Fruit picking has always been a tough job, but it was good fun and good money for young people, especially over the summer. Thousands headed up to places like Cobram for the “barracks” of the big orchards or camped on the Murray River for the season. Now the industry is so desperate for pickers it wants to bring in guest workers. Why?
It is a tough job in the summer heat. For peaches and pears the payment was by the bin — about half a tonne. The bags you pick into go over your shoulders and hang in front — like a pouch. Typically they’d hold one to one and half boxes and there were 22 boxes to the bin.
Top or “gun” pickers were able to pick six to 10 or more bins a day – but that meant running between the trees and up and down the ladders with 10- 20 kilo of fruit for eight hours or more. Students, travellers and hippy pickers averaged somewhat less but if they turned up early every day orchardists did not mind. The pubs were full over the summer and hundreds camped along the Murray – the local towns did well from the pickers.
Up until the late 1970’s it was all cash in hand — then everyone had to have a union ticket. The Australian Workers Union did well as people signed up as many names as were needed to avoid tax.
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Then came the need for real names, tax file numbers and so on. The real wage for pickers was being cut faster than farmers could increase the bin price paid for fruit. Making $100-300 per day meant the best workers were being taxed at “executive rates” as they picked. So gun pickers, the backbone of the industry, all but disappeared. For “learners”, wages are little better than the dole and then there’s the rising cost of fuel and accommodation. The more these costs increase the more food crops rot unpicked.
Now migrant workers are seen as the answer. It might work too, as they will be provided with accommodation, probably not have to pay tax and someone else will pay them to get there and back. Funny that we could not do that for our own
Exempting all fruit pickers from income tax — again — would have cost other taxpayers less.
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Paying them a fair wage in the first place, so that they pay tax and qualify for Medicare etc, and providing them with a safe workplace would be an even better idea.
Because no unionist was ever going to lump 40 tonnes and hand a cent to Malcolm Fraser and Johhny Howard – and so there was no labour done under those circumstances. There was a bit of tax paid – but not much. Since the Commonwealth scholarship was so shit, I’d say we had a fair deal all up.
But most of the blokes pissed the day’s wages up at the pub and gambled the rest on the doggies – so the government got their taxes back that way.
No Union ticket – no work. But keeping the subs current was another matter. We had a cockatoo. When the Union rep was spotted, everyone headed for the hills.
I guess you are right though. The solution is a fair pay for a fair day’s work and a tax system that recognises that farmers generally can’t pay much, often have no crop to pick and the pickers have no job security and no permanent roof over their heads. Tax the mining companies and get off the picker’s backs.