Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
Written By: - Date published: 7:17 am, February 29th, 2012 - 98 comments
Union wage rises beat non-union every time. It’s basic market theory. If workers bargain individually they are in perfect competition with each other and become price takers. Together they have market power. Hence: “united we bargain, divided we beg”. But the Right doesn’t want you to know that. They want to break the unions to strangle wage rises.
Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, February 28th, 2012 - 34 comments
Don’t panic. It’s 3 year since the National Ltd™ “Job Summit”. I’m really looking forward to the 3000km Kaitaia-to-Bluff cycle way, the nine-day fortnight, and the $1 billion contribution from the banks plus $8 billion from government to invest in job-producing industry. Can’t be long now before we start to see jobs being created . . . John promised.
Written By: - Date published: 10:38 am, February 28th, 2012 - 105 comments
Cameron Slater reckons he’s cracked it; wages are growing after all. What’s his proof? A graph from the EPMU that shows wages have risen 17% and inflation only 15.7%. Wages are up, no crisis! But the man-boy genius needs to check his info better. Turns out that’s the average payrise for EPMU members since 2007. For all workers, the average pay rise was just 13%.
Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, February 28th, 2012 - 169 comments
So, naturally, the answer is to spend a whole lot of money forcing solo mums to spend their time looking for jobs that aren’t there.
Written By: - Date published: 12:04 pm, February 27th, 2012 - 35 comments
Government documents from last year reveal a plan to make ACC boost its levies and pay the government a dividend so that private insurers can compete. But that wasn’t enough. Now, the plan seems to be to exclude ACC from workplace injury insurance altogether. Private insurers just can’t offer cover as cheap as ACC can. So that Nats’ solution is to deny us access to ACC workplace cover.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, February 27th, 2012 - 89 comments
John Key said he “would love to see wages drop“, and his government has achieved that but they’re just getting started. This is the year when the gloves come off. Ports of Auckland is trying to slash its wage bill by 20%. Talley’s-AFFCO is locking out 750 workers indefinitely. And DHBs are trying to scare nurses ahead of their pay negotiations with the spectre of job cuts.
Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, February 27th, 2012 - 164 comments
332,000 people are on benefits, up by 60,000 under National. Coincidentally, there are 250,000 Kiwis who want work but can’t find it, up 82,000 under National. Probably a lot of cross-over between those two groups, eh? So, you can understand why National’s solution is to take a few bucks off a few thousand women.
Written By: - Date published: 2:44 am, February 27th, 2012 - 4 comments
Rick Boven in Auckland – Global environmental trends Global environmental trends will affect New Zealand’s future. In his forthcoming lecture to the Fabian Society, Rick Boven of the New Zealand Institute will summarise the high-level trends, identify implications for New Zealand, explain obstacles to an effective response and propose strategic priorities to reduce risks and […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:34 pm, February 25th, 2012 - 36 comments
National’s man in NZ on Air, John Key’s electorate chairman Stephen McElrea, was terribly worried about New Zealanders seeing a documentary about child poverty before the election. Informative TV has no place being funded with the public purse in National’s New Zealand. But no such objection to $1.6 million for New Zealand’s Got Talent. It’s the perfect pap to distract the masses.
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, February 25th, 2012 - 74 comments
Directorships are the golden ticket in the world of the business elite. You attend maybe 10 meetings a year, sign whatever’s put in front of you, typically get paid $3-4K a pop, and do it over again half a dozen times or more for various companies. It’s a gravy train for managers past their use by date. But customers and shareholders have to trust what directors sign off on.
Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, February 24th, 2012 - 84 comments
Google news has 1.5 pages of articles mentioning David Shearer to John Key’s 13 in the past week. The only ones directly about Shearer or Labour are saying ‘where’s Shearer? He’s wasting his honeymoon’. I wondered what his strategists are thinking. Then I saw they’re all the same people who just led Labour to 27% and I realised the scary part – they’re trying their best.
Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, February 24th, 2012 - 52 comments
Show your support for the MUNZ workers in the Ports of Auckland dispute, including a picket today from 10am.
Written By: - Date published: 12:36 pm, February 23rd, 2012 - 33 comments
Hey remember how the Nats weren’t going to cut frontline staff? How’s that working out?
Written By: - Date published: 9:03 am, February 23rd, 2012 - 131 comments
Since New Zealand skulled the neoliberal cool-aid, hospital admissions for infectious diseases, the diseases of poverty, increased 51% while dropping in the countries we should consider our peers. The working class life has gotten worse; our wages are lower, our jobs gone, and our families living in unhealthy houses owned by slum landlords.
Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, February 23rd, 2012 - 57 comments
Steven ‘White Elephant’ Joyce isn’t content with building highways to nowhere with costs that exceed the benefits. Now he wants an international convention centre in Auckland that’s just as pointless. But he doesn’t want the government to pay. So, he’s cutting a dirty deal with more law for sale and more pokie machines blighting our communities.
Written By: - Date published: 9:47 am, February 22nd, 2012 - 64 comments
Steven Fry’s outburst on broadband in NZ, however confused, did at least succeed in putting the state of our broadband access back in the headlines for a bit. It’s an issue that the Nats would rather we forgot.
Written By: - Date published: 3:51 pm, February 21st, 2012 - 33 comments
Consciences are uncomfortable things and mine’s been giving me a bit of trouble lately. I’ve been on the horns of a dilemma (sorry for the cliche but who can resist the imagery?) about employment practices. We allow ourselves a handwringing moment, a short burst of outraged righteousness and then run off to buy a pair […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:23 am, February 21st, 2012 - 210 comments
For the first time in history, net government debt has passed $50 billion. New Zealand’s net international liabilities, the amount New Zealand owes the rest of the world, is also skyrocketing: $140 billion now, $197 billion in 2016. John Key used to say we had a growth problem, not a debt problem. With GDP per capita down 2% under National, we now have both.
Written By: - Date published: 3:40 pm, February 20th, 2012 - 3 comments
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Bollard says the NZ-Aus income gap may not be as large as suggested – but what about the incompetence gap?
Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, February 19th, 2012 - 137 comments
There have been several interesting pieces on the politics of climate change recently, including some reflections (and a new book) from Michael Mann (the scientist behind the “hockey stick”), and leaked documents from the denier industry.
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, February 18th, 2012 - 303 comments
Fran ‘Sell it all’ O’Sullivan is fuming over the Court decision putting aside the approval of Pengxin’s application to buy Crafar Farms. She knows that Pengxin can’t satisfy the actual legal test because its bid has never been about bringing benefit to New Zealand. Its been about securing strategic assets for China. But some of her whining really needs to be pulled up.
Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, February 18th, 2012 - 127 comments
Private sector competition brings market disciplines and efficiencies to bloated publicly-owned monopolies. That’s the mantra, eh? That’s the indisputable truth… right? So, how come the Nats are planning to make ACC raise its levies and pay a dividend – for the first time ever – so that private insurers can compete? And how does that benefit NZ?
Written By: - Date published: 9:17 am, February 18th, 2012 - 16 comments
No Right Turn on the plight of democracy in Greece.
Written By: - Date published: 5:57 pm, February 17th, 2012 - 39 comments
Paula Bennett, in her rush to action, has a Green Paper that intends to create a White Paper that may result in some legislation that she hopes will help “vulnerable children”. But, much as National have spurned attempts from other parties for a non-partisan action on child poverty and looking after our nation’s children, we […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, February 17th, 2012 - 172 comments
The Nats want to replace public service jobs with computerised systems. They claim that this will improve service and save money. Quite apart from the folly of destroying jobs in the current economy, they are likely wrong on both those claims.
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, February 16th, 2012 - 43 comments
On November 30th, after the election, National received a $55,000 donation from Oravida, a company formerly owned by Terry Lee, director of Pengxin’s Crafar Farms vehicle, Milk New Zealand. In light of National’s illegal decision to let Pengxin buy the farms despite a lack of real benefits to New Zealand, maybe we ought to examine that donation a little more closely.
Written By: - Date published: 7:47 am, February 16th, 2012 - 77 comments
The Crafar Farms decision is sensible and a correct interpretation of the law. Foreign buyers must add something that a local buyer can’t, other than a higher purchase price. Otherwise, our farmers will continue to be out-bid for our land by foreign government-backed companies that can afford a lower rate of return, and NZ will gain nothing. So, why is National rushing to change the law?
Written By: - Date published: 6:47 am, February 14th, 2012 - 340 comments
The Bankers’ Crisis is hurting people all over the world. From the deepest, darkest austerity in Greece, to the continuing foreclosure tsunami in the US, to cutbacks and job losses here, it’s the ordinary people suffering the hangover for the bankers’ wild decades of unbridled excess and profit. But at least the banks are suffering too, eh? Yeah, nah.
Written By: - Date published: 9:46 am, February 13th, 2012 - 68 comments
Capitalism is good. Globalisation is good. It’s political orthodoxy. But is it matched by economic reality? Perhaps not. Recent pieces by Bernard Hickey and Gordon Campbell give us plenty to think about…
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, February 9th, 2012 - 9 comments
Steven Joyce’s piece on Tuesday was a transparent and hypocritical attempt to frame political opponents negatively, and soften us up for more asset sales, mining, deep sea drilling and the like. Thing is, it’s the Nats with their misguided austerity cuts who are the real nay-sayers holding the country back.
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 am, February 9th, 2012 - 186 comments
It’s slipped down the news agenda but is about to come back up it: The Ports of Auckland Dispute. Tony Gibson is wasting our money on his union-busting campaign that will result in reduced profits for ratepayers. Sign up to make him see sense.
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