A Far North Queensland citrus grower believes he is already prepared for the upcoming piece-rate legislation, encouraging fellow producers to consider investing in specialised technology software solutions to not only streamline operations but improve productivity.
Originally from South Africa, Wim van Niekerk started farming in 2016 and has since developed two citrus farms in Dimbulah. A recent Fair Work Commission decision to install a minimum wage in the Horticulture Award will create challenges for many fruit and vegetable businesses. Mr van Niekerk was presenting at the Citrus Technical Forum on the Sunshine Coast, where close to 350 delegates attended the two-day event, which wrapped up today. He explained that he has utilised New Zealand company ABC Software, which has a tool to help keep a record of the hours worked by pieceworkers, in line with legislation.
"With the new laws that came in on piece rates and minimum wage, we have already been implementing that for the past three years unknowingly," he said. "I didn't know that changes would be made to those laws, but we have been doing it anyway. ABC is a fantastic platform and we have used it for the past few years, and what it does is that we can do any work on the farm from an hourly wage to picking lemons in the afternoon at piece-rate, until for example, it rains and the trees get wet, so they need to go back to an hourly wage - then with a press of a button ABC takes everything back to a piece rate. You can...
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