jobs

Categories under jobs

  • No categories

Granny hugs the corpse of neoliberalism

Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, October 15th, 2012 - 59 comments

Here’s Granny Herald’s genius plan for economic development: if Meridian can get more money for its power elsewhere, it should let Tiwai Point close. 3,000 jobs would be lost. Invercargill and Bluff would effectively be killed. But, hey, market forces! Problem is, if Meridian only considers its narrow commercial interests, it ignores the cost to the country as a whole.

‘What crisis?’ Rudderless ship, stormy seas

Written By: - Date published: 8:03 am, October 14th, 2012 - 133 comments

There is ample evidence of a deep and lasting crisis, but in the delusional world of Planet Key it doesn’t exist. The EPMU Job Crisis Summit  opened a much needed conversation.  Russel Norman likened the New Zealand economy to a rudderless sailing ship In Stormy Seas.  Will the summit be the start of a sea change for NZ?

Historic joint party Inquiry: Crisis in Manufacturing

Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, October 12th, 2012 - 43 comments

Today leaders of 3 opposition parties took part in an historic press conference.  Winston Peters, David Shearer and Russel Norman jointly announced the launch of a parliamentary inquiry into the crisis in manufacturing. Update: Links to articles added. One News Video.

Selling New Zealand: 100% Muddle-Urf

Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, October 11th, 2012 - 18 comments

Why is John Key backing the flagging tourist industry as a major export earner for NZ’s future? His trip to Hollywood was partly about using the Hobbit to promote NZ as a tourist destination. Why is the government so fixated on attracting more US tourists?

Manufacturing crisis

Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, October 9th, 2012 - 19 comments

If I was at the manufacturing crisis summit this Friday, and if John Key was showing up rather than spending his time on Planet Key and claiming that manufacturing is doing “extremely well”, I would ask him this: How come when Hollywood calls, you drop everything and go; how come you arrest Dotcom for them and give them $50m a year; but when Kiwi jobs are bieng lost, all you have to offer is denials and the cold shoulder?

Key’s snub to unions and workers

Written By: - Date published: 6:37 am, October 9th, 2012 - 99 comments

National promised us an “unrelenting focus on jobs” and delivered record highs in unemployment and emigration.  Now Key is refusing to even attend a Union jobs summit,  because on Planet Key everything is just fine. The unwillingness to admit that anything is wrong is just blind arrogance.

Hollywood Rules

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, October 8th, 2012 - 76 comments

In another slippery John Key u-turn, after his mission to Hollywood ‘sweeteners’ are now on the table. Key is bending over to let US-based conglomerates extend their dominance in NZ, in support of their own interests and values.

Nats: no plan, no hope to offer

Written By: - Date published: 9:06 pm, October 7th, 2012 - 8 comments

I turned on the news hoping to see the Nats’ rebuttal of the Greens’ detailed plan to protect Kiwi manufacturing like our competitors are doing. Instead, I saw a smirking fuck who has overseen the loss of 40,000 manufacturing jobs say ‘the high dollar’s good’. Joyce actually says a over-valued dollar is a good thing. ‘Flat-screen tellies are cheaper! Pity you don’t have a job to buy one!’

Greens call for new tools, QE to save jobs

Written By: - Date published: 9:51 am, October 7th, 2012 - 328 comments

40,000 manufacturing jobs gone in four years. Manufactured exports in free-fall. Tourism revenue collapsing. If that’s not a crisis, what is? Why is the government going to do? Nothing. Nothing. On Q+A, Russel Norman put forward a solid proposal: lower the OCR, new tools to stop housing booms, and quantitative easing to pay for Christchurch […]

More jobs on the line as Nats fails to act on the dollar

Written By: - Date published: 7:19 am, October 7th, 2012 - 59 comments

40 jobs in a hi-tech business repairing jet engines are set to be lost. The business’s profits are being slaughtered by the high dollar. The Bluff smelter could close – 900 jobs directly on the line, plus thousands more in the local economy – as Rio Tinto can’t make a profit with the dollar so high and aluminum prices down. How much longer will we do nothing?

National Day of action against Bennett’s welfare reforms

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, October 5th, 2012 - 128 comments

Today there have been protests around NZ, against Paula Bennett’s punitive welfare reforms.

Updates: Include ODT article link and extract, photos of Henderson protest, and links to several news articles.

Of Hollywood, Hobbits & NZ-US politics: Episode II

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, October 4th, 2012 - 66 comments

As Key heads off to the US to promote the NZ film industry, I look back at the Hobbit union-busting case and the issues it raised. Will Key’s latest mission to Hollywood, boost the economy, increase jobs and provide benefits to the NZ film industry? Or will it actually undermine the NZ’s economy and democracy, further Americanising NZ’s culture along with it?

On Planet Key, the market always provides

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, October 1st, 2012 - 16 comments

We’re told 36,000 workers are needed for the Christchurch rebuild. But since the earthquakes began 2 years ago, 9,000 people with the skills needed for the rebuild have left New Zealand. We’re making no effort to keep the skilled workers we have but the Government thinks those 36,000 workers will just magically appear when needed.

A vision for manufacturing

Written By: - Date published: 7:33 am, October 1st, 2012 - 117 comments

David Cunliffe has given another excellent economic development speech. I think what’s interesting is that he’s not really proposing new policy – what he’s saying is largely in line with the platform Labour ran in on 2011, but he’s articulating the vision behind those policies – the why, rather than just the how – which was lacking from Labour in 2011. Great stuff.

The losses keep coming

Written By: - Date published: 12:08 pm, September 24th, 2012 - 54 comments

Welcome to National’s economy: Kiwirail has just announced 158 infrastructure and engineering job losses, and this afternoon Solid Energy will probably announce the loss of 300 jobs at Spring Creek, and 200-250 elsewhere.  This on top of the swathe of job losses in Huntly and Christchurch Solid Energy announced a month ago.

Granny says – you can’t do that

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, September 21st, 2012 - 16 comments

The ever forward looking and even-handed Herald devotes its editorial to attacking Labour for supporting Winston Peters’ Bill to make some small changes to the Reserve Banks’ objectives to bring them more in line with Australia’s. Leaving aside the fact that the Herald hasn’t attacked NZF or the 3 other parties who support this, only Labour, isn’t it time Granny got with the programme?

They’re trying to build a prison/for you & me to live in

Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, September 21st, 2012 - 16 comments

National is celebrating the creation of 1300 jobs (only 300 permanent) with a prison. How many more prisons would they have to build to reverse the increase in unemployment under their watch and create 65,000 permanent jobs? Only 217. It’s ironic that the only job creation the free-market loving Nats can trumpet is a government-paid for prison.

Planet Key, Planet Paula, and the War on the Poor

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, September 19th, 2012 - 67 comments

Over the last week, the government’s off-world set of distorted realities has come to the foreground: those of “Planet John Key” and “Planet Paula”. These worlds highlight the way Bennett’s latest welfare reforms wage war on the poor and undermine fairness and democracy.

Jobs? In Oz…

Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, September 19th, 2012 - 19 comments

I saw this story on Friday saying about how the number of jobs available on seek.co.nz is up. Paula Bennett and John Key regularly come up with stories about how many jobs there are out there – you only need to look at trademe or seek – but they don’t mention that…

We need a government that gives a f*ck

Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, September 11th, 2012 - 56 comments

The paper mill at Kawerau is halving its production, and its workforce. Another hundred plus jobs gone. Meanwhile, Norske Skog, which owns the mill, is expanding production at its paper mill in Tasmania. What’s the difference? In Australia, the government is investing in local production and local jobs to substitute imports. Here, our government doesn’t give a fuck.

National’s priorities

Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, September 8th, 2012 - 74 comments

Joycie says relax

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, September 6th, 2012 - 20 comments

Steven Joyce is meant to be the Jobs Czar. So, what’s his reaction to another hundred job losses yesterday at the Bluff smelter and the threat of the loss of 3,200 more? “If [Tiwai Pt closed], it would adjust different things like investment profiles and all sorts of things” but no worries because Rio Tinto and Meridian will “come to some arrangement”.

Spring Creek & the Government’s priorities

Written By: - Date published: 7:54 am, September 5th, 2012 - 42 comments

I’m no fan of coal mining, obviously. We need to reduce the amount of carbon we put in the atmosphere dramatically and stopping digging it up would be a good start. But the Nats have no such concerns. They want more jobs in hydrocarbon extraction. So, why the lack of any kind of response from National to stop job losses at Spring Creek?

Nats hollow excuses on poverty

Written By: - Date published: 6:59 am, August 30th, 2012 - 90 comments

National has a line on child poverty to allow them to oppose actually doing anything: ‘Jobs! Jobs are the solution to poverty, not more assistance for poor kids. National is about jobs, not handouts! And we’ll get more jobs with mining!’ But their record doesn’t match the rhetoric … There are 65,000 more unemployed under National and hundreds of mining jobs are being lost.

Sack PoAL management

Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, August 27th, 2012 - 28 comments

Remember the Ports of Auckland lock-out? The bosses tried to starve out 300 worker to push through contracting out, and ‘save’ $6m a year. The workers won. Now, PoAL has reported a $12m loss caused by the $33m cost of the lockout. So, the bosses spent $33m trying to get a $6m a year ‘saving’.  Time the councils sacks the managers who wasted that money.

Child hardship rise a “bloody disgrace”

Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, August 24th, 2012 - 60 comments

David Shearer is right. The rise in inequality under National, shown by the latest Household Incomes report from MSD, is a bloody disgrace. Good on Shearer for his robust and instinctive response. Now we look forward to seeing it reflected in the outcomes from the policy work that is going on behind the scenes.

10 Jacks are as good as their master

Written By: - Date published: 6:43 am, August 21st, 2012 - 128 comments

Compare the latest figures on CEO pay to the median income of New Zealanders and to the minimum wage. The average CEO gets 10 times the pay of a full-time minimum wage worker or the income of the typical Kiwi. The gap is growing. The CEO pay increase was 26 times the median income increase, 56 times what a full-time minimum wage earner got. Does anyone think this is a recipe for a happy and successful New Zealand?

Losing a generation

Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, August 20th, 2012 - 59 comments

There are just short of 630,000 people aged 20-29. A net 33,000 of them have left for Australia under National – 13,000 in the last year. That’s twice the rate of emigration under Labour. There’s also twice as many unemployed in this age group – 46,000. That’s 1 in 8 of our youngest generation of workers either leaving for Aussie or unemployed under National.

Labour’s plan a real alternative to Nats’ failure

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, August 17th, 2012 - 33 comments

Labour’s hands on approach to economic management focused on boosting manufacturing stands in stark contrast to National’s failed record of big promises and no delivery. Manufacturing is our largest employer. It has lost 25,500 jobs under National. National has been pushing mining for four years. It employs 6,000 people, up just 600 under National.

Hands on Labour

Written By: - Date published: 9:51 pm, August 16th, 2012 - 32 comments

Fresh ideas to grow a stronger manufacturing sector, on top of the major changes Labour has already signalled featured in a speech given today by David Parker to a union audience in Wellington. David Cunliffe was there too,  and I particularly liked the  discussion afterwards. The key players are receptive to good ideas and it looks like Labour will have a real alternative to offer at the next election.

162,000 unemployed just a “technical rise”

Written By: - Date published: 7:59 am, August 10th, 2012 - 277 comments

Key’s making excuses for his government’s pathetic record on jobs. Unemployment is going the wrong way but Key calls another 2,000 people without jobs to 162,000 – the highest number since 1994 – a “very small, technical rise“. 65,000 more unemployed under National. And we’re doing relatively badly. We’ve gone from 6th lowest unemployment in the OECD to 14th.