Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Against the will of the Fonterra farmer Shareholder’s Association, National is trying to destroy Fonterra’s cooperative model on vague grounds about access to capital. The end result will be the one world-leading, world-scale company we have, which brings in 20% of our export earnings, will start sending it profits offshore. David Cunliffe makes the case passionately and eloquently.
NZ milk production has apparently risen by 30% since 2005. And, according to sources used by frenz.co.nz, back in 2006 over 14 billion […]
Talley’s has sunk to a new low in the AFFCO lockout. Not content with trying to starve out 1,000 workers and force them to accept 20% pay cuts, Talley’s-owned AFFCO meatworks are planning to lockout hundreds more workers on the Easter statutory holidays – just to save on paying its workers holiday leave. It’s a despicable, and hopefully illegal, move.
Something to do in Auckland tonight: What: Special screening of The Muppets Where: Hoyts Sylvia Park, Mt Wellington When: Tonight, April 3rd, 6.10pm […]
While Collins is busy backing herself into a corner over the ACC affair and has found herself footing the bill for vexatious lawsuits, Joyce, her main rival for the post-Key leadership, is cutting a sleazy deal with SkyCity: more pokies and relaxed licencing in return for an international convention centre we don’t need. Now we learn SkyCity is fostering problem gambling.
Bernard Hickey has a great piece in the Herald on Sunday that you shouldn’t miss.
While the PoAL dispute has been raging a thousand meatworkers are entering their fifth week of lockout at Talleys-owned AFFCO.
There’s a war on workers on across the country at the moment but you can help fight back.
Once upon a time, decades ago now, ports were run by a person called the Harbourmaster. He used to be a highly qualified and experienced Master Mariner, who had extensive knowledge of shipping and decades of experience, at sea and within the port. All this competence and experience came at a wage, at most, five times the average wage.
OK – so we’re a bit late with this – but it’s Earth Hour, 8:30 – 9:30pm NZ time.
The ever-growing list of letters, emails, and leaks in the National Party Civil War, that started off as an apparently apolitical privacy breach by ACC, is getting hard to follow. Here’s a summary of the various documents and their ramifications – so far.
The PoAL management looks as incompetent and divided as the Nats after their ‘bullet-proof’ contracting out plans were shot down by the Employment Court and a director resigned publicly admonishment management’s strategy. Time to use that bully pulpit, Len. Say you have no confidence in Pearson and Gibson, demand they drop their plans, and get the port back to work.
Things are not going so well for Ports of Auckland. “Ports of Auckland lifts lock-out amid board rift” sums it up…
Friday 13th (April) – a scary day as submissions close on 2 major government bills. Make sure you get your submissions in on the Mixed Ownership Model Bill and the Social Security (Youth Support and Work Focus) Amendment Bill.
Close Up tonight led with the allegation, based on a leaked document, that John Key (and other prominent Nats) were listed as supporting a $14 million dollar insurance claim by Bronwyn Pullar.
Bill English and Treasury adopted a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to the Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme. And it’s cost us $2 billion. The Deputy Auditor General has delivered a damning report on a ministry used to judging others, not suffering any oversight itself…
Apparently the Auckland Council doesn’t know how much the POAL fiasco is costing. Rough estimates suggest that the cost is at least $400,000 a day, probably significantly more. No wonder the Council doesn’t want to know.
You know that bookies sense when there is blood in the water and they’ll create contracts. I don’t gamble but the interesting contracts today in my mind are “Judith Collins to cease being a Minister before 1 June 2012”, “An ACC official ….to be found to have leaked Boag email”, “Beehive staffer to be found to have leaked Boag email”, etc. And a politician is definitely in trouble in NZ when they start talking about defamation 🙂
Why did Collins print a copy of the Boag email? Who else saw it or was informed of its contents? If she didn’t give the information to Lusk or Slater, how did it get to the Herald? If they weren’t involved, why did they run hard on the Pullar issue with an anti-Boag angle from Day 1? Does Collins want us to believe ACC leaked to the Herald? How long does Collins thinks she can hold out?
ACC denies leaking Bronwyn Pullar’s name. It’s not credible that they would act so high risk and so politically. Boag and Pullar clearly didn’t leak it. So, that leaves Collins and her office. Collins denied leaking the email to the media … but leaves a fair bit of wiggle room, doesn’t it? The tipline is, as they say, running hot – and the name on everyone’s lips is Lusk. More soon.
100 jobs a day were lost in January and 1000 people a week left New Zealand for Australia last year but it turns out it was all a mistake! David Farrar has discovered that we measure GDP slightly differently from Australia and if we use their measure then the purchasing power parity-adjusted difference in GDP per capita is close to zero. Hooray!
Ports of Auckland must pay the permanent workers among the union members it had illegally locked out. It’s only a partial victory for workers who want to work and have long-term job security, not just get paid for two weeks. But it’s yet another costly defeat for management. How long will they keep burning ratepayers’ money like this before the council acts?
Judith Collins has twice told the Prime Minister that she didn’t leak Bronwyn Pullar’s information. But who else could have? The internecine fighting within National is heating up with Michelle Boag saying “When you can’t send a communication to a Government minister without fearing that the privacy of that communication is going to be breached, that’s very, very dangerous.” This is going to end badly for someone.
The Nats selected Chinese company Huawei to build theparts of the UFB network after Joyce and English visited them in China. Now, the company’s been banned from Australia’s UFB project because of links to Chinese espionage. Key’s shrugged it off. Maybe there’s a risk, maybe not. But our government should give a damn and investigate. Its indifference makes it look compromised.
Mediation broke down in the Port dispute again yesterday with the PoAL management still refusing to make any concessions. So it’s back to court for a ruling on PoAL’s lockout without notice. Hopefully, the Court will side with reason, force the Port to allow the workers back and impose compensation for lost wages along with hefty fines.
German corporations’ boards are half employee representatives. This has stopped outsourcing, short-term executive thinking, outrageous executive/director pay and can only have improved worker relations. Their economy is sustainable and powering ahead out of the financial crisis through innovation and productivity. Could such an idea catch on here?
New Zealand has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the world, and an international study has just highlighted the fact.
It’s strange watching National’s factions fight it out in the media- the Herald on Sunday running the Collins/Slater faction stuff and the Dompost running material from Boag/Pullar. Both sides are scum. Pullar received (somehow) the largest leak in ACC and passed to the media. Collins has imitated her fellow ministers by leaking Pullar’s private details in revenge.
Growth in the December quarter was 0.3%, a third of the government’s PREFU forecast.
| Quarterly GDP per capita, $95/96 | |
| Peak, Q4 2007 | 8,104 |
| When Nats took power, Q3 2008 | 7,935 |
| Now, Q4 2011 | 7,777 |
| Brighter Future | any day now |
Anyone else find it odd that GDP per capita has fallen as much during the ‘aggressive recovery’ as it did during the recession?
We’ve received the following press release from Auckland Council Local Board members calling on Len Brown and the councilors to stand up to PoAL’s out of control management. The workers want to work and be more productive. The bosses want to screw them out of their pay to increase profits and are acting irrationally in pursuit of that goal.
The government has introduced their welfare changes to parliament. In addition to making mums of 1 year-olds seek paid work in addition to raising children, it introduces private companies profiting from unemployment misery with welfare to work schemes. The UK has been trying this for a couple of years – let’s look at how that’s going…
The Herald editorial says many “saw a more efficient and more flexible port emerging from” contracting out at PoAL. This is an oft-spouted fundamental misunderstanding of what is happening. Contracting out would not reduce time or cost to move freight. It would just reduce the downtime the port pays for amounting to a simple transfer of wealth from wages to profits.
Nick Smith’s handpicked chair of ACC, John Judge, denies that ACC leaked Bronwyn Pullar’s name to the media after she made public the biggest leak of private data in history from the organisation. So, who did? Given the government’s track-record – Bennett vs the solo mums, Brownlee publicising Dalziel’s redzone offer – I’m betting it was Judith Collins.
Plenty of high-profile bad news headlines for the Nats. At least it takes the focus of the boring old economy.
1,200 prison beds, 1 in 8, are empty plus the 1,300 bed reserve. Prisoner numbers are projected to keep falling. So, why are the Nats spending a billion dollars on the Wiri private prison? And where will they get the prisoners? By closing existing public prisons. Rather than upgrading what we have more cheaply they’ll let a foreign company make a profit off locking people up.
The Port of Auckland’s refusal to let the stevedores return to work now that they have lifted their strike notice is a lock-out. There are specific legal requirements around strikes and lock-outs at ports and other essential services – notice must be given in writing and with 14 days’ notice. The Port’s lock-out is illegal. And it’s costing Auckland millions.
