transitions in the south waikato labour market: an ethnographic study

somewhere to live during a difficult period for the rural economy. This was a difficulttransition, and the only job the husband could get was as a farm worker.The main reason why we [shifted], basically ‘cause they sold up the farmand we had to leave. …Yeah so we had to leave, yeah so we had to find ajob and that was the only one we could find. Tried to find a contract ormanaging job but there’s nothing. …After having been contract sharemilking, to come back to a wages job was quite difficult. Back to a jobwhere you’re just a boy and you’ve got no say or anything.After about a year, he found a farm manager's position that offered more money andprospects, and the opportunity to consolidate following the recent upheavals. Afterfour years, he and his wife were ready and keen to return to self-employment and theymoved into a share milking arrangement.Of those in self-employment, four remained working this way at the time of interview.They were all in farming. The three cases where this type of employment had come toan end included the couple with the horticultural and boating businesses; a couple whoran the processing plant; and a woman who had separated from her husband havingbeen share milking with him prior to that. The processing plant had originally beenowned by the mill and managed by the husband. When the mill looked to sub-contractthe process, he was in an ideal position to buy and run the business. As the mill washis only customer, the business was also very vulnerable, and this proved its downfallwhen they decided to once more do this particular process themselves. Having hadsome warning of this, he had been able to get a full-time job. However, this meant ademanding schedule for a few months as he worked both jobs – as an employee duringthe day and running the business at night. He also did some casual maintenance workfor a time. Given his wife was also an employee of the company, she too was out ofwork as a result of the change. The processing work had resulted in her aggravatingthe Occupational Overuse Syndrome she had developed in a previous job. So, whilstunhappy at being out of work, she was glad to be able to rehabilitate her condition.The injuries that I had at the nursery were kind of my elbows. So I can’tcarry bags of groceries and working at paper process it is actually pushingthe big reels and doing that has done something to the ligament in my armand so with the business finishing that was one of the main reason why Ifinished.The changing nature of the economy created the initial problems that eventually leadto the closure of the horticultural business.We were running the two green houses and building the third. We weregrowing tomatoes, all the tender crops together. …we had a big grape salebusiness going.For some time, this couple had mostly marketed their produce through their own shop.However, supermarkets were becoming a larger player in the market.[There was] a lot of pressure because at that stage – the green houses werebecoming a liability …although we had 30,000 feet of greenhouses, it wasno longer viable to keep them. Supermarkets were open all the time so thatside of the business basically folded if you like. We were starting to feel thepinch … [the] changing retail world with supermarkets being opened andmore of our crops were growing had to be marketed rather then ‘back sale’.36