Last month, it was Australia’s mining sector gearing up to employ temporary foreign workers to fill so-called ‘skills shortages’.
Now, Australia’s wool industry is pressuring the government to allow the importation of foreign shearers [my emphasis]:
SOLVING a shortage of shearers has become the curly question of the State’s wool boom. But the industry’s peak body says jetting in shearers from the UK to clip sheep on farms across WA during peak times could be the answer.
The State is enjoying a wool boom not seen since the hey days of the 1980s thanks to surging demand from China combined with drought affecting wool producers in the Eastern States…
But the WA Shearing Industry Association is warning the State doesn’t have enough shearers to cope with the demand during the two peak seasons — one starting now and running through to October and a second peak from January to April.
The association met WA Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan this week to discuss the shearing shortage and enlist her help to lobby the Federal Government for changes to workers’ visas.
Adding to the shearer shortage are improvements to wages and conditions in New Zealand, which has led to fewer shearers coming to Australia to fill vacancies. “We’d like an arrangement where we can bring guys from the UK and possibly other countries into WA …
“In shearing you can earn excellent money … but there does need to be improvements in working conditions. You can go into sheds where gates are broken off, the electrical standards are not up to scratch,” [Association president and Spencer Shearing owner Darren Spencer] said.
If the WA Shearing Industry Association cannot attract shearers from the drought-affected East or from New Zealand, then its should do what New Zealand has done and improve wages and working conditions.
This is precisely how the labour “market” is supposed to work. Whenever there is a ‘shortage’ of anything, the price (in this case wages) is supposed to lift until the shortage is met through increased supply (in this case by attracting workers from other sectors).
As explained by The Australia Institute’s chief economist, Richard Denniss, the very purpose of foreign worker visas is to “suppress wage growth by allowing employers to recruit from a global pool of labour to compete with Australian workers”. In a normal functioning labour market, “when demand for workers rises, employers would need to bid against each other for the available scarce talent”. But this mechanism has been bypassed by enabling employers to recruit labour globally. “It is only in recent years that the wage rises that accompany the normal functioning of the labour market have been rebranded as a ‘skills shortage'”.
Stephen Koukoulas (The Kouk) noted similar recently:
For a nation supposedly so concerned about near record low wages growth:
It’s hard to believe that it would continually push down wages by circumventing the ordinary function of the labour market and allowing firms to employ foreign labour.
So-called “labour shortages” are desirable and are the very solution to the low wages growth afflicting Australia, which has everyone from the RBA to the government fretting.
The incessant warnings of “skills shortages” by the various business lobbies are really code for “we want to pay workers less” by employing foreign workers.
