The company that brought in 100 migrant workers to help tackle a major infrastructure project is not taking the easy way out, an immigration lawyer says.
Transmission Gully construction Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
A hundred workers from the Philippines have been brought in to work on Wellington's huge Transmission Gully roading project [https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/355587/there-s-kiwis-out-there-who-could-be-doing-these-jobs
infuriated unions] who insisted locals could be doing the job.
E Tū and the Amalgamated Workers' Union said it was common knowledge the project was a sure thing, and training should have started years ago to prepare a Kiwi workforce.
But immigration lawyer Aaron Martin said a completely local labour force could never have been expected for a project of that size.
"The demands [the project] places on the labour market are significant and you look at New Zealand's history - whenever large infrastructure projects have been commenced, by necessity, you need to have access to skills from offshore," he said.
"You can't expect that the local labour market is going to be able to satisfy that demand."
More needed to be done to address skill shortages within the industry but finger-pointing was not the answer.
"It's not the responsibility of just one single sector to train people," he said.
"The education sector needs to make young people work-ready and businesses need to be able to engage with the education sector and other parts of government and to be quite honest what are the unions doing to offer up-skilling to their membership?
"I think it really has to be a group effort and I think that there's a lack of innovative thinking around that."
Recruiting from offshore was not an easy process and companies would hire locally if they could, Mr Martin said.
"The requirements for companies to get work visas for overseas workers are not easy and Immigration New Zealand is quite rigourous in its labour market testing.
"It seemed to me that the comments indicated that New Zealanders were being done out of jobs when in fact that can't be the case otherwise the work visas wouldn't have been issued."
Cost was unlikely to be a factor, as Immigration New Zealand would not allow overseas workers to be paid wages that were disproportionate to what their local counterparts received
CPB HEB, the joint venture company that hired the Filipinos for Transmission Gully, confirmed they paid migrant workers and New Zealanders the same wage for the same job.