Labour module

author: young

This module covers the labour supply. Note the labour requirements for various aspects of the farming system are calculated and documented in the relevant modules.

To capture the dynamics of labour, the year is broken into labour periods [Ros11]. The supply of labour in each period by each labour source is calculated, and the labour required by each farm activity is determined and assigned to the given period/s.

The amount of labour available in each period depends on the number of labour units and the hours worked each day. Labour can be supplied by three sources:

  1. Casual staff – In the unrestricted model, casual staff can come and go at any time throughout the year as required. However, the user can fix the number of casual staff employed during each period of the year.

  2. Permanent staff – Permanent staff work on the property all year (with an allocation for leave).

  3. Manager staff (commonly the farm owner) – The farm manager works on the property all year. They control the overall farm plan and thus spend a fixed amount of time each quarter on farm planning, learning, record-keeping, purchasing and selling, and other office work.

Farm labour tasks can be allocated to a specific labour source where required. For example, farm planning must be completed by manager staff. Any labour source can complete unallocated tasks. To realistically reflect the labour hierarchy, casual and permanent staff both require a certain amount of supervision from the farm manager. The proportion of supervision is specified separately for seeding and harvesting. This is because during seeding and harvest it is likely that less supervision is required. Casual staff are generally less experienced and/or acquainted with the farm operation than permanent staff and thus require more supervision.

The importance of timeliness and the high labour requirement of seeding and harvest means staff often work longer days during those periods [Ros11]. To accommodate this, the user specifies the hours worked by each type of staff on the weekdays and weekends for both standard periods and seeding and harvest periods.

The farm manager and permanent staff have four weeks of holiday each year. The holiday timing is flexible (optimised by AFO). This is because managers and permanent staff tend to have a less defined schedule, often taking multiple smaller holidays during the year or returning to the farm during holidays to check on things. Additionally, in AFO, permanent and casual staff require supervision from the manager which means if the manager is forced to take their holidays in one big chunk the model may not be able to access labour resulting in inconsistencies if the period dates change. All labour sources take days off for Christmas, New Year’s Day, and Easter. Permanent staff are also allocated a certain number of sick days per year. The user has the ability to alter the length and timing of worker leave

Casual staff are paid on a per hour basis and the manager and permanent staff are paid an annual wage. All labour costs include superannuation and workers’ compensation insurance.

AfoLogic.Labour.f_labour_general(params, r_vals)

Calculates labour supply, labour cost and supervision requirements.

AfoLogic.Labour.f_perm_cost(params, r_vals)

Permanent and manager staff cost.

Costs include bank interest. Permanent cost includes wage plus super plus workers comp and leave ls (multiplied by wage because super and others are %)