employment

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Jackson’s employment law fibs

Written By: - Date published: 7:59 am, September 29th, 2010 - 18 comments

Peter Jackson and others film industry employers are claiming they can’t employ their workers as employees.

That claim is simply untrue.

So what’s the real reason for their reluctance to employee people on proper agreements?

Teachers strike tomorrow

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.

Christchurch workers

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.

Reserve army of labour

Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, September 1st, 2010 - 34 comments

Bill English came pretty close to admitting that the Nats are “relaxed” about our current high unemployment. Phil Goff came out swinging…

Sick Of It

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…

I’m So Dizzy

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, August 9th, 2010 - 44 comments

The rate at which National have been spinning of late is giving me nausea. It can’t be long until they get to the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide scenario of declaring black to be white and getting run over on the nearest zebra crossing.

For the economic record

Written By: - Date published: 6:03 am, August 3rd, 2010 - 130 comments

John Key trotted out a huge lie in Parliament last week: “It took 9 years for Labour to make a complete and utter mess of the economy; it might take a bit longer than that for us to sort it out”. Let’s compare National and Labour’s economic records shall we.

The original justification or no justification at all?

Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, July 28th, 2010 - 3 comments

During the election the National Party packaged up its policies so as not to scare voters. The 90 day probationary period was for two specific reasons. It was targeted toward people on the margins of the employment market and only applicable to small businesses. Either the original justifications still hold true, hence undermining any argument to extend the scheme, or the original justifications were rubbish from the very start.

Key’s dilemma

Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, July 17th, 2010 - 23 comments

This weekend Key will start (literally) cashing in his political capital by trading off Kiwi workers’ rights for business backing.

But by pushing for these changes his backers risk the second-term National majority they need to get their hands on our assets.

It seems their bad habit of putting short-term profit ahead of long-term sustainable gains has carried over into the political sphere.

Nats don’t believe in Kiwis

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, May 14th, 2010 - 43 comments

Shame on National and Kiwirail CEO Jim Quinn for not letting the Kiwirail workers even bid to build the new Auckland railcars. This isn’t just about national spirit and a belief in New Zealand. It’s about acting smarter and making the right choices for the economy. Steven Joyce and National have proven that they neither believe in New Zealand nor have the brains to recognise the smart moves for the country.

Kiwis report future less bright under National

Written By: - Date published: 4:01 pm, April 6th, 2010 - 58 comments

In 2008, John Key was promising us a brighter future. 18 months on, we’re in that future he was talking about and Kiwis are reporting their lives are worse than they were before he came to power. 83% of Kiwis surveyed by ShapeNZ rated their quality of life as ‘good’ or better, down from 89% in 2008 and 92% in 2007. Key has a responsibility to live up to his promises

Aussie pay gap widening, Key does nothing

Written By: - Date published: 12:32 am, March 2nd, 2010 - 28 comments

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.

Mirror on a tale of two offices

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, February 15th, 2010 - 5 comments

Jackie Blue's magical Tardis Electorate Office that both is, and isn't

Julie Fairey at The Hand Mirror has posted a follow-up on the curious tale of how National’s Dr Jackie Blue “had told the Herald that Nathan’s job ended because of an office merger with new National MP Sam Lotu-Iiga, when actually they both still have separate offices, in different suburbs.” Joan Nathan you will recall, […]

Welcome to the 1990s

Written By: - Date published: 2:25 pm, February 4th, 2010 - 28 comments

Unemployment is now 7.3%. The highest since the 90s. What, you don’t remember that decade? Well, you’re in a for a treat. Govt says population rise behind high unemployment Social Development Minister Paula Bennett pointed to an increase of 14,500 people in the working age population. “There are simply more people joining the workforce, which […]

Kiwis back fairer minimum wage

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 […]

Back the Redundancy Protection Bill

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 […]

In a land of plenty

Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, December 5th, 2009 - Comments Off on In a land of plenty

Alister Barry’s other classic documentary on the effects of the Right’s neoliberal revolution on every day New Zealanders, In a Land of Plenty, is also now online thanks to NZ On Screen. Check it out below:

Greens release Green New Deal pt 2

Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, December 3rd, 2009 - 20 comments

Anyone who thinks that our economic troubles are over because the economy grew 0.1% is delusional. And no-one seriously believes that we don’t have to act quickly to stop the rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A Green New Deal is as necessary now as ever. The Greens have come out with the […]

Employers ripping off job ops money

Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, November 25th, 2009 - 3 comments

National has only come up with one employment policy to counter the recession. No, not the cycleway – ‘job ops‘. It works like this: employers get given $5,000 for employing a young person in an entry-level role. To qualify, the must be new and would not exist if the Job Ops subsidy was not available, […]

Fran’s got it right

Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, November 18th, 2009 - 8 comments

For the first time ever I wholeheartedly agree with Fran O’Sullivan’s column. In today’s Herald she writes about the government’s inaction over youth unemployment and what it will mean in terms of a lost generation. The percentage of young people who can’t find jobs snowballed after the global economic crisis hit New Zealand. But (so […]

Urgent action needed on job creation

Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, November 17th, 2009 - 9 comments

We’ve talked a lot about the negative effects of unemployment on the unemployed and their communities (depression, crime, family breakup, poor health, poor educational outcomes for children etc) but there’s another group that benefits from fewer people being on benefits – people with jobs. Check out the graph. At the end of the 1990s, there […]

Spin cycle finally into 1st gear

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, November 11th, 2009 - 7 comments

I’m all for cycle-ways but excuse me if I don’t get all silly over John Key knocking a post in the ground in Waikato and declaring his first cycle-way under way. The reality is the Waikato River Trail was being built anyway. In fact, it is already over half built. So this $3 million isn’t actually creating […]

Farrar vs the facts

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, November 9th, 2009 - 36 comments

I’ve never quite understood why David Farrar, who is after all paid to do statistical work, insists on performing transparent statistical tricks on his blog. Yesterday, he did a post with figures on the number of 15-19 year olds with jobs. He argued that it showed removing the youth rate and giving everyone the same […]

Four day week, way of the future?

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, September 28th, 2009 - 18 comments

How would you like to work  a four-day, ten-hour per day week, rather than a five-day week? A number of organisations in the US have adopted the 4-day week to save energy costs during the recession, and it’s working so well for employers and workers that it may become permanent. A survey I saw mentioned […]

Informative journalism

Written By: - Date published: 10:20 am, September 25th, 2009 - 4 comments

Colin Espiner: “For some reason that I don’t quite understand, unemployment usually continues to rise at the end of recessions, and there’s normally a lag time of something like a year before it falls.” I can help with that one. When a down-turn starts, employers generally don’t know how bad or how long it will […]

Redundancy protection – it’s only fair

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, September 11th, 2009 - 20 comments

A coalition of unions, Labour, the Greens, the Maori Party, and community groups has come together to support Darian Fenton’s Redundancy Protection Bill. There’s a website, facebook group, petition, and other ways you can get involved. The Bill, due to be debated later this month, would set a minimum level of redundancy protection for all […]

On their coat-tails

Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, August 17th, 2009 - 40 comments

Jon Stewart talks to Austan Goolsbee, Chief Economist for President Obama’s Economic Recovery Board: “when you’re looking in the face of the next great depression, that’s not the time to tighten the belt” Now, I’m not as optimisitc as Goolsbee about the long-term outlook but thank goodness the governments of the major countries didn’t go […]

Unemployment back to English’s ‘realistic’ level

Written By: - Date published: 5:11 am, August 7th, 2009 - 33 comments

Who said this? “if we continue with National’s policies over the next three years we will be able to create another 115,000 jobs and bring unemployment under 6%. These are realistic targets…Labour’s claim that it can bring the unemployment rate down to 3% is also a hoax” It was Bill English in 1999. Of course, […]

‘Green-shoots’ wither in UK

Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, July 27th, 2009 - 11 comments

Like New Zealand, the UK has had a deluge of ‘green-shoots’ news from the corporate media and the financiers desperate to jawbone the economy into recovery. The spin became so pervasive that the consensus among economists was the UK economy would have shrunk only -0.3% last quarter and would be growing by now. It shrunk […]

Good jab, now land some punches

Written By: - Date published: 5:04 am, July 21st, 2009 - 88 comments

It was excellent to see Phil Goff laying down the gauntlet to Key yesterday. He announced Labour’s policy to temporarily relax partner means testing for the dole and promised a recession response package. On the same day, Key’s big achievement was noting the Hillary family had settled their dispute with Auckland museum. Goff is saying […]

Incentive to leave school?

Written By: - Date published: 8:02 am, July 16th, 2009 - 18 comments

I disagreed with Helen Clark in 2007 when she first suggested raising the school leaving age, as I don’t believe the mainstream school system is suitable for all young people. However I did largely support Labour’s 2008 policy to ensure all school leavers under the age of 18 are in some kind of education. If […]