While other countries have used their strong public sectors to steady the private sector and keep unemployment down during the economic downturn, our government is compounding unemployment by cutting the public sector, throwing people out of jobs and feeding worker insecurity.
There are 276,000 jobless Kiwis. The seasonally-adjusted trend on dole numbers is still on the rise. Many other people fall through the gaps and are unable to get public assistance in their time of need.
What better time for the Minister for Social Development to bugger off for five weeks?
In NZ, the average FTE wage rose 2.86% after inflation – $891 to $934 – over the past year. In Aussie, it was 3.6% above inflation – $1159 to $1226. When will John Key admit that he sold us a lie? When will the media call on him to resign if no progress is made on the one substantial promise of a ‘brighter future’ at he made?
Happy International Women’s Day. If only there was something to celebrate.
“We are deeply concerned about the current attacks on workers’ rights that will badly impact on women,†said CTU President Helen Kelly…
Can someone at MSD please explain to Paula Bennett a season is? Our lazy minister is once again claiming victory over rising unemployment because of the seasonal drop in unemployment numbers. Worryingly, the decline between January and February was less than the average in recent years.
National’s latest proposals to strip away workers’ protections against unfair dismissal must surely put to bed any idea that this is a moderate, centrist government.
The proposals are a breach of National’s election promises and go further than even the ECA. They are a charter for employment without dignity.
276,000 jobless, of which 168,000 officially unemployed. 115,000 more underemployed.
Big numbers, but remember that the unemployed aren’t a static group being added to every day as the Key Government sits on its hands. In fact there’s a continual churn of people into unemployment and into work much larger than the net increase.
The total pay packet fell for Kiwi workers last year and it will get worse in coming years. Aussie wages continue to rise, their unemployment is falling. If Key is serious about catching Australia he needs a full employment policy. Instead, he will keep doing nothing.
We received this guest post about half an hour after John Key announced his cycleway. At the time, the very sensible criticisms it raises were ignored by an enamoured media.
How prescient it looks now, on the anniversary of the Prime Minister’s Jobs Summit.
If National is going to legislate democratic procedures for unions taking industrial action, aren’t they bound by consistency to do the same for employers?
Requiring a secret ballot of shareholders before lockouts are allowed would be a good start.
Another day, another anti-beneficiary story beaten up by Paula Bennett to justify her bennie-bashing policies. Punitive measures against people who genuinely want to find work will not help them. All it does is waste WINZ’s resources re-approving genuinely unemployed workers leaving fewer resources for helping people into work.
The faulty logic behind Roger Douglas’ bill to cut the wages of young workers could just as easily be applied to any number of groups hit hard by the recession – Maori, students, men, dropouts, singles, people in Northland. What if we were to change a couple of key words in his bill?
Two industrial relations bills from the Right were pulled from the ballot today.
The first, Roger Douglas’ bill to restore youth rates, is just the usual ACT Party kick the poor stuff.
But Tau Henare’s bill on strike ballots is just plain stupid.
No chance some gang f#ckwits would be deterred by longer sentences.
What happened to that plan of Key’s to end whaling?
How do we get a high wage economy when National opposes each and every wage rise?
When you’ve got a Finance Minister who can’t get stats right, a Social Welfare Minister who can’t define her flagship policy, and an Education Minister who can’t explain her flagship policy, it’s easy for an incompetent Women’s Affairs Minister to slip through.
John Key’s recent stint at the Big Gay Out wasn’t all target marketing and niche political branding. He also had a run in with living-wage campaigners who took him to task for his government’s poor response to minimum wage earners and asked if he could live on the minimum wage.
When the Government came under fire over National Standards John Key was quick to raise the anti-union bogey. The old stereotypes are certainly still strong in National, but they have led Key into a trap. What might have worked for Muldoon or Maggie in the past won’t work now for a number of reasons.
Protests are taking place around the country today against the National Government’s miserable 25 cent increase to the minimum wage.
Relating to what I wrote yesterday about the Right and much of the media being largely blind to the existence of those of […]
The best political commentary these days doesn’t come from the political journalists. As Zetetic shows, they have turned themselves into government minders. But […]
Paying a person doing the same work as another person less money because of their sex or religion or ethnicity or any other grounds […]
Campaign for a living wage is protesting the offices of National MPs this Saturday to protest increases in GST and the miserly increase […]
Over the last month or so National’s pollster David Farrar has been running a series of posts desperately trying to pin the spike […]
Number of jobless Kiwis = 276,000 Number of jobs plans from Key Government = 0 Key can make all the vague references to […]
30 years ago, according to John Key, wages in Australia and New Zealand were the same. Since then New Zealand wages have stagnated […]
The Herald reports: “[Key] also raised the 15 per cent Maori unemployment rate, saying improving education outcomes for Maori children would help address […]
Paula Bennett and John Key have been, once again, prematurely popping the bottle of champagne to celebrate the end of rising unemployment. […]
Nearly a year ago, John Key, shaken by the first whispers of disquiet over his government’s month-long holiday at the height of an […]
A panicked, chaotic series of excuses poured forth from John Key’s mouth yesterday as he attempted to shift the blame for the shocking […]
Andrew Campbell It should come as no surprise that unemployment hit 7.3% today. That’s what happens when a government does virtually nothing to […]
Unemployment hit a startling 7.3% in the December quarter, far higher than the 6.8% expected. There are now 159,000 officially unemployed workers in […]
Telecom is threatening to throw up to 1,500 workers out of their jobs so it can increase profits by offshoring. A good government in this situation is […]
Remember how John Key said he “would love to see wages drop“. You might remember the big corporate media refused to run it, […]
The latest round of the Labour Cost Index is out and it shows that the nation’s 400,000 union members are the workers holding […]
One of the old saws that the Right brings out whenever the topic of increasing the minimum wage comes up is ‘oh no, […]
I see the DomPost is running a sniveling editorial claiming Labour’s commitment to raising the minimum wage can’t be done. It then breaks […]
