Recruitment challenges as beneficial constraints: Pathways to improving job quality in the Australian horticulture industry

Abstract

The horticulture industry faces major workforce recruitment and retention challenges that are often characterised as labour shortages. Policy solutions to these challenges developed by government and industry have focused mainly on increasing labour supply particularly through temporary visas. However, evidence of wage theft and widespread insecure employment indicate that this policy solution has likely exacerbated problems relating to poor job quality in the industry. This presentation draws upon research collected and analysed for a three-year project with Joanna Howe, Stephen Clibborn, Diane van den Broek and Alexander Reilly. This consisted of a national survey of 332 employers and 14 regional case studies to examine the different ways that horticulture employers have addressed their workforce recruitment and retention challenges in their regions. Our findings indicate that policies that successfully increased labour supply in some regions diminished incentives for employers to improve job quality. However, employers in other regions with persistent recruitment challenges responded by training workers, developing career pathways and organisational innovations. The findings indicate that recruitment challenges, while posing significant short-term problems for business viability, can potentially act as ‘beneficial constraints’ by encouraging employers to develop more sustainable solutions for meeting workforce needs.

Speaker

Chris F Wright is an Associate Professor in the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School. His research focuses on comparative employment relations, labour immigration, skills and supply chain sustainability. Chris’s work has been published in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, ILR Review, and the Journal of Business Ethics. He is an Associate Editor of Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society and the Immediate Past President of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ).