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AFFCO Talley’s and Jobs That Count

Written By: - Date published: 7:21 am, February 5th, 2015 - 9 comments

Darien Fenton at Jobs That Count brings us the details of the fight for decent pay and conditions at Talley’s meat processing plants

Unemployment up

Written By: - Date published: 2:27 pm, February 4th, 2015 - 40 comments

We need a much better analysis of what kinds of jobs and conditions are out there in NZ, crude figures are not telling us enough.

Guest Post: from a Fairy Godmother

Written By: - Date published: 6:50 pm, December 29th, 2014 - 36 comments

How can young unemployed people get help in finding a job, when they have been trying to get one for some time?

One word away from needing food parcels

Written By: - Date published: 1:05 pm, December 24th, 2014 - 71 comments

The smug middle class National voter seems oblivious to how close they are to financial hardship…

rising poverty amongst asians

Written By: - Date published: 11:04 pm, December 9th, 2014 - 85 comments

a new report shows that poverty related illnesses are growing at a rapid rate for asian children, and so are other poverty indicators.  some of this is related to a more settled population, but we also need to talk about racism.

Andrew Little: the future of work

Written By: - Date published: 8:03 am, December 1st, 2014 - 98 comments

The text of a speech delivered by Andrew Little this morning

“Marching in the streets”

Written By: - Date published: 5:15 pm, November 8th, 2014 - 129 comments

Thousands of people protested and marched around the country against the secret and anti-democratic TPPA negotiations. Reports & pics. Updated

The future of work, income

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, November 1st, 2014 - 188 comments

Automation is changing everything – faster than we think…

Opposition to Nats’ attack grows

Written By: - Date published: 7:53 am, October 25th, 2014 - 79 comments

Labour’s petition against National’s attack on Kiwi’s rights including the right to a break at work is growing like topsy with over 22,000 people signing up to it in the last day and a half.

Boots Theory: Numbers are meaningless when families are living in cars

Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, October 5th, 2014 - 137 comments

There’s something obscene about the way the economic story gets framed: the figures on a page, the points on an index, the number of dollars someone can swap for a number of different-coloured dollars, when people are suffering.

NZ Inc

Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, September 14th, 2014 - 119 comments

David Cunliffe has announced his final big policy. It’s called NZ Inc and it’s a bloody smart move.

The working poor

Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, September 13th, 2014 - 46 comments

National is not interested in doing anything about poverty in NZ. They won’t even officially measure poverty, because they don’t want to know.

NRT: 32,000 out of work under National

Written By: - Date published: 3:21 pm, August 6th, 2014 - 54 comments

The latest Household Labour Force Survey was released today, showing a drop in unemployment. But while its an improvement, there is far less employment than when National came into office 5 years ago. That is a monumental fail.

Labour – Raise the minimum wage

Written By: - Date published: 4:05 pm, August 1st, 2014 - 298 comments

Labour is promising to raise the minimum wage to $16.25. It’s the right thing to do. And it doesn’t cost jobs.

Tales from the left ground

Written By: - Date published: 6:34 pm, July 17th, 2014 - 26 comments

I was uplifted by seeing Team Carmel Sepuloni out campaigning in Henderson today.  Marama Davidson has been out on the ground in Otara.  The Internet-Mana Party have gone on a Road Trip.  There’s been an on-going left campaign in Ohariu…. what are the tales from the left, campaigning on the ground?!

NRT: So much for the surplus

Written By: - Date published: 1:21 pm, July 8th, 2014 - 40 comments

As was generally expected by anyone who’d been watching the actual economy rather than just the dairy exports, business profits are lower than expected. And there aren’t the jobs and pay increases in our “rockstar” economy. So consumer spending measured by GST is low as well. Meanwhile the price inflation keeps increasing government costs. So we are already on track for a large deficit next year rather than the government’s much-touted imaginary surplus. You have to ask why we deserve a government that appears to live more in a universe of wishful thinking than reality.

The real aims of National’s “Education” policy.

Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, July 8th, 2014 - 149 comments

If the aims of National/ACT’s education policy were, genuinely, to to improve the learning, education and career choices for our children, including the ones that are failing at present, they would not be following policies which have signally failed to achieve any of these goals, anywhere else they have been tried.

Green Party pre-budget policy launch

Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, May 13th, 2014 - 10 comments

The Green Party will do a pre-budget economic policy launch: livestream here 11am 11.30am-12.30pm.They are pretty adept at interacting with Kiwis via social media, and on TV. They are grounded in grassroots activities, that link to their policies aimed at making life better for low-to-middle income Kiwis. [Updated#1: got start time wrong: #2 policy here – Green Investment Bank; news reports]

NRT: All about distribution

Written By: - Date published: 1:54 pm, April 30th, 2014 - 29 comments

Distribution – who pays, who gets what – is one of (or perhaps the) key question in politics. It is the big problem with Labour’s new monetary policy. We’ve all seen how the theoretical ability to compensate the losers of policies which produce net gains tends to be forgotten in practice. Which means that the acceptability of the policy is going to depend crucially on whether Labour follows through on this promise.

National’s exports – how to lose value and jobs

Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, April 30th, 2014 - 77 comments

Manufacturing exports dropped by 3.3% over the last year. Manufacturing businesses and their jobs disappeared with them. Meanwhile the National MP’s with dairy farms and interests will today be proclaiming a buoyant economy based on them selling barely processed milk-powder to China. It is good for them but as they gut the manufacturing jobs few other kiwis will reap any benefits.

LB: Bill’s Busted Budget and Tim’s Exploding Emissions

Written By: - Date published: 4:28 pm, April 9th, 2014 - 13 comments

Local bodies points out a couple more of the National government’s sad-sacks. For some strange (but obvious) reason a warmish market for milk powder doesn’t do much for NZ apart from destroying our environment. English’s taxcuts for his wealthy mates have destroyed the fiscal base of the government and done nothing to cause any investment in the productive and employable parts of our economy. Tim Groser has also made an artform of making NZ worse off.

Poverty denial – NZ Herald editorial

Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, April 8th, 2014 - 210 comments

Today’s NZ Herald editorial joins Paula Bennett’s beneficiary-bashing stunt, asking for flying privileges to be cut, & denying there is a lot of poverty in NZ- a view from the privileged part of NZ’s inequality gap.

Invermay: Meddling Joyce Ignores the Evidence

Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, March 10th, 2014 - 8 comments

My brother has posted across at Red Alert on Steven Joyce’s bungling oversight of AgResearch’s current $100 million restructure. The Crown Research Institute is New Zealand’s largest, and a recipient of generous Government support. Andy West, the former head of AgResearch stands to gain as head of Lincoln University from a plan that independent review […]

Opposing the PM’s statement

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 pm, January 28th, 2014 - 18 comments

The PMs’ statement todaywas a bit of a fizzer: lacking ideas, a lot of waffle.  Some opposition speeches were more inspiring, & laid out some real alternatives: like the speeches from Cunliffe (on fire), Norman (inspiring), Ardern (animated) & Harawira (real people; real struggles).

Local Bodies: Shell and the Great South Basin

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, January 8th, 2014 - 170 comments

The Southland Times devoted the whole of the front page to celebrate Shell’s decision to do some exploratory drilling in the Great South Basin. The best scenario will be that they discover a sizable gas field similar to the one in Taranaki. Then royalties we will get are only 5% of the value of what is sold, almost 40% less than the OECD average AND we will have to pay full commercial rates to have any of it ourselves. The worst case scenario…. Well that is really bad and has no effective cover

John Key’s patchwork ‘job machine’: user pays

Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, December 28th, 2013 - 47 comments

John Key’s great idea for job creation – his cycleway project – has produced some benefits, but is a patchwork production.  Some sections will be user pays to fund maintenance.  Meanwhile the job creation benefits have been limited.

Making sense of the (un)employment stats: Census 2013

Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, December 12th, 2013 - 22 comments

A Statistics NZ Census quick stats page is both useful and puzzling. Nearly a 3rd of adults are not in the “labour force”, unemployment stats mask true unemployment, the young and low income women particularly are struggling, distorted occupation categories, and more….. [Update: Occupation categories]

Smile and Wave

Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, December 10th, 2013 - 54 comments

Confronted with a protest about the government’s lack of action on child poverty, John Key’s response is: “So yeah, they just protest because that’s all they’ve got to do all day.” As though protesting – participating in our democracy – was a particularly unimportant thing to do. Also, if the people he was writing off […]

NZ’s struggling screen industry

Written By: - Date published: 9:51 am, October 24th, 2013 - 117 comments

The NZ screen industry is in a precarious state, unable to compete with incentives in other countries to attract the crums from Hollywood productions, impacted by the currency high dollar rate.  Innovative ideas needed for an independent NZ industry, linked with public broadcasting TV & online viewing. [Updated: Maori TV & Barry Barclay]

Cunliffe stands strong for fair pay and your work rights

Written By: - Date published: 6:29 am, October 10th, 2013 - 139 comments

David Cunliffe showed that he wasn’t just pandering for votes in the leadership race by reaffirming and strengthening his commitment to work rights at the CTU conference yesterday. When David is PM the minimum wage will rise to $15 an hour, the public service will set an example by paying the living wage, and the Nats’ attacks on rights will be reversed – no more Fire at Will, no more youth rates.

The cleaner & the ugly face of National

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, September 27th, 2013 - 164 comments

Imagine that your job was to clean 130 toilets every day. Imagine the grinding unpleasantness of it. Imagine the horrors some disgusting person would regularly leave for you to deal with. Imagine you do that for just above the minimum wage, barely enough to support your family, far from enough to live a real life. And imagine seeing one of the people whose shit you clean sneer at you.