Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, February 20th, 2013 - 25 comments
George Monbiot exposes how well-funded right wing ‘think tanks’ and individuals operate through networks including the AEI, IEA & Koch. These have links to the NZ Initiative (BRT & NZ Institute). The coming DailyBlog may help challenge such influential networks and their destructive ‘neoliberal’ politics.
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 pm, February 18th, 2013 - 13 comments
The CTU wants to raise awareness of the effect of market pressures on working conditions and workplace safety. What killed Ken Callow?
Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, February 18th, 2013 - 80 comments
Unions have been under concerted attack for several decades. Though weakened, they still produce results for workers. NZ Teachers’ Unions act on sound research, aiming to provide a quality and fair education system for all Kiwis. Global federations are campaigning against anti-worker corporates, like DHL.
Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, February 16th, 2013 - 23 comments
Welcome to Poverty Watch, a weekly update on National’s lack of response to the urgent and growing issue of poverty in NZ. This week, more from the Children’s Social Health Monitor 2012 Update Report, the government gets a ‘D’ on child poverty from the Salvation Army, instead of acting the Nats are keen to bury such evidence…
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, February 16th, 2013 - 64 comments
There’s a book I’ve heard about that I’m hoping helps push the inequality awareness barrow a little further this year.
Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, February 15th, 2013 - 66 comments
Don’t you love hearing the rich say the working poor can’t have more pay? The faux concern that higher wages cost jobs from the same people who support huge executive pay packets and tax cuts? If you really believed higher wages meant fewer jobs, you would cut the CEO’s pay in half, not dick around over a few dollars an hour for real workers.
Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, February 15th, 2013 - 23 comments
Why are Treasury and Reserve Bank presenting clearly trumped up numbers to pretend the economy is doing better than it is? They’ve been caught out lying that the banks weren’t excessively profitable by international standards, that private electricity suppliers aren’t more expensive, and that we’re not unequal by OECD standards. Now, the Reserve Bank is telling blatant lies about the manufacturing sector.
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, February 15th, 2013 - 22 comments
Irony meters everywhere pegged their meters as Bill English accused some bosses of being “greedy”, and not paying their staff enough. Hey Double Dipton – those greedy bosses? – they’re just following your example…
Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, February 15th, 2013 - 141 comments
For those of you who’ve missed it Colin Espiner is back on the NZ interwebz with a new Stuff blog, the (rather earthily titled) Bull-Dust. Colin was a bit of a pioneer of journalist blogging in New Zealand. He was, I believe, the first Gallery journalist to run a proper blog and certainly the first to get in amongst it in the comments sections.
Written By: - Date published: 11:11 pm, February 14th, 2013 - 42 comments
The Herald reports that the Supreme Court will not meet the Government’s timetable for its decision on the Maori Council’s challenge to Asset Sales.
Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, February 14th, 2013 - 89 comments
The Living Wage Coalition has released the results of their research, calculating that a wage of $18.40 is needed for workers and their families to have a decent life and participate in society. About 40% of workers currently earn less. The pressure is now on bosses of businesses and public bodies to pay the living wage or explain why they deserve a decent life but their workers don’t.
Written By: - Date published: 5:40 pm, February 13th, 2013 - 50 comments
Child Poverty, a high exchange rate and suppression of free speech. It’s that National Government again.
Written By: - Date published: 12:08 pm, February 13th, 2013 - 35 comments
White collar crime – fraud and tax evasion – is in the news again with a new report on the impact. The costs are estimated as several Billion per year. Meanwhile the Nats put all their energy into demonising and chasing $22 Million in welfare fraud.
Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, February 13th, 2013 - 22 comments
The Salavation Army “State of the Nation” report is out today, and, as Metiria Turei says, it makes depressing reading. It describes a nation of increasing inequalities, with those on low incomes, and their children, being hit particularly hard.
Written By: - Date published: 9:32 pm, February 12th, 2013 - 25 comments
Good for Damien O’Connor. He’s calling for an enquiry into possible mis-selling of interest rate swaps to farmers. Good for Fairfax’s Rob Stock too, who has written extensively about this issue in the Sunday Star-Times. In Britain, it’s a huge story; their Financial Services Authority has said that more than 90% of these interest rate derivatives could have been mis-sold. Compensation is going to be paid; the only question is whether it will be in the millions or billions.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 pm, February 12th, 2013 - 49 comments
The concept of a living wage is one that just makes good sense to me. A wage should be enough to live on, right? Because it’s a wage? Because what’s the point if it doesn’t?
Written By: - Date published: 7:26 am, February 12th, 2013 - 146 comments
Bad jobs numbers and a succession of collapses of major businesses weighing your government down? You need: distraction! How about an old classic from the New Zealand politician’s playbook – the Yellow Peril! Passed on by Seddon and Peters, Yellow Peril’s now being wielded by John Key as he talks of vague, unsubstantiated threats that boatloads of Indonesians are heading for our shores.
Written By: - Date published: 5:49 pm, February 11th, 2013 - 26 comments
John Key, as expected, failed to take any sort of lead – or even fast following – on the Living Wage campaign. It’s “a matter for them” – businesses and workers – not something for a mere Prime Minister to be interested in. He thinks it’s nice if businesses pay more as they can afford it, but obviously doesn’t see higher wages as a priority.
Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, February 11th, 2013 - 90 comments
There’s a lot of talk about the benefits of moving to a green, sustainable economy but details on what that looks like in practice in New Zealand are often frustratingly thin. Greenpeace is releasing a report – The Future is Here – that puts meat on the bones. The main thing is getting us off expensive, polluting, imported oil and on to clean, local energy.
Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, February 11th, 2013 - 25 comments
Convicted fraudster and Herald columnist Damien Grant says ‘good riddance’ to manufacturing in his latest piece. A lower dollar would make his next smartphone more expensive, he says. When not in jail, Grant’s a receiver. Things are good for him at the moment. But, I’ll tell him this: even carrion birds ultimately need a healthy herd to scavenge off.
Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, February 11th, 2013 - 18 comments
As one writer sums it up – “no austerity has helped any economy”. So why do we carry on with this failed ideology? Perhaps because, while it does nothing for the vast majority of people, it helps make the super-rich even richer…
Written By: - Date published: 7:26 am, February 11th, 2013 - 175 comments
The living wage campaign is announcing this week the results of its study into the pay that a family needs to afford the basics for a decent life in New Zealand. It’ll be around $18-$20 an hour, which is more than 40% of workers get. I look forward to the proposal receiving strong support from the parties of the Left – the Left has always said a well-paying job is better than welfare.
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 pm, February 10th, 2013 - 432 comments
So Trevor Mallard thinks it’s smart to stick the boot in to Russell Norman for linking to an article about using the printing of money as a tool of monetary policy. Well it says a lot more about the state of the Labour Party than anything else. It just goes to show what happens when […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:42 am, February 9th, 2013 - 68 comments
Once again Big Film threatens NZ to do as it’s told, or they will take their toys and go home. Specifically, they don’t want negotiation documents released under OIA. Makes one wonder just what is in these documents. What are they afraid of do you think?
Written By: - Date published: 9:26 am, February 9th, 2013 - 27 comments
Frank Macskasy at Frankly Speaking looks at who does get generous government assistance – and who doesn’t. “This isn’t governance. This is economic decline by a thousand cuts.”
Written By: - Date published: 8:05 am, February 9th, 2013 - 70 comments
Greenpeace activists were fined and ordered to do Community Service – for serving the global community by protesting about Climate Change & the oil industry. Others get honours like knighthoods for services that are damaging for the majority in the community. Misplaced values? [update] RNZ interview with Lucy Lawless.
Written By: - Date published: 6:59 am, February 9th, 2013 - 3 comments
Welcome to Poverty Watch, a weekly update on National’s lack of response to the urgent and growing issue of poverty in NZ. This week, further in to the Children’s Social Health Monitor 2012 Update Report.
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, February 8th, 2013 - 5 comments
So the Nats have lost 30,000 jobs in the last year. But it’s not their fault right? If we can’t blame the global economy, it must be the stats! And to be fair since this government came in the Household Labour Survey has jumped about a bit – between bad and horrendous.
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, February 8th, 2013 - 42 comments
The Nats were elected on a promise of a high wage economy. When it became clear that they were achieving the opposite, they tried to spin a disaster into a “competitive advantage”. And so in the real world the exodus to Australia continues. Now it’s affecting even our naval capability.
Written By: - Date published: 12:59 pm, February 7th, 2013 - 25 comments
When was the last time you heard John Key promise 170,000 new jobs? Just before the election in 2011, I reckon. Well, this last year 30,000 jobs were lost. Put that in context, it’s the 3rd largest annual job loss in history. The largest was 1988 as Douglas put the economy to the sword. The next was 2009 during the recession. And now, we’re losing 600 jobs a week during the ‘recovery’.
Written By: - Date published: 10:01 am, February 7th, 2013 - 103 comments
Mr Fixit Steven Joyce has been handed the Novopay fiasco, and the first pay round under his watch is the worst yet. Teachers are currently owed almost $12 Million in missing wages. Is this a conspiracy, or just a good old fashioned cock up?
Recent Comments