One of the topics that has been coming up in the conversation at every horticultural company here in Ontario, is labour. Finding good employees is a real challenge. The workers that are available aren’t from Canada (originally), because Canadians, just like the Dutch, aren’t keen to work for a grower.
The situation around labour in the Canadian horticultural industry is similar to the one in the Netherlands. Back home, people prefer to work in other sectors and it’s nearly impossible to get unemployed people to work at a nursery. And if you do get them, they usually leave in no time.
Canada is the same in that respect. Most growers we’ve met so far, say that working in the horticultural industry isn’t a popular choice among Canadians. Transplanting young plants gets their fingers dirty – they don’t like that. If you get them to do that kind of work for a day, they’ll come and ask for a different task for the following day. Not exactly what you’re looking for as an entrepreneur.
So, labour is a challenge. “You don’t want to get any Canadians” is what we heard yesterday. And today was no different. “Canadians are spoiled” was the main message.
Of course, this isn’t true for all Canadians. Maybe the ones that are available don’t show much of a work ethic. But the Canadian economy proves that Canadians working in other sectors are far from lazy. It’s a very wealthy country that experienced only a short stint of recession. So there’s nothing wrong with the Canadian work ethic, it’s just hard to get them interested in horticultural work.
But of course there are always exceptions. Like Neil and Mike Steekelenburg’s company Cosmic Plants, which we visited today. All their employees are Canadian, and they’re very happy with their staff. This might have something to do with their crops, though. Phalaenopsis greenhouses don’t get too hot and it’s clean work. The Canadians enjoy working there. So the the brothers don’t have any problems finding good, native employees.
But other types of nurseries have a different experience. They’ve got to fall back on immigrants or workers from abroad. In Hamilton for example, there’s a large Polish community. One grower tapped into that. Another prefers immigrants from Guatemala, Jamaica, Honduras, Vietnam or Cambodia as seasonal workers. They hire them through employment agencies.
And yet another prefers the Mexicans. Like the Van Koeveringe family of Spring Valley Garden. We arrived there late afternoon and met a large group of Mexican workers who had just sat down for some pizza. One of the owners, John van Koeveringe, explains that hiring Mexicans does come with its own challenges.
It’s ‘Canadians first’ in Canada and businesses have to show they’ve done everything they can to employ a Canadian. So that’s what Van Koeveringe did. He advertised, organised an Open Day etc. The Open Day attracted maybe one Canadian, who would pretty quickly come up with some sort of allergy for one thing or another.
After that entire process, he was free to hire the Mexican workers. They’ve got a great work ethic. But it takes some effort to employ them. You’ve got to sign up for a programme with the Mexican government. There are certain obligations for the grower, including arranging housing.
Van Koeveringe is currently employing 75 Mexicans. They don’t mind the long days; they work from 7 a.m. until 8.30 p.m. The only times they don’t work are on Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday. And when Van Koeveringe needs people to work a night shift, they’re always eager – they’ll even fight for the extra work.
We got to see it with our own eyes during the company tour and the Mexicans workers were indeed amazing. It was hard to follow their movements, picking tulips and placing them on the bunching machine, with the naked eye.
I wonder what they see when they close their eyes at night. Well, if they’re still seeing those tulips anyway, they might as well work a few extra hours. No bother!
Arie-Frans Middelburg
