Accommodation

Table 6.2 summarises accommodation provisions as claimed by employers in early 2012. Most enterprises either accommodated all workers on site or all workers off site with transport arrangements in place.

Table 6-2: Types of Accommodation for RSE Employees

Type of

Accommodation

Onsite Offsite notes

Cabins only 34%

Cabins, supplemented

11% Mainly cabins

with some other types included Houses 36% Prefabs 17% Caravans 2% Rental Housing 35% Lodgings 25% Miscellaneous types often adapted Motels 20% Backpackers/hostels 10% Campsites 6% Billets 4%

Source: Author Survey

Weekly rentals on accommodation sighted by this researcher ranged from $90 to $135, slightly higher than survey results suggested (see Appendix 2). Onsite accommodation, often in the form of 4-bunk cabins, was usually of a lower standard than off site. Buildings and structures used for other purposes, such as shipping containers, were adapted in several sites visited. The most recently added

accommodation was often in the form of portacoms103_{. Caravans were sometimes interspersed with}

the onsite accommodation, but never tents. Survey responses did not disclose the extent of caravan use, but some use of caravans for sleeping purposes only was accepted by the DOL. An official explained that as long as the enterprise was committed to ongoing improvement in accommodation, some use of caravans was tolerated for a time (Official #6, 13-4-12). Offsite accommodation mainly fits the description of backpacker accommodation somewhere between two and four bunks per room. The most comfortable accommodation seen, in the sense that it could be described as quality backpackers or motel style, was sited in three separate locations which charged $135 per worker in each case. A large employer with highly variable accommodation charged a single fee of $130 for both accommodation and use of vehicles, approximately in the ratio 100:30. When asked why not charge differently according to the quality of accommodation the answer was that all workers would want the cheaper accommodation. In several off site cases the accommodation was adapted from disused former hospital accommodation, including a former hospital wing.

Three issues which arose frequently were heating, space and damage.

They had a two and half hour meeting; the upshot was they needed heaters in the accommodations! Two hours to work that out! And all they needed to say was “Hey we need heaters!”(Brendon, 22-6-12)

Shelly (interviewed 20-11-12) reported that two years earlier gas heaters were used in the workers’ camp but there was difficulty over cost and there was currently no heating. “The camp won’t allow electric heaters. The women [night shift workers] now sleep there in the day with lots of

blankets”.104

Some evidence came to light of imaginative approaches to heating in contrast with minimalist strategies referred to above. “So the Tanna boys stay up in Katikati and they stay at Sapphire Hot Springs. Works well they come home cold and jump in the hot pool” (Euan, 19-11-12). This was not the only example found in the Bay of Plenty thermal region where the use of hot springs made a positive difference to the lives of the workers. However the frequency with which the heating issue arose casts doubt on the level of understanding of at least some employers around the needs of people in an unfamiliar climate. Why, for example, did Brendon, quoted above, need to be told of the need for heaters in the accommodations?

103 _{These portable forms of housing meet building standards, but can be overcrowded if used unscrupulously.} 104 _{Shelly subsequently qualified this observation to note that oil column heaters were also supplied by the firm} at some point (pers. com, 10-11-12)

Terry and Alice, referred to in the previous section, were interviewed at length and provided further insights into accommodation issues. Two places where there were particular problems around heating and space were B Street and A Street. In B Street, 21 people were sleeping in a 3 bedroom house at one stage. It is hard to see how this could have satisfied the DOL’s space requirements (see next 2 paragraphs) given that the toilet and kitchen facilities were designed for only a 3 bedroom house. In A Street, 18 people occupied one large house plus a portacom situated on a back lawn. The eight in the portacom (viewed by the researcher) were in an area of approximately 30 square metres and in the previous year (2011) were supplied with portaloos105 _{until a permanent facility was}

developed. A small oil column heater was provided in 2011 with a setting to switch off at 11 p.m. Terry had managed to change the setting. The front house had a wood burner but for a full season Terry routinely replaced the green wood being supplied with burnable fire wood to help this group keep warm. This situation reached a crisis point when a two hour evening course at A Street, part of the Vakameasina programme, was cancelled because the house was considered too cold for the workers to concentrate. Terry found workers sleeping on mattresses in the kitchen area in order to use the oven turned on to keep warm all night (Terry and Alice, 10-4-13).

The issue of space has been closely monitored by labour inspectors, who work from a number of legislative platforms. Numbers to a room vary from single occupancy (rare) to at least eight. Although caravans are being phased out, some workers preferred to keep them if it meant an opportunity to have a single room. Penelope provided an example of eight sleeping to a room with communal kitchen and rent at $90/wk.

More typically, numbers to a room in various locations were 4-6 (various field notes). There is a standard portacom which measures 6 metres by 3 metres externally, approximately 18 square metres in size, which has become widely used. Under a formula provided by the Hawkes Bay District Council106 _{of 2 square metres per bed plus 2 square metres per person, 18 square metres may be}

argued to be adequate for six people with each double bunk counting as a single bed space.

Adequate space and heating were issues for workers, whereas employers often complained of damage to property, although only a minority of employers interviewed raised issues of serious damage. A converted backpackers which had been allocated to 30 ni-Vanuatu during their stay in 2012 was observed in the week immediately after they had left and the repair and clean-up process was documented (field notes, 4-7-12). There were two holes in walls, a number of cigarette burns in

105_{The trade name “portaloos” refers in New Zealand to a portable toilet which can be moved to and from a} location at short notice.

carpet, and sufficient disrepair to require plastering and painting. The damage was not extensive. The firm using this accommodation was a large contracting company and there was no live-in pastoral person in this accommodation.

Poppy also mentioned damage associated with drinking as her major concern.

There would be a few we won’t bring back next year and sometimes it’s hard to get a handle on who is causing the problem but with Vanuatu people its holes punched in walls ... drinking gets out of hand ... it’s a problem. (Poppy, 4-7-12)

Poppy drew attention to a motor camp which had been used to accommodate a group of Tannese in 2012. The camp manager confirmed that he had concerns about alcohol misuse late in the picking season (field notes, 4-7-12). I visited both the motor camp and the converted back packers

mentioned above in 2012 and again in 2013. The ni-Vanuatu occupants of both accommodations had been replaced by a group of Samoans and a group of Solomon Island workers respectively. Both of these employers were large enough to make use of several accommodation providers and had the ability to re-assign accommodation arrangements between different groups of workers.