RSE Scheme
An introduction to the RSE scheme, its background, who is involved and how it works.
The Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme (RSE) was launched in 2007. It has been critical to sustaining our industry’s growth and ensuring our industry has the workforce required to carry out crop management, picking and packing work each season when there are not enough New Zealand workers.
There is an administrative limit or cap on the number of RSE places that can be taken up in any one year. This cap was set at 5,000 places when the scheme was established in 2007, but the success of RSE has led to those numbers increasing to 14,400 in 2020.
In this time the scheme has been developed by industry and government into a mature well- functioning programme with benefits for all parties concerned but in particular for the employees, the employers and their communities.
Unless employers can show they have pre-established relationships with workers from other countries, they may only recruit workers under RSE policy from the following eligible Pacific countries:
- Fiji
- Kiribati
- Nauru
- Papua New Guinea
- Samoa
- Solomon Islands
- Tonga
- Tuvalu
- Vanuatu
Workers must meet health and character requirements and provide evidence of arrangements to leave New Zealand at the end of their stay. People employed under the RSE policy may stay in New Zealand for up to seven months during any 11-month period. Exceptions to this are workers from Tuvalu and Kiribati, who can stay for nine months because of the distance from New Zealand and the cost of travel.