 2005. The workshop is designed to invite reactions to the empirical evidence gathered by the World Bank project to date and to spur discussion on the practical issues involved in any labour scheme.

Peter Mares and Nic Macllelan, “Neighbours: Making bilateral Worker Schemes a Win-Win,” in At Home and Away: Expanding Job Opportunities for Pacific Islanders Through Labor Mobility, World Bank, Washington, 2006.




Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

To undertake research complementing the Pacific Island Labour and Australian Horticulture project, Peter Mares will travel to Canada for two weeks in the second half of 2005 to study the operation of Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, and its potential applicability to Australia. Under the scheme some 20,000 workers from Mexico and the Caribbean travel to Canada each year to be employed for periods of four to eight months growing and picking tomatoes, capsicums, cucumbers and other crops in greenhouses in southern Ontario.

The Canadian scheme has been operating for more than twenty years and is seen as a coherent alternative to the flow of undocumented migrant workers into agricultural jobs that characterises many rural industries in the United States and parts of Europe. Recent research on the Canadian scheme suggests that it has benefits for rural communities in both Canada and the workers’home countries. In Canada the scheme has enabled the expansion of a key industry by filling seasonal gaps in the local labour market, and has had positive spin-offs for rural towns as seasonal worker spend a proportion of their earnings on local goods and services. Meanwhile the savings that seasonal workers remit to the home communities are used to improve housing and nutrition and to keep children longer in schools.

The scheme is not without its problems however, particularly in relation to the conditions under which seasonal migrant labour is employed. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Canada describes the scheme as 'Canada's shameful little secret’. Peter Mares will study the Canadian experience to see what lessons can be learned by Australia, where there is growing pressure to recruit foreign workers to provide seasonal labour in expanding horticultural industries.

Research Team

Investigator: Mr Peter Mares

Publications and Other Research Outputs

Peter Mares, “Workers for all seasons,” (PDF) The Diplomat, July–August 2006.

Transcripts from two programs on Canada's seasonal agricultural workers scheme (PDF) produced and presented by Peter Mares and broadcast on ABC Radio National’s Bush Telegraph.







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