Maori Employment Pattern Changing

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31304, 25 February 1967, Page 7

Maori Employment Pattern Changing

"Th* Press’' Special Service WELLINGTON, February 21. Within the space of a single generation,

or even a decade, New Zealand’s Maori worker may well show a marked disinclination to adopt the employment role expected of him today—that of the seasonal drifter.

This is the conclusion of Mr L. D. B. Heenan, lecturer in geography at the University of Otago, from a study he has made of the changing state of the Maori population in the South Island.

Releasing his findings in the “New Zealand Geographer”, magazine of the New Zealand Geographic Society, Mr Heenan said the Maori was dropping his position as a seasonal worker in favour of becoming an urban settler, and with this he had to face a number of problems, including racial discrimination. “Already urbanisation has undoubtedly played an important, not to say critical part in the recent development of a decidedly new pattern in Maori fertility, most evident to date in the North Island. “The perceptible decline in the Maori birthrate since 1961 not only implies a marked fall in the over-all rate of population growth, but will also cause a quite substantial reduction in the number of both male and female Maoris entering the labour force 10 to 15 years from now. “This trend, together with progressive urbanisation, points to the future need to think in terms of a relatively smaller and predominantly urban-based work force featuring much more sophisticated occupational habits and substantially more advanced work skills than possessed before,” he said. Mr Heenan added that the implications of this for the seasonal industries of the South were all too clear. “But the possibility of further labour shortages deriving from the prospective emergence of an urbanised Maori society may well be alleviated by the substitution of other unskilled and semiskilled manpower migrating from New Zealand’s island neighbourhood in the Pacific. “Today the influx of Samoans, Rarotongans and other non-Maori Polynesians continues unabated. And, indeed, the attraction of seasonal work in the South Island has already been demonstrated, as witness the appreciable rise in the num-

ber of Pacific Islanders employed at Ocean Beach freezing works during the 19605.” But he said that some wider implications of the situation should also be noted.

''Urbanisation in the South,

as in the North, brings with it transitional problems, stemming from the process of adaptation to an unfamiliar pattern of living. Closer contacts between Maori and non-Maori seem inevitably to lead to occasional incidents of a discriminatory character, as have occurred in Christchurch from time to time in recent years. Yet problems arising from adjustments to urban life should not be allowed to overshadow the problem of rural areas affected by depopulation, he said. “The urbanward drift of adolescent and young adult Maoris tend to leave behind a more conservative residual community, one often dominated by older age groups and thus less amenable to movement and change. “Age-selective depopulation must also increase the dependency burden Imposed upon those economically active members of the community, and does nothing to alleviate social and other ills associated particularly with strictly limited rural economic resources, a narrow choice of job opportunities, and living amenities frequently much inferior to those enjoyed by or within reach of the bulk of urban dwellers,” said Mr Heenan.