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Dear FICA Members, Sponsors & Industry
Who would have expected us to be so familiar with the terminology RATS when just prior to December we were being taken through a webinar by Inscience about how to use these kits, how to access them and the issues of supply. Now you can stroll up to the local 4 Square and buy them at the counter, be a close contact and be administered them free from appointed MOH outlets.
On top of that just as the pirce of logs is lifting for all manner of reasons on the export market circuit, we are struck with whatever supply issues will progress and eventuate with the Russian - Ukraine War. Its certainly a non-normal environment and ever changing, so we really dohave to build resilience and flexibility into our thinking for the sustainability of our businesses and the forestry industry.
So not a chance for me to get out to the regions while contractors want to avoid any risk of CoVID infection, but we have rolled up our sleeves and thought how can we support members in this situation. Webinars, yes we all know how to get ourselves onto ZOOM so over the next four months we are providing four different speakers to address our sector, sponsors and other forestry stakeholders. The first of them will roll out next week.
FICA WEBINAR SERIES
WEDNESDAY 23 MARCH : 4pm – 5pm
Rien Visser: Improving our Understanding of Costing out Logging Machinery
Further in the series to come:
April 20 - Pio Terei: Work Life Balance*
May 18 - UDC: Understanding Fixed and Flexible Costs*
June 22 – Lance Burdett – Resilience*
*topic titles to be confirmed
Invitations will be sent out a couple of weeks prior to the date of the event, to get you booked in to these one hour sessions. We enourage you to take part and the expectations to take one key message home will be valuable. Please feel free to pass onto your senior managers and crews.
We applaud Safetree for kicking off the new platform Eco-Portal and encourage you all to sign over to this new system and reap the improvements. There will be more released soon around further benefits and additions to the overall certification system that was worked on last year by FICA and industry stakeholders.
I take this chance to encourage anyone with vacancies and the oportunity to fill them with newbies to the sector, to register for the Harvesting Subsidy as the slow uptake to date will mean we will relenquish the funding packaging - basically lose it! To date we have taken up less than 20% of the available positions that MSD have covered. We will probably shut it off end of March if we can not get more registrations.
So still working extremely hard on the various projects we have with ROVE, shaping up of the entities and workforece plans are on the agenda. Recruitment of the ROVE teams seems to have been completed which will translate to more activities getting underway. The Workforce Council & FICA Board thank the participation of Nathan Fogden, Wini Geddes and Nick Tombleson for their time over the last 2 years. I will take their seat at the Council and be looking to recurit from the contractors when industry specific needs are required.
So summer is about to turn to autumn and the leaves will change colour, its seems they are one thing we can gaurantee will happen as there are a few uncertianities and unknown changes out there. Even the change to the government polling is moving fairly quickly - watch this space!
Kia Kaha - stay safe, stay your distance.
Prue & FICA Board
Prue Younger
CEO, FICA
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