Using overseas workers to prevent shortfalls.

What about people who come to have a working holiday?

Admittedly I live in a touristy place (900 locals, 30,000 tourists) but there seems to be a large amount of people who come and work over here when the work is around. Of course, on the down side of the argument, we do have the second highest unemployment rate in Auckland.

One thing to understand about the Phillipines is that its extremely good value.
Phillipinos who come to NZ usually come armed with at least 2 degrees and not only that they are willing to work for the going rate and are hard workers.
Same goes for agents that work on Manilla based contact centres...These agents you get when you call Telecom or whoever for basic support are well overqualified, they also usually have double degrees in computer science etc...

So - We really can't compete on that level other than to continuously train more kiwis in computer science.

As far as contact centre agents go - I believe the skills threshold for being a good technical support engineer are actually quite low...Literally ANYONE could do 1st & 2nd level technical support with the right training...BUT they won't do it for long if they are only being paid $32,000 a year.

I believe we can possible cut into this off-shore outsourced labour market by creating our own call-centre training scheme where we could compete internationally with places like India, Phillipines etc.... The only draw back would be that people would have to be willing to work for less than minimum wage......Well why would anyone do this? I believe that if the model was one that agents where trainees brought in either from the Department of Corrections and/or The Ministry of Social Development (ie long term beneficiaries) that we could create a worker class that worked for low pay in exchange for training. This could create an environment where we would be financially competitive with places like India and Phillipines - It would also provide a solution for criminals or beneficiaries wanting to work but just don't have any options to change their lifestyle.

I know I would work for $5 an hour if I had nothing better to do... I know its a dangerous precedent if not done right but I think it could work.

@blairrobson1

Literally ANYONE could do 1st & 2nd level technical support with the right training

Anyone can do first level with about 6 weeks training on how to answer the phone. Having a basic understanding of the tech helps but it's not really essential as what you need to know is usually available on the PC. 2nd level requires experience and tertiary.

BUT they won’t do it for long if they are only being paid $32,000 a year.

IMO, most people won't do it for long no matter how much they're paid as it's really friggen boring. The only reason some people hang around longer is because of the possibility of advancement into management but that can only apply to a few people.

I know I would work for $5 an hour if I had nothing better to do… I know its a dangerous precedent if not done right but I think it could work.

It's the doing it right bit that's a concern. Taxes would have to be raised on businesses and the rich to ensure that it's not an outright subsidy to them as WfF is. I'm in favour of a UBI but the same applies to that.

@courtney3 To bring up a slightly different but important subject.

We really need to get rid of the legalised slavery of students, nurses in particular, who spend pretty much the last half of their degrees working for free in hospitals. If carers can get minimum wage while sleeping then we should be able to pay student nurses minimum wage while they are doing important work in hospitals.