The labour manager for one of the New Zealand contractors involved in the Recognised Seasonal Employer or RSE scheme says the employment of Pacific workers helps improve the productivity of their business.
Hawkes Bay apple grower and exporter Mr Apple hires over 800 workers from Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati and Solomon Islands each season.
Mr Apple's Alistair Jamieson says they've seen a significant increase in productivity through the steady number of Pacific workers who return year after year and are motivated to work hard.
"And of course now, we're into the fourth year of the scheme. And we get on average about a sixty percent return of the workers we have. So those workers come back. They are skilled at the job they do and of course they become more productive and we can see anything up to a twenty-percent lift in productivity between one year to the next."
Alistair Jamieson