Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 15th, 2010 - 17 comments
Not content with destroying education to get at teachers, now National are after your health to get at doctors and nurses.
Written By: - Date published: 1:42 pm, September 14th, 2010 - 13 comments
Here are the reasons for tomorrows strike from a member of the PPTA (Post Primary Teachers Association) in a guest post. The Ministry of Education has rejected them all.
You’d have to expect the spinners for the government to carefully ignore these issues in favour of their usual simplistic meaningless dogwhistling messages. That is the level they’d prefer that kids are educated to.
Written By: - Date published: 6:46 pm, September 13th, 2010 - 9 comments
Teachers are striking on Wednesday.
But there’s not a lot of information about why.
That’s an information void the government will fill if the PPTA doesn’t.
Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, September 10th, 2010 - 12 comments
There seems to be confusing in National’s camp about further attacks on workers rights.
Unfortunately this tallies with rumours they’re planning big changes in a second term.
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 pm, September 9th, 2010 - 70 comments
86 workers have been fired from Kaiapoi New World, which will be closed for a year due to quake damage. This is exactly why the government should implement the kind of scheme I outlined where the government steps in to supply the full wages of workers who can’t work due to the quake, funded by delaying the tax cuts for the rich.
Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, September 8th, 2010 - 60 comments
The unions, business, and Phil Goff have all gritted their teeth and called the Nats’ $15 million wage subsidy scheme for small quaked-affected businesses ‘a start’. The problem is, it’s likely to be the end. This scheme will leave workers and employers severely out of pocket, killing businesses and jobs.
Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, September 7th, 2010 - 59 comments
Christchurch needs a more ambitious rescue package than has been announced. Relying on EQC and insurance payouts is not enough. I would cancel the top bracket tax cuts due to come into force in a month saving half a billion dollars for a real economic revival plan The first step would be to grant emergency bridging funding to businesses closed by the quake so that they can continue to pay their workers
Written By: - Date published: 11:16 pm, September 6th, 2010 - 15 comments
It’s been nearly two years now of Paula Bennett declaring that the unemployment crisis is over. Yesterday, she put out a press release titled ‘More than 6,000 beneficiaries find jobs in August‘. Wow, 6,000 in a month, pretty good. But Bennett must have been hoping we wouldn’t read beyond the title. The fact is that 900 more people went on the dole than came off it. The total number of beneficiaries just keeps climbing.
Written By: - Date published: 9:24 pm, September 6th, 2010 - 41 comments
Unite Union’s Christchurch office has been flooded with phone calls and text messages from worried workers in post-earthquake Christchurch.
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, September 5th, 2010 - 33 comments
Almost as an aside, Matt McCarten has announced that he has the “killing kind of cancer” in his column today. Matt is one of the lions of the Left. His union, Unite, has defied the skeptics to become a real success story. Temp and low-paid workers have found an avenue for collective action, and learnt they can win. Matt makes it clear he’ll never flinch from fighting for the workers. Good on ya, mate, we’re with you.
Written By: - Date published: 9:17 am, September 1st, 2010 - 10 comments
Key says that teachers are “disconnected from the real world” for wanting a pay rise that will barely beat inflation. This from the same guy who promised higher wages. The same guy chucked half a billion dollars this year alone on the taxpayer credit card for tax cuts for the rich. The only people disconnected from the real world are those who think skimping on education and health will take this country forward.
Written By: - Date published: 12:49 pm, August 31st, 2010 - 13 comments
The government is canning it’s already too-small and ill-directed Community Max programme. $40 million was a pathetic amount that created, at best, just 3,000 temporary jobs when quarter of a million Kiwis are jobless. And, due to lazy policy-making all the Key government probably ended up doing was subsidising jobs that would have been created anyway.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, August 31st, 2010 - 13 comments
National’s big election promise in 2008 was to close the wage gap with Australia. They’re failing, as our wages fall behind theirs under National’s economic mismanagement and employer-centric policies.
But there are some who are doing better than others in the pay stakes:
Union members.
Written By: - Date published: 7:28 am, August 31st, 2010 - 36 comments
According to John Key, teachers who want to maintain reasonably class sizes and free flu vaccines are disconnected from the real world. That would be the real world of hanging out with the Queen and spending $1.5bn on finance companies I guess. What a dick.
Written By: - Date published: 7:23 am, August 31st, 2010 - 9 comments
The Herald’s top story today screams “Strikers’ Helpless Victims”.
But it turns out that staff have been suspended.
I guess that doesn’t fit the Herald’s class war perspective.
Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, August 30th, 2010 - 68 comments
Not content with wrecking primary school education, Anne Tolley has bought herself an unnecessary fight with secondary teachers.
Written By: - Date published: 11:57 am, August 27th, 2010 - 28 comments
The Employment Relations Act Amendment (2) is coming… Be prepared to fight.
But also, be prepared to slip in an Amendment to the Amendment…
Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, August 27th, 2010 - 62 comments
According to OIA papers released to the NZ Herald, Key’s plan to extend the 90 day “fire at will” law to all businesses is an ACT party takeover of government policy.
Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson recommended against the extent of the plan. She was overruled by Cabinet in response to ACT threats. As Trevor Mallard said, if Key had any balls he would’ve stuck to his Minister’s advice.
Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, August 25th, 2010 - 17 comments
Heather Smith, the pharmacy worker who was sacked unfairly under the 90 day fire at will law and featured in a recent advert for the campaign has won a CTU-backed case against her employer in the Employment Court.
Written By: - Date published: 1:08 pm, August 25th, 2010 - 16 comments
Bill English is going to play more number games today to claim wages are rising. Actually they’re falling, they’re going to keep falling, and there are 100,000 extra jobless. We deserve a Finance Minister who does his job, not one occupying himself with statistical chicanery.
Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, August 24th, 2010 - 17 comments
Contrary to the sunny prognostications of Nice Mr Key, job queues are getting longer. How much more great economic management from John and Bill can the country stand?
Written By: - Date published: 1:19 pm, August 24th, 2010 - 2 comments
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months before Paula Bennett came to office – 22600
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months since Paula Bennett came to office – 52200
Fiscal cost of extra people on the dole (welfare payments and lost tax) – approximately $1 billion
Money in this year’s budget for jobs initiatives – $31 million
Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, August 24th, 2010 - 21 comments
It was only at the protest on the weekend that I learned about the Nats’ plan to make us get sick notes if we take a day off work for ourselves or to look after a sick family member. This would be an insult to workers and a huge waste of medical resources from a government that has no understanding of efficient use of scarce resources and thinks that workers are all scumbags who need a good kicking.
Written By: - Date published: 5:27 pm, August 21st, 2010 - 26 comments
Thousands of Kiwis turned out to protest National’s new labour legislation, a unjustified, spiteful attack on our work rights, which is simply designed to lower labour costs. The CTU has announced a campaign leading to national day of action on Oct 20th. Kiwi workers won’t take this lying down. We are fighting back.
Written By: - Date published: 1:54 pm, August 20th, 2010 - 56 comments
Workers are getting together to oppose the government’s changes to employment law with rallies in the four main centres this weekend. Join your rally.
The Saturday rallies against National’s anti-work rights bill assemble at:
Auckland, QE2 Square, bottom of Queen St – 1pm
Wellington, Civic Square – 1pm
Christchurch, Catherdal Square – 1pm
and on Sunday:
Dunedin, Dental School, Great King St – 11am
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, August 20th, 2010 - 27 comments
Bill English thinks he has proven that wages grew just 3% under Labour and grew 15.5% under National in the 1990s. How’s he done it? By taking a ridiculous definition of wages and a very convenient timeframe. Bill, this is getting old. Your distortions are transparent and exposing you is too easy. How about, rather than fudging historic numbers, you get on with your job of building a better future?
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, August 18th, 2010 - 28 comments
Parliament erupted in laughter yesterday as Bill English made up more ‘facts’ to attack Labour’s economic performance. Even if his accusations against Labour’s record were true, he doesn’t have any solutions himself. Indeed, the reason he is spending so much time trying to smear Labour’s record is he is desperate to make is own record look less appalling by comparison.
Written By: - Date published: 6:37 pm, August 16th, 2010 - 68 comments
Key said put up or shut up.
The CTU and some gutsy workers are putting up.
Will Key have the guts to answer them?
Written By: - Date published: 7:09 am, August 13th, 2010 - 144 comments
John Key challenged the unions to “put up or shut up”. So they’re going to put up. The CTU has launched a campaign to name and shame businesses that are abusing the fire at will (90 day probation) bill. It’s a campaign based around personal stories. Heather Smith tells the first of many…
Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, August 12th, 2010 - 42 comments
Attacking beneficiaries won’t solve the real problems. There aren’t enough jobs, the recession is not really over. Rather than dealing with that, this government is carving off an ever large slice of our shrinking national wealth for their rich buddies. The poor and the jobless are turned into figures of public spite by a government of the rich which will cut to their meagre benefits will be pay for tax cuts for the rich.
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, August 10th, 2010 - 43 comments
The benefit system is not unaffordable, the best way to lower its cost is to create jobs. But it is clear that is not on the Welfare Workings Group’s agenda. Their job is to paint beneficiaries as bludgers, the welfare system as broken and expensive. Their job is to pave the way for welfare cuts to pay for tax cuts that will leave the poorest Kiwi families more impoverished. They’ve made a good start.
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