Today is not a good day for workers. Employment law changes that take effect today weaken workers’ rights and will result in more cases of zero-hour contract “excesses”. Labour’s Iain Lees-Galloway has been doing good work on this issue (sign the petition). In contrast National’s position now appears confused, with Workplace Relations & Safety Minister Michael Woodhouse acknowledging problems even as today’s changes make matters worse.
Zero hour contracts are the logical end point of National’s agenda for employment legislation. But last night Workplace Relations & Safety Minister Michael Woodhouse promised legislation to “prohibit the worst excesses”. “Excesses” in the free market – who would have thought?
If you analyse the many things said by Spock you would come to the conclusion that he was a strong progressive.
John Key has yet again asked the Remuneration Authority to limit the increase in MPs pay. And yet again they have said that the law required them to make the decision they did. So MPs get a hefty raise at the same time that the minimum wage is raised slightly. And the media report Key’s comments sympathetically. He is the Prime Minister. If anyone can change the law he is the person best placed.
John Key has said today that he has urged the Remuneration Authority not to give MPs a salary increase. Get that feeling of deja vu? Idiot Savant at No Right Turn explains why.
The PM running from a yacht club when confronted with protestors against poverty. Pretty fair summary of where this country is at.
Another big tax evasion scandal with links to NZ. Don’t expect the government to spend any time looking in to this.
This morning the Salvation Army released their state of the nation report – A Mountain All Can Climb. It is mixed news, and most coverage has focused on the impact of the housing crisis.
The Salvation Army has all but ruled out being involved in the Government’s Social Housing unless it is provided with capital. And if divestment occurs it considers that tenants should have a role in governance of the houses they live in.
We are in the process of locking in inequality through the intergenerational ownership of housing, thus squeezing more and more mobility out of society.
The social democracy of my youth has radically collapsed into our current culture of individualism, privatisation and personal greed.
Darien Fenton at Jobs That Count brings us the details of the fight for decent pay and conditions at Talley’s meat processing plants
We need a much better analysis of what kinds of jobs and conditions are out there in NZ, crude figures are not telling us enough.
George Monbiot wrote recently on how Canadian and United Kingdom public media reporting on corporate news are hopelessly pro business and lacking in any sort of balance. And how the volume of articles concerning environmental issues is declining. Is it the same in New Zealand?
Falling numbers yes, but falling through the cracks.
An interesting milestone in inequality is about to be passed.
The continued rise of rheumatic fever is an indictment of our society.
New figures show that there is no quick fix for diseases of poverty.
Your move, National.
Political Scientists Bronwyn Hayward and Mark Boyd were interviewed on Radio New Zealand yesterday on New Zealand politics in 2014 and what happened during the election. They talked extensively on dirty politics, on the role of the media and how things can be improved in 2015.
Pope Francis has created a stir recently. He has been instrumental in the ending by the United States of sanctions against Cuba, he has criticised the Curia for being inwardly focussed and not sufficiently concerned for the poor and he has reached out to Muslims. And to top things off he is intending to issue a Papal Encyclical on climate change and will be urging countries to enter into a meaningful agreement on climate change.
Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century came to the strong conclusion that capitalism left by itself will increase inequality and cause increased risk of social, economic and democratic upheaval. He has an unlikely supporter, albeit critical, in Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world.
Inequality has been very much in the news recently. Friday saw the publication of two really excellent pieces that between them provide a comprehensive, if depressing overview.
Two New Zealands will shortly celebrate Christmas, the poor and the rich. Here’s a crazy thought…
Message to today’s anonymous Herald editorialist – competition doesn’t close the inequality gap, it widens it. In other news, black is black not white, and water is wet. How can you write such drivel?
Right-wingers recently got all hot and bothered about the idea of “recall elections”. Perhaps we do need them, not for the scandal of a Mayor having a bathroom, but for governments that systematically and cynically deny the truth, to the detriment of us all.
Another example of a bad employer unfairly docking a worker’s pay. But this worker was a union member…
The stage was long ago reached where members of the US Government were told they should “wear their sponsors logo’s on their shirts”.
Looks like exploiting petrol station workers by docking their pay for circumstances beyond their control was just the tip of the iceberg of this kind of behaviour.
And, as ever, one for the poor.
Jason Wilson in the Guardian has asked a very relevant question. Why is the right currently dominant in the English speaking Western World and what does the left have to do to change this?
Zero hour contracts, where an employee’s work hours are determined solely at the whim of the employer, are becoming increasingly common. The implications for the fight against poverty are dire.
Is Key planning to flog off state houses at half price to a liquor company?
Big business is planning a fighting fund to extol the virtues of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. And they want there to be a debate about the benefits of the TPPA. But only after the treaty has been concluded …
The Nats’ line on poverty is that beneficiaries need to get in to work. The rise of the working poor both in NZ and internationally, shows what nonsense that excuse is.
Chief executive remuneration packages in the privatised power companies have surged post float.
In England there is a couple who own nearly 1,000 houses, who previously evicted beneficiaries in favour of Eastern European immigrants but who have recently taken to evict immigrants with too many children. And in Uruguay there is a former President who used to give most of his salary to charity, who lived in a farmhouse rather than a palace and who drove a VW Beetle rather than a limousine. Which particular form of humanity should be in charge?
