Written By: - Date published: 10:49 am, January 25th, 2010 - 28 comments
Written By: - Date published: 3:32 pm, January 22nd, 2010 - 18 comments
You may remember that late last year John Key, Bill English and Paula Bennett could hardly find the words to praise themselves for the falling numbers on the dole. That was until I pointed out that it was a seasonal dip that always occurs between September and November, and, actually, the seasonally dip over the […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, January 22nd, 2010 - 68 comments
“2500 people waited up to seven hours to apply for one of 150 jobs at a new South Auckland supermarket”* OK, maybe 16 applicants per job isn’t beyond the norm when you’re advertising one at a time but when you’re advertising 150? Think about it, that means there are 2,500 jobless Kiwis just within the […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, January 21st, 2010 - 57 comments
It fascinates me that in all this talk about ‘catching up with Australia’ via tax cuts, nobody bothers to look at the Aussie tax system to see what they’re doing. Keith Ng has a cool interactive graph on the portion of all income earnt by different income groups and the tax they pay. He compares what […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, January 20th, 2010 - 24 comments
The Key Government’s anti-beneficiary campaign continues. The latest is a beat-up on long-term beneficiaries. Apparently, 9 people have been on the dole for longer than 20 years, 14 for 15-20 years, and 181 for 10-15 years. ‘Bludgers!’ we’re meant to cry ‘Bludgers!’ But let’s actually think with our brains rather than our jerking knees. This […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, January 20th, 2010 - 90 comments
The ‘3 strikes’ policy is the kind of policy you put in place when you want to look tough on crime but you have no idea how to actually reduce it, in the same way a cycleway is the jobs plan you have when you don’t have a plan. We know locking people up longer doesn’t […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, January 18th, 2010 - 132 comments
Traditionally, the minimum wage was set at around 60-67% of the average wage. During the Muldoon era and the 1990s, National let the minimum wage stagnate, with inflation eating away at its value. It declined to as low as 34% of the average wage under Muldoon and 41% under Bolger. Both the 4th and 5th Labour […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:40 am, January 18th, 2010 - 12 comments
Statements made in Parliament last year, in chronological order: Hon BILL ENGLISH: They have been telling us that we should copy the Australian fiscal stimulus, when Australia’s unemployment rate is close to 6%—whereas our fiscal stimulus has kept our unemployment rate down to 5%. So which one is it: copy Australia’s plan and force the […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:38 pm, January 16th, 2010 - 70 comments
Phil Goff has picked up on the point I made yesterday: while unemployment is falling in Australia due to the $42 billion stimulus package implemented by the Rudd Government, in New Zealand unemployment is still rising while this do nothing government sits on its arse, and unemployment here is now higher than in Aussie for […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, January 16th, 2010 - 8 comments
After all of the kerfuffle about Key’s long holidays I figure there’s not much for me to say about it but it’s worth remembering what his plans for the fourth week of annual leave were just before it came into effect: It’s not the man’s unusually long time off the job that irks me so […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, January 15th, 2010 - 21 comments
Well, I didn’t think it could done but it has been. National has been promising to close the gap with Australia, and damned if it hasn’t happened already. The Nats’ target was 2025, it didn’t even take a year. In fact, we’re now above Australia and accelerating away while they fall. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:03 am, January 12th, 2010 - 85 comments
Workers to get same holidays as PM Monday, 11/01/2010, 11:30pm Press release: New Zealand Government The Government will raise the minimum annual leave entitlement for all workers from four weeks a year to seven, Prime Minister John Key said today. “This will bring the holiday entitlements of all Kiwis into line with the vacations I […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:24 pm, January 6th, 2010 - 35 comments
There’s no denying that the Burj Khalifa is impressive. Not all that much short of a kilometre high, it’s easily the highest building on Earth. It loses some of the lustre, though, when you think about what it actually is. This building makes no economic sense, it was built on borrowed money by a country […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, December 28th, 2009 - 10 comments
An interesting piece on the SST yesterday: English has warned public servants such as teachers and nurses not to expect pay increases that are “out of line with realistic expectations”. “I think we will see quite a few sparks fly,” O’Reilly said. “Government departments are being told how much they can spend so you’re going […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, December 23rd, 2009 - 26 comments
While most Kiwis are getting ready for Christmas there are tens of thousands who will be having a hard time this holiday season because they were made unemployed this year. And most of these workers will have had no redundancy protection to tide them over. That’s not good enough. It leaves workers and their families […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, December 23rd, 2009 - 57 comments
So Paula Bennett wants to force people on the dole to reapply after a year. At best, it’s a waste of money by adding more bureaucracy. At worst, it will leave people who are already in poverty destitute for weeks. You can lose your dole already if you don’t meet the conditions. In particular, if […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, December 22nd, 2009 - 23 comments
Earlier this year, Paula Bennett released the personal details of two women who get the DPB who had opposed her cancelling of a grant designed to get people off the benefit. As far as I’m aware, the Privacy Commissioner still hasn’t published her opinion on Bennett’s bully tactics but it looks like Bennett has got the […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:06 am, December 16th, 2009 - 1 comment
Over at FairDeal, NZEI have announced that the support staff in schools have managed to get a wage increase. The campaign by support staff members and the wider union has finally resulted in a settlement of the support staff collective agreement. There is now a $14 minimum rate for Grade A, a $14.62 minimum rate […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, December 16th, 2009 - 26 comments
An extraordinary moment in Question Time as John Boscawen skewered National’s hollow promise to close the wage gap with Australia by 2025. Watch the video and listen to Bill English’s voice. He was simply left high and dry when Boscawen asked him for some actual evidence that the gap is going to close: Boscawen: By how much […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, December 15th, 2009 - 12 comments
National claims it created 2,300 jobs with its stimulus spending. Of course, most of this supposed stimulus was smoke and mirrors – re-announcing existing spending – and 2,300 is bugger all when there are over quarter of a million Kiwis out of work. But I had a few more problems with this announcement. Firstly, I […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, December 14th, 2009 - 8 comments
“Govt stimulus creates 2300 jobs” reads the headline! It’s a bit misleading though. A more accurate headline would have been – “Labour Govt stimulus creates 2300 jobs”. How’s that, I hear you cry? Follow the money: The Government estimates its economic stimulus package has created about 2300 jobs through increased infrastructure spending of more than […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, December 10th, 2009 - 7 comments
About a month ago I used the Stats NZ Labour Cost Index to come up with the approximate distribution of payrises for unionised and non-unionised workers. I showed that most union members got payrises this year and most non-union members didn’t. Turns out that was pretty much on the money. The EPMU released figures yesterday […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, December 10th, 2009 - 10 comments
A victory for New Zealand’s 270,000 retail workers and their families last night, with Parliament voting 62-59 to reject National MP Todd McClay’s Easter Sunday trading bill. This debate has never been about observing a religious holiday as the neoliberals try to paint it, it’s about recognising that there should be times during the year […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, December 10th, 2009 - 39 comments
Check out Phil Goff’s general debate speech yesterday on In The House, a handy new site paid for by the Office of the Clerk (can’t work out how to embed from it yet). The speech is excellent and it focuses where Labour should be focusing: National’s complete unwillingness and inability to do anything for hardworking […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, December 9th, 2009 - 9 comments
An excellent question from Labour yesterday, using some familiar numbers: Hon Annette King: When he was reusing ‘unreliable, highly volatile, and potentially misleading’ [Paula Bennett’s words] figures yesterday, was he aware that unemployment drops around this time every year and that this year we are experiencing a smaller than usual seasonal drop of just 2.6 percent, […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, December 8th, 2009 - 5 comments
Governments use statistical tricks to lower the official unemployment rate. This fun video shows how many jobless people get swept under the carpet. It’s not that the statisticians aren’t aware of the jobless. In the US, they use different definitions of unemployment. ‘U-3’, the official unemployment rate only counts those people who are actively looking […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:46 pm, December 7th, 2009 - 11 comments
John Key is still claiming credit for the drop in the number of people on the unemployment benefit that occurs every October and November due to seasonal jobs that disappear after Christmas. In his press conference today Key said that the number of people on the dole had fallen to 58,500, a 300-odd drop […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:28 pm, November 29th, 2009 - 20 comments
In opposition, National claimed that Labour wasn’t really getting people off benefits, it was just moving them from unemployment benefit and ‘hiding’ them on the sickness and invalid’s benefits – Paula Bennett repeated the claim just this week in the House. But the facts prove otherwise. When Labour was in power, there was small […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, November 27th, 2009 - 1 comment
Just a reminder, thousands of hospital support staff, school support staff and other low-paid public sector workers are rallying in 27 centres nationwide today to tell the government to lift the freeze on low pay. The rallies are taking place from 12.30-1.30. If you can, head on down in your lunch break and show your […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:04 am, November 24th, 2009 - 2 comments
If you can, get along to support the hospital support staff, the school support staff, and all the other low-paid public sector workers this Friday. (full size image here)
Written By: - Date published: 9:18 am, November 24th, 2009 - Comments Off on It’s not spin, the govt told me
The Dompost reports: “The number of places available on a programme to get young people off the dole will be increased after the Government credited it with a drop in unemployment”. Sigh, it’s the seasons, stupid. There has been no drop in unemployment, that went up to 6.5% in the last stats. The number of […]
Recent Comments