Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, February 21st, 2008 - 39 comments
Categories: workers' rights -
Tags: workers' rights
While media, politicians and the Kiwi blogosphere are arguing about the wage gap with Australia, around four hundred NDU members at Bunnings Warehouse are taking matters into their own hands with a two-hour nationwide strike action today.
Bunnings workers in New Zealand start on just $12 an hour compared to $19 for their counterparts in Australia. This is from a company that could afford to give its Australian CEO a raise of 61% recently, bringing his salary up to more than $6 million or, in an ordinary wage earner’s terms, $2,885 an hour.
It also brings some context to the wages debate. No amount of tax cuts will give these workers the $7 pay rise they’d get from moving across the ditch, and to pretend that’s the case is just dishonest.
These workers have unionised themselves in an industry that had the guts torn out of it by the Employment Contracts Act and are standing together to fight for decent wages. They deserve our full support.
You can help by calling your local Bunnings store manager on 0800 HARDWARE or by emailing Bunnings New Zealand’s General Manager at brad.cranston@bunnings.co.nz. Tell them to get back to the table and pay their workers properly.
More info at NDU.
Facebook
Twitter
Scoopit!
“Just because you seem to only care about something that directly affects you doesn’t stop others caring about the wider community and consequences.” The purpose of a business is to make profit. Businesses are not altruistic. Don’t try to pretend that you are running a business because you “care about the wider community”. You may do so in general terms, but that’s not the purpose of your business.
If, as you say, you care about the community, then you should be concerned about low wages and the damage they do to society. There are a lot of social costs to low wages, and ultimately paying people such low wages is economically inefficient. Just increasing productivity or getting more people into work is not going to fix low wages in itself. Because a business is there to maximise profit, it is not going to increase its workers’ wages unless it has to, regardless of how much its productivity increases.
“Also raising the minimum wage exacerbates this issue as it becomes more attractive to turf the hypothetical kid out to get $25K more in rather than $20K more in” – the whole point is that if Mum and Dad did not need to survive on poverty wages, their children wouldn’t have to work to help support the family. It’s not a question of “turfing out”, it’s a question of need. The minimum wage is a safety net, $12 an hour is not enought to raise a family.
If Labour gave a damn about workers they would stop taxing the living daylights out of them. Never mind, Klark and her commie cronies will be off into the dustbins of history come election 08.
Tim, you’re failing to discern between iiq374′s business interests, which are probably to make a profit, and his political interests, which occur in his non-working time. He cares politically that we not enact policies that reduce employment – even though those policies don’t impact his company directly. Why do you believe that his only interest here is whether or not his company is impacted – did he give up his rights as a NZ Citizen when he became a filthy capitalist?
G’day LMBL, welcome to The Standard. We look forward to further intelligent and constructive contributions from you in the future. Have a Nice Day.