business & technology
Human Resources
Pickers can be choosers
The industry’s worker shortage of Vintage 2022
The COVID pandemic produced numerous challenges for wine producers in Australia: from dismal visitation to sales that stayed at the bottom of the barrel. Another complication was the closure of borders and lack of seasonal workers. Harrison Davies spoke with producers to see how they dealt with a vintage worker shortage in 2022. Calls for help rung from coast to coast as Vintage 2022 got underway across Australia. Producers the country over scrambled to find workers to help pick fruit and process grapes. “Hi there winos. Is anyone still looking for a last minute vintage position? We still need a few cellar hands,” said one producer in the Pyrenees. “We are looking for V2022 workers in Clare Valley, South Australia. We will need two people. Start around last week of January till end of April,” said another in the Clare Valley. Similar concerns echoed across vineyards and in cellars as wine businesses struggled to keep up with a fruitful vintage and a lack of seasonal staff. Most years the vintage is covered by working holiday makers, seasonal workers who only expect a few months of work before moving on.
This year, however, vintage landed in the last few weeks of “fortress Australia”, when the borders were closed, preventing anyone from coming or leaving. Producers were quickly finding themselves short staffed and struggling to keep up with the busy pace of vintage. The previous federal government put though several policies to try and alleviate some of the challenges. Then Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, Alex Hawke, released a statement saying that working holiday rules would become more lenient to make up for the worker shortfalls. “Until the end of 2022, there will be no limit on the length of time working holiday makers can work for the same employer,” he said in a statement. “The above measures are temporary and designed to provide immediate
assistance to Australian businesses that are currently facing critical workforce shortages, to enable them to continue delivering goods and services to the community.” These changes seemed to be too little, too late and producers began to look for other ways to get grapes off vines and into the cellar. Some brought all hands on deck for all parts of the vintage, bringing cellar hands into the vineyards to pick fruit and bringing vineyard hands and viticulturists into the cellar to provide assistance. Some called upon friends and family to help pick grapes and offered them food and drinks in exchange for their work. Others were simply fed up at the quality of work provided by locals, as one New South Wales producer lamented. “Anyone else had a gutful of pickers this vintage?” he said in a Facebook post.
The staff at Oliver’s Taranga in McLaren Vale during Vintage ‘22
94
Grapegrower & Winemaker
www.winetitles.com.au
July 2022 – Issue 702
