This article was first published by RNZ
A Workforce Development Council representing manufacturing, engineering and logistics industries says Māori are key to lifting numbers in these sectors.
Forecasts by Infometrics shows in the next five years the country will need to fill 157,000 jobs in these three industries, with 80 percent of these expected to be replacement jobs from those who have retired or moved on.
Hanga-Aro-Rau’s Whanake Māori workforce development hopes to increase the number of Māori with higher skills in higher paid jobs and improved employment options.
The manufacturing, engineering and logistics sectors employ 650,000 people within around 105,000 businesses.
The sectors contribute $80 billion to the country’s GDP.
Chief executive Philip Alexander-Crawford said there were a number of reasons, including ageing population, career changes and staff moving abroad, as to why Māori were a key part to boosting the workforce.
“It’s really crucial that we do whatever we can to fill those positions and that need. Obviously, immigration is part of filling that need, but so too is taking up the opportunity that sits with our ever increasing Maori and Pacific workforce.
“Even in the next five years, we’re likely to see the overall Māori population increase by about 80,000, and of [that] 50,000 of our Māori community will be coming into the workforce,” he said.
He wanted to see an all system approach to helping more Māori into different sectors.
“We need to see greater partnership between industry and schools, and we need to ensure that the community and government departments see the benefits of not only being employed within our industries but seeing it as a really clear pathway to success,” Alexander-Crawford said.
His comments come before a hui in Hamilton on Thursday which discussed the Whanake Māori workforce development at Wintec.
Māori make up around 14 percent of the manufacturing workforce, 11 percent of engineering and 16 percent of logistics.
Miraka was a Māori dairy company and has a workforce of around 33 percent Māori.
It’s Kaihautū, Eileen Bowden said government agencies could help support more Māori coming into these sectors by including key Māori values.
“Māori have different way of learning. Everything they do is based on their values, and these values act as a guide and this is what they take with them through life but also in the work environment
“Perhaps in some of the training leaderships programs ... they incorporate key values like manaakitanga, like whanaungatanga and tikanga, these are core values that Māori relate to,” Bowden said.
She explained the company had in house training for its staff to help them upskill, which reaped success for its employees.
CM Contractors’ core business was manufacturing timber frames and prefabricated trusses.
Its managing director Maia Stockman said her company had an 100 percent Māori employment rate.
“Everything we do is embedded in us, to the way that we are with our kaimahi, we manaaki them like they’re whānau...it’s a reciprocal relationship that I think as Māori, that’s what we naturally do. It’s about building our people up with us, rather than trying to stay one step ahead of them,” Stockman said.
When it came to employing she said that was not a struggle, the current issue was lack of work.
“The hard thing is, is we have the capability and the capacity to bring more people through and train them up and give them the basic hammer hand skills to maybe continue with us, or to go on to do other industries ... but the issue we have right now is constructions falling out of the bottom, so housing isn’t booming like it once was due to, obviously, just the current economic environment that we’re in,” Stockman said.
She said this slow point was an opportunity for her company to see who’s around and who to potentially shoulder tap.
“We look at who’s in the community, and we see someone that may be in the need of an opportunity, and we try and give that, but obviously resources stopped us from being able to give more, because you do require funding in order to be able to keep producing or training, " Stockman said.
She said because the company was 100 percent Māori employed, the mahi they did reflected everyone around them.
By Ashleigh McCaull of RNZ