workers’ rights

Categories under workers’ rights

health and safety (156)
unemployment (251)
Unions (427)
wages (502)

Rodney Hide in control of Key Government policy

Written By: Michael Foxglove - Date published: 9:42 am, August 27th, 2010 - 62 comments

According to OIA papers released to the NZ Herald, Key’s plan to extend the 90 day “fire at will” law to all businesses is an ACT party takeover of government policy.

Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson recommended against the extent of the plan. She was overruled by Cabinet in response to ACT threats. As Trevor Mallard said, if Key had any balls he would’ve stuck to his Minister’s advice.

Sacked 90 day worker wins justice

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:50 pm, August 25th, 2010 - 17 comments

Heather Smith, the pharmacy worker who was sacked unfairly under the 90 day fire at will law and featured in a recent advert for the campaign has won a CTU-backed case against her employer in the Employment Court.

Ready for more of English’s dodgy numbers?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:08 pm, August 25th, 2010 - 16 comments

Bill English is going to play more number games today to claim wages are rising. Actually they’re falling, they’re going to keep falling, and there are 100,000 extra jobless. We deserve a Finance Minister who does his job, not one occupying himself with statistical chicanery.

Job queues longer

Written By: r0b - Date published: 2:28 pm, August 24th, 2010 - 17 comments

Contrary to the sunny prognostications of Nice Mr Key, job queues are getting longer. How much more great economic management from John and Bill can the country stand?

Failure by the numbers

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:19 pm, August 24th, 2010 - 2 comments

Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months before Paula Bennett came to office – 22600
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months since Paula Bennett came to office – 52200
Fiscal cost of extra people on the dole (welfare payments and lost tax) – approximately $1 billion
Money in this year’s budget for jobs initiatives – $31 million

Got your doctor’s note?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 10:57 am, August 24th, 2010 - 21 comments

It was only at the protest on the weekend that I learned about the Nats’ plan to make us get sick notes if we take a day off work for ourselves or to look after a sick family member. This would be an insult to workers and a huge waste of medical resources from a government that has no understanding of efficient use of scarce resources and thinks that workers are all scumbags who need a good kicking.

Thousands protest Nats’ attack on our work rights

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 5:27 pm, August 21st, 2010 - 26 comments

Thousands of Kiwis turned out to protest National’s new labour legislation, a unjustified, spiteful attack on our work rights, which is simply designed to lower labour costs. The CTU has announced a campaign leading to national day of action on Oct 20th. Kiwi workers won’t take this lying down. We are fighting back.

Fairness at Work rallies 21 & 22 August

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 1:54 pm, August 20th, 2010 - 56 comments

Workers are getting together to oppose the government’sÂ changes to employment law with rallies in the four main centres this weekend. Join your rally.
The Saturday rallies against National’s anti-work rights bill assemble at:
Auckland, QE2 Square, bottom of Queen St – 1pm
Wellington, Civic Square – 1pm
Christchurch, Catherdal Square – 1pm
and on Sunday:
Dunedin, Dental School, Great King St – 11am

English still busy fudging the numbers

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:23 am, August 20th, 2010 - 27 comments

Bill English thinks he has proven that wages grew just 3% under Labour and grew 15.5% under National in the 1990s. How’s he done it? By taking a ridiculous definition of wages and a very convenient timeframe. Bill, this is getting old. Your distortions are transparent and exposing you is too easy. How about, rather than fudging historic numbers, you get on with your job of building a better future?

Bill English: making it up as he goes along

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:20 am, August 18th, 2010 - 28 comments

Parliament erupted in laughter yesterday as Bill English made up more ‘facts’ to attack Labour’s economic performance. Even if his accusations against Labour’s record were true, he doesn’t have any solutions himself. Indeed, the reason he is spending so much time trying to smear Labour’s record is he is desperate to make is own record look less appalling by comparison.

Sacked. No reason given

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 6:37 pm, August 16th, 2010 - 68 comments

Key said put up or shut up.

The CTU and some gutsy workers are putting up.

Will Key have the guts to answer them?

Unions launch name and shame

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:09 am, August 13th, 2010 - 144 comments

John Key challenged the unions to “put up or shut up”. So they’re going to put up. The CTU has launched a campaign to name and shame businesses that are abusing the fire at will (90 day probation) bill. It’s a campaign based around personal stories. Heather Smith tells the first of many…

The cycleway & the coming benefit cuts

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:24 am, August 12th, 2010 - 42 comments

Attacking beneficiaries won’t solve the real problems. There aren’t enough jobs, the recession is not really over. Rather than dealing with that, this government is carving off an ever large slice of our shrinking national wealth for their rich buddies. The poor and the jobless are turned into figures of public spite by a government of the rich which will cut to their meagre benefits will be pay for tax cuts for the rich.

Welfare working group tries to create a crisis

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:47 am, August 10th, 2010 - 43 comments

The benefit system is not unaffordable, the best way to lower its cost is to create jobs. But it is clear that is not on the Welfare Workings Group’s agenda. Their job is to paint beneficiaries as bludgers, the welfare system as broken and expensive. Their job is to pave the way for welfare cuts to pay for tax cuts that will leave the poorest Kiwi families more impoverished. They’ve made a good start.

Fairness at Work rallies 21 & 22 August

Written By: Tammy Gordon - Date published: 4:33 pm, August 9th, 2010 - 31 comments

Unions are getting together to oppose the government’s changes to employment law with rallies in the Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

Click through for the schedule.

I’m So Dizzy

Written By: Bunji - 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.

National admits 90 day period not a choice

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:17 am, August 6th, 2010 - 280 comments

When National rammed through the first version of the 90 day fire at will law it claimed the period would be a ‘choice’ negotiated fairly between employees and employers.

Now employers are advertising it as a precondition in job ads, with the Minister backing them all the way.

Unemployment rises to 6.8%

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:00 pm, August 5th, 2010 - 100 comments

Statistics NZ has just released the Household Labour Force Survey for June 2010 and it’s grim reading, with an astonishing increase in the unemployment rate from 6.0% to 6.8%.

Maori unemployment is now up to 16.4%, Pacific unemployment is at 14.1% and there’s been a 70% increase in long-term unemployment to 37,600.

Spin and bullshit

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 11:39 am, August 5th, 2010 - 13 comments

Labour has rightly challenged National on its failure to make any progress on its core promise to “close the gap” with Australia. And rather than responding with action, National has responded with spin and bullshit. And that is very telling indeed.

Bananas!

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:08 pm, July 31st, 2010 - 51 comments

Kiwis are amongst the highest consumers of bananas per capita in the world but for decades the banana industry has had a record of significant exploitation of workers including slave labour practices, execution of trade union members and a homicidal disregard of basic heath and safety practices. There’s a reason for the term “banana republic”. […]

Wage gap $40 a week wider under Nats

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:39 am, July 28th, 2010 - 95 comments

Closing the wage gap with Australia was one of National’s key promises in the leadup to the 2008 election, but the Dom Post reports today that the wage gap has grown by another $40 a week under National’s watch.

Can we stop pretending now that National ever really had a plan to close the wage gap?

Workers and Dear John

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:34 am, July 28th, 2010 - 35 comments

National is making a total mess of industrial relations. Two different news items yesterday tell the same story: the unions are angry, and the PPTA teachers are angry. Nats beware. Nice Mr Key could so quickly become Dear John…

Where’s their evidence?

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 2:00 pm, July 26th, 2010 - 13 comments

National wants to make a change, they’ve got to make a powerful case that the change will have the results they claim. So where’s their evidence? Where are the models, the studies, the scenarios? They haven’t got any. This is faith-based government. Based on faith in the neo-liberal god. This is guess based government. The guess being that we’ll keep voting for that Nice Man Mr Key.

Another win for union members

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:50 am, July 26th, 2010 - 54 comments

The Herald reports that Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union members have won the right to a substitute holiday to make up for the fact that Anzac Day and Easter Monday fall on the same day this year as well as a three percent pay rise for this year and another next year.

You read that right, at a time when the government is attacking workers rights two thousand EPMU members are increasing their holidays and getting a pay rise.

A few brief points about the attacks on workers

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 12:21 pm, July 25th, 2010 - 86 comments

Having just watched the q + a interview with Council of Trade Unions President Helen Kelly and Alasdair Thompson from the EPMA (a must-watch, Kelly did a great job) I think there are a few things that need to be said:

Caption contest

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 7:21 pm, July 21st, 2010 - 40 comments

Remember the billboards comparing Helen Clark to a series of dictators in 2008? Funny thing is she’d never had anything to do with a dictator. But at least one MP who will be voting for John Key’s attacks on workers did.

The changing excuses for Fire at Will

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 9:33 am, July 21st, 2010 - 7 comments

In the 2008 election campaign, National carefully packaged up its policies in such a manner as not to scare voters. One of the policies John Key was very careful to frame was the 90 day probationary period for new workers, rightly called Fire at Will. This removal of rights for working people, he explained to us, was for two specific reasons. It was targeted toward people on the margins of the employment market and only applicable to small businesses (less than 20 workers).

Key caught out again on 90 day law

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:12 am, July 21st, 2010 - 29 comments

Good to see John Key’s lies over the 90 day fire at will law are starting to catch up with him. An employment specialist has come out contradicting Key’s smug assurances that even though his fire at will law will explicitly remove our right to even be given a reason why we’re getting the sack, somehow good faith provisions would still require the employer the give one.

Key lies about sick leave

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:00 am, July 21st, 2010 - 35 comments

No Right Turn has a good post pointing out that John Key’s petty fascism on sick leave is already covered by the law. An employer can demand a worker provide a medical certificate after one day’s sick leave. All Key’s law change will do is remove the requirement for our employers to behave reasonably when we’re sick.

The price of trade

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:20 am, July 20th, 2010 - 36 comments

The textbooks tell us that free trade is good because it means a more efficient use of resources. But the reality is that often the ‘competitive advantage’ one country has in producing a product compared to others isn’t some natural resource or better legal or physical infrastructure that makes business more efficient. Too often, the cheapest countries are the cheapest because they pay their workers the least and don’t protect their environment.