It makes a nice change to see a
coffee chain in Wellington being excoriated on social media for raising the
price of a flat white by ten cents in response to the recent increase in the
minimum wage, I’m used to seeing dairy farmers get a kicking for everything
from the price of butter to the imagined harsh conditions we subject our
employees to.
If anything was going to distract
people from a $6 block of butter, it was going to be a $6.10 cup of coffee.
When I started dairying in 1996 I had no idea
what the minimum wage was, Google tells me it was $7, and my first job in the
Waikato gave me 2 rostered days off per calendar month. This wasn’t necessarily
the same two days every month, sometimes it could be the first weekend and then
next month it could be the last: working 40 or 50 days straight was by no mean
uncommon.
When the farm owner at the time suggested
that getting a full day in lieu was a bit generous as I only worked half a day
on the public holiday, I readily agreed. I’d given up my $36,000 job in Wellington
to move to the outskirts of Hamilton and start again as a dairy farm assistant
and I was happy for the opportunity. I was only paying $40 a week rent for a
sprawling 4-bedroom house; this meant that despite the $10,000 cut in salary I
was better off financially than when I was in Wellington.
Despite the roster I was also happier
and healthier than I had been in years, and in my opinion nothing beats
watching your kids grow up in the country.
None of this is to say that these
practices should persist today, just that they are part of our very recent history
and today’s employers are people like me who came up through those systems.
Helen Kelly used to name and
shame dairy farmers on Twitter, she would find an ad on the internet and
analyse it; time off, hours worked, hourly rate and quite frankly it was
embarrassing. Sometimes she was wrong, but most of the time she was exposing
some pretty old fashioned employment ideas like annualised hours and value of
accommodation as part of the package.
Times have changed very quickly
and poor employment practices amongst farmers are becoming less and less common.
I noted the increased minimum wage with interest but knew that no action was
required on my part as each of my employees earn well in excess of that, and I
am writing this column on my regularly rostered 3-day weekend.
Unlike coffee shops, dairy
farmers aren’t in the position to pass the costs of production on to consumers.
We have to farm smarter and spend our money where it will have the most impact
on our profitability. Over the years we’ve come to realise that a happy, stable
work force is money well spent, it’s rarely a place to look to for savings.
As for coffee, nothing can beat 2
teaspoons of Nescafe Classic in a travel mug at 4am in the cowshed.
