workers’ rights

Categories under workers’ rights

Unemployment – No Story Here

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, January 8th, 2011 - 65 comments

Youth unemployment is 19.8%, but is there much coverage of a shockingly high number?  That’s 1 in 5 young people Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs to the initiated); higher than the OECD average.

Why didn’t the warning sound at Pike River?

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 pm, January 6th, 2011 - 44 comments

I never, ever thought I would say this but there’s a very good article in Investigate this week. It’s about the Pike River disaster. With methane sensors in place, alarms should have gone off well before the gas reached combustible level. Investigate reveals the sensors may have been disabled by workers who would lose pay if they had to stop work.

John “30-sec” Key…. smile and walk away.

Written By: - Date published: 8:33 pm, January 3rd, 2011 - 103 comments

The two significant things from the Herald interview: #1 The signalling by John Key of his willingness to step down. #2 The view of John Key that “essentially there is no money”. “There won’t be money for us and there won’t be money for Labour,” John Key. The significant thing about the first statement is, […]

Clipshow – Jackson’s bad faith posturing

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, December 29th, 2010 - 14 comments

From the ‘I told you so’ file comes IrishBill’s first post on the Hobbit dispute after Jackson suddenly announced that a settled dispute with a small union was forcing Warner Bros to abandon a $100m investment and move overseas. We now know Jackson was lying to extort more money and a law change but Irish called it at the time, resulting in 516 comments – a record.

The family problem

Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, December 25th, 2010 - 37 comments

Kiwis frequently like leading the world in the many ways that outmatch our ‘weight’. I wish we weren’t leading the world in this one.

We have one of the worst youth unemployment rates in the world as The Economist shows.

Jackson statement worsens Hobbit fiasco

Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, December 23rd, 2010 - 80 comments

Peter Jackson yesterday did what the government has refused to do and commented on the revelation that he told Gerry Brownlee the Actors’ Equity blacklist was no threat to the Hobbit movies being filmed here. Unfortunately, Jackson has just further sullied his reputation by revealing the true motives for the Hobbit Enabling Act.

The new economy: Govt as an economic actor

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, December 17th, 2010 - 42 comments

Three government investment decisions in the last couple of weeks have shown the deficiencies in the neoliberal way of doing things. SOE Solid Energy’s lignite-to-liquids obsession, Kiwirail buying trains in China rather than making them itself and Steven Joyce decision to re-create Telecom’s monopoly by giving it 70-84% of the broadband contracts.

3 time loser wins

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, December 7th, 2010 - 25 comments

In a surprise to no-one, John Key has appointed 3 time election loser Hekia Parata to replace the latest of his corrupt ministers to walk the plank – Pansy Wong. I’m hoping Parata will be less of a disgrace than Wong. It wouldn’t be hard, she would just have to actually try to answer questions in the House and actually do something about the wage gaps.

A hero – really?

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, December 6th, 2010 - 41 comments

The modern urge to label leaders who perform adequately during an emergency as ‘heroes’ astounds me. Particularly in the case of Pike River. Peter Whitall is a boss who just had 29 workers die on his work-site. While reserving judgment on his blame for that, I’m not going to call him a hero for doing a decent job for the cameras.

Tales from front-lines of the class war

Written By: - Date published: 10:24 am, December 6th, 2010 - 17 comments

This collection of articles from recent days illustrate the class war going on within this country. In a time of economic, environmental, and social crisis, either the established elite can be reined in or it will use its power to cement its position and take a greater share of the wealth. Because we’re letting them, the elite are winning the class war.

Pike’s interference could compromise investigation

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, December 4th, 2010 - 75 comments

Pike River Coal has been pushing for access to investigation interviews.

This kind of interference needs to be stopped before the investigation is compromised.

Fire at Will coming to your workplace

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, November 24th, 2010 - 33 comments

As of April 1 next year, I’m going to be a whole lot less confident moving to a new job. If I do, I’ll probably find the new contract gives the boss the right to fire me without giving me the right to justice if the firing is unfair. Reducing workers’ confidence to change jobs is just one of the stupid consequences of universal Fire at Will.

English: excuses but no solutions on plummeting incomes

Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, November 19th, 2010 - 33 comments

Labour picked up on the statistics I revealed yesterday that show the median income of Maori has fallen 11.5% under National and the Pacific Island median income is down an astounding 19%. Kris Fa’afoi and Annette King put out press releases. Then King took the battle to Bill English in the House, who it seems is also a reader.

NZ media asleep at the wheel

Written By: - Date published: 1:37 pm, November 18th, 2010 - 31 comments

Democracy is quietly dying in NZ but you’d never know it by the media’s response.  The government is rushing through a slew* of legislation under urgency and it doesn’t even rate a mention in either the Herald or the DomPost (the DP devotes half a page to Harry and Kate’s engagement for god’s sake). National Radio […]

Framing the argument

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, November 18th, 2010 - 16 comments

Bill English and brother Conner, CEO of Federated Farmers, share a vision for the world. It’s one where the environment and workers are exploited to the hilt in the name of ‘growth’ and the fruits of that ‘growth’ flow to a privileged elite (like the Englishes). Yesterday rich-boy Conner chided the rest of us with a speech titled “There is no free lunch”

Maori & Pacific Island incomes plummet

Written By: - Date published: 6:58 am, November 18th, 2010 - 93 comments

Here’s a little something that Kris Fa’afoi and his team might like to being to the attention of Mana voters as they prepare to go to the polls. On National’s watch, the median Maori income has fallen 11.5%. For Pacific Islanders the fall’s 19%. Pakeha are down 2.6%. No tax cut for the rich can cover the gaping holes in those family budgets.

Hone and the holidays act

Written By: - Date published: 9:57 pm, November 17th, 2010 - 23 comments

Who would have thought that while Hone was talking up Matt McCarten in Mana the other day he was getting ready to vote with National and Act to undermine Kiwi workers’ annual leave and sick leave rights?

Neo-liberalism at work

Written By: - Date published: 5:16 pm, November 16th, 2010 - 15 comments

So people get sick and become less productive. I would have thought that that was pretty much stating the obvious.

Spending tax payers money trying to quantify how much imaginary wealth these sick people could have created for their employers if they had been perfectly well, seems to me to be bordering on lunacy.

Fired for using too much sauce

Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, November 12th, 2010 - 47 comments

The Nats are determined to push through more attacks on the rights of working New Zealanders. The latest stories of abuse of the Fire at Will law to emerge involve a chef who ‘who used too much sauce’ and a dairy worker who stood up for an abused immigrant worker. The Nats want all of us to be subject to Fire at Will. Our job is to fight back.

Dole numbers still rising

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, November 10th, 2010 - 10 comments

While the unemployment rate continues to jump around like mad, the dole numbers are telling a consistent story. And it’s not a good one. Every month this year has been worse than normal. In October, the number of Kiwis on the dole fell by 0.1%, that’s compared to a 1.1% fall last October and an average 3.1% drop each October under Labour. This October there were 4,800 more people on the dole than last October. Didn’t you say we were coming out of the recession strongly, Mr Key?

Inequality Rises

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, November 10th, 2010 - 53 comments

Wages rose for the rich and fell for the poor this year, according to a Employers and Manufacturer’s Association survey. Managing Directors got a 3.7% rise from $190k to $197k, whilst the unskilled production workers beneath them saw their wages drop 6.5% or $2000 to $29.5k.

The recession, combined with this government, hurts the poor the hardest.

National – No Friend to Women

Written By: - Date published: 2:44 pm, November 9th, 2010 - 45 comments

The gender pay gap is increasing by about 1 percentage point each year under Pansy Wong’s watch – it’s now 13%.  And a new report out shows women’s level of participation in key leadership areas is static or falling.  Female unemployment had passed 7 percent for the first time in 12 years.  National’s policies equate to an attack on women.

High pay makes elitists view us as serfs

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, November 9th, 2010 - 41 comments

I’ve never really understood the logic of paying CEOs multi-million dollar salaries. Can Telecom’s $7m man, Paul Reynolds, for example, really be worth 100 skilled technicians? Is there no-one who is basically as good who would work for a million or two less? Now, research shows high pay gaps for CEOs actually makes them worse bosses.

Nasty Nats Steal Holidays

Written By: - Date published: 5:05 pm, November 7th, 2010 - 38 comments

This NAct government is so anti-worker that they have managed to re-arrange the calendar so that we get 5 fewer holidays in this government’s term than the last Labour one.  And that’s before they sell off our 4th week.

One in ten Kiwis jobless or underemployed

Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, November 5th, 2010 - 11 comments

At 6.4% unemployment appears to be falling, slowly. But it also looks to be above where it was at the start of the year, when it supposedly plunged to 6.0%. Economists are viewing the wildly fluctuating numbers sceptically. Whatever precisely is happening, with one in ten working age Kiwis unable to get work, it’s not time for dancing in the streets.

Q&A on The Hobbit – Part 2

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, November 3rd, 2010 - 52 comments

In a highly-charged debate like the Hobbit fiasco, it’s easy to lose sight of the real issue amongst the claims and counter-claims over petty details. In a second post that strips things back to what matters, Blue asks the big question: ‘how exactly did NZ taxpayers end up handing over tens of millions of dollars to Warner Brothers?’

Made in Wellington

Written By: - Date published: 8:35 am, November 3rd, 2010 - 33 comments

I went to see Made in Dagenham last night. The parallels between the dispute, that began when female workers at a Ford plant in the UK struck for better pay, and then equal pay with men, and the Hobbit fiasco were striking. But it’s the dissimilarties in the outcomes that I was left pondering. Let’s take a look at the two events:

A rushed law, a bad law

Written By: - Date published: 5:11 pm, October 29th, 2010 - 56 comments

The Hobbit Enabling Act is meant to do is say ‘you’re an employee if you are called an employee in your contract, if not, you’re a contractor’. But it doesn’t say that and it doesn’t override the Bryson case that caused the ‘uncertainty’ Warners supposedly feared. Now, nobody knows what the law actually is. Well-founded disagreements will mean court cases.

Going backwards with National

Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, October 29th, 2010 - 34 comments

It takes a lot to screw up a great country like New Zealand. It can’t be done overnight. But if you’re really negligent, anti-worker, and focused on hand outs to the rich, you can start to make things worse pretty quickly. Let’s look at the key measures of National’s performance, according to their own criteria:

Tourism: revenue flat, employment down

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, October 29th, 2010 - 41 comments

I’m confused by the up beat coverage of the tourism figures released on Wednesday. Have people actually read the numbers? Tourism is in decline. Employment and revenue are still going down, and the next time oil prices go through the roof, the situation will get worse. No cycleway will change that.

At least Barbara Castle had some guts

Written By: - Date published: 9:07 pm, October 28th, 2010 - 11 comments

Wellington’s Embassy theatre hosted the New Zealand premiere of the Ring movies a few years ago. There’s another good movie showing there now. It comes from the producer of “Calendar Girls” and is called “Made in Dagenham”. It tells the story of women sewing machinists who went on strike for equal pay at England’s largest […]