What is the lowest most disgraceful thing this Government has done?
How about cutting funding for top ups of the wages of disabled workers aimed to get them to the living wage?
In my life I did not think that this Government would stoop so low. But here we have it. They are cutting funding designed to increase the pay of disabled workers just so they can afford their tax cuts for landlords.
The Herald has the details:
The Government is saving $56 million over five years by dumping a programme topping up the pay of disabled workers to the minimum wage.
That could see 900-plus workers – mostly with intellectual disabilities – continue to be paid as low as $2 an hour, but the Government says it’s better than not working at all.
The previous Labour Government had planned to end the exemption that allowed employers to pay disabled people below the minimum wage. Budget 2023 allocated $37.3m over four years to top up their pay to the minimum wage (currently $23.15 an hour) – from next year.
But that was axed in Budget 2024, boosting the Government’s coffers by $11.34m in the coming year, and $56.345m over five years.
And they attempted a snow job by saying that the policy made disabled workers less employable when the reality was it was a Goovernment top up so that there was no cost to the employer. Again from the Herald:
Social Development Minister Louise Upston was grilled about this today at the Social Services and Community Select Committee, leading to heated exchanges between her and Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March, as well as with her ministerial predecessor, Labour deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni.
…
Sepuloni said Labour’s Budget 2023 commitment had no intention of anyone losing their jobs.
“The plan was for a government subsidy of sorts for employers so they [the disabled workers] could work with dignity and receive the minimum wage.”
She said the $11m the Government was pocketing in the coming year could have gone towards those workers being paid the minimum wage.
“Not if they weren’t able to keep a job,” Upston retorted.
Sepuloni: “It’s subsidising them. This argument is going around in a circle. It makes no sense.”
They cannot even claim that there was a fiscal cliff. The spend was programmed for the next four years until it was cut.
This must represent a new low and shows the Government’s disdain for families with members who have disabilities. I can’t believe how tone death let alone how heartless they are.
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