National’s short lived status as a supporter of pay equity

25 comments on “National’s short lived status as a supporter of pay equity ”

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1. Carolyn_nth 1

   21 April 2017 at 9:20 am

   How do Nat ministers and their supporters sleep at night?

   Callous bunch that does not accept principles of equity. And who want some sections of society relegated to servitude and slave wages, no matter how skilled and essential their work.
   • Michael 1.1

     23 April 2017 at 5:54 am

     They know they have no chance of being replaced by anyone else. More to the point, isn’t this sort of underhand deceitfulness precisely that which we’ve all come to know and love from the B-team?
     • KJT 1.1.1

       23 April 2017 at 9:46 am

       If they stuff up too much, I.e. let workers have a greater share of the economy, they will simply be replaced by the other Neo-liberal party, in waiting, Labour. Who will be tasked with damping down workers expectations, again!
2. The Fairy Godmother 2

   21 April 2017 at 9:38 am

   Disgusting. The minimum pay rate for an ECE teacher is $22 an hour. They have a bachelor’s degree. They don’t have enough time to do the ludicrous amount of accountability paperwork demanded by the government and feel pressured to do this in their own time. This job is very demanding and this mainly female workforce desperately needs a pay rise. Also teacher aides are very poorly paid. I think they should be on a similar rate to prison officers. They often work with children with major behavioral issues who can be quite violent. Schools are faced with the alternative of excluding such a student or somehow find a teacher aide to shadow such a student who will accept the 16 dollars an hour government funding allows.
3. mosa 3

   21 April 2017 at 9:49 am

   All National party woman mps are conspicuous by their silence on this entire subject.

   I guess they are against equal pay for woman and will vote to support legislation designed to make sure that hard working underpaid females stay exactly where they are…underpaid and undervalued by making legal action to support their case almost impossible with these draft proposals.

   Also the cost in taking a case to court is expensive and the costs would be tough on a smaller union’s resource’s

   This is something Jacinda Adern should be directly campaigning on and really highlighting National woman mps who are supporting these unjust conditions.
4. red-blooded 4

   21 April 2017 at 10:11 am

   It always looked too good to be true. These mean-spirited, tight-fisted assholes don’t give a bugger about pay equity – they’re much more concerned about costs. Let’s remember that many women employed in low-wage sectors ultimately source their pay from the government (even if they work for contracting companies, schools or child care centres). Worried about costs to the government?… How about holding off on tax cuts?

   They got the big positive headline the other day, even though they’d fought against this case as hard as they could. I really hope this balancing story gets as much media attention. It’s more complicated, though, so I don’t see it cutting through as easily.

   Bring on the election.
5. greywarshark 5

   21 April 2017 at 10:36 am

   Peggy Seeger has a song I’m Gonna be an Engineer that everyone thinking about pay equity and respect between the genders should listen to. She is delightful and right to the point.

   and cartoonised
   (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr8jFMXTioc
6. Keith 6

   21 April 2017 at 10:55 am

   Like Zero hours that we were all told was consigned to sewer of history, but is now being tried on again by the fast food industry, pay equailty was always going to be a mirage. http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/04/07/fast-food-companies-seem-to-want-a-fight-i-say-bring-it-on/

   National milked the announcement two days ago like the benevolent progressive party they pretend they are, whilst fully knowing plans were being put in place to thwart it.

   Think about teaching, female dominated and badly paid especially considering the smount of work teachers must do outside the standard 8 hour day. The Nats will be shitting themselves.

   Life under National is never what the misleading adverts say they are, we should all know that by now! They cannot be trusted
   • The Chairman 6.1

     21 April 2017 at 11:55 am

     Indeed, Keith. National failing to walk the talk once again.

     http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/88522319/government-promising-action-to-tackle-the-gender-pay-gap-in-2017
   • SpaceMonkey 6.2

     21 April 2017 at 12:07 pm

     I thought exactly that too. You can imagine my surprise when my 18 yo stepdaughter brought home her contract from a well known juice bar franchise…

     * No guaranteed or set hours or days of work.
     * Told what the roster is the weekend before.
     * On feet all day, no set time for breaks.

     And subsequently in practice – unpaid work expected at the end of the day to tidy up the shop.

     It is paid slavery.
     • KJT 6.2.1

       23 April 2017 at 9:48 am

       Totally normal for jobs like retail, hospitality, fruit picking and farm labourers.
7. Rosemary McDonald 7

   21 April 2017 at 11:24 am

   Well. Bugger me dead.

   I was actually retching as Kristine Bartlett and Jonathon Coleman were cuddling up in a carefully orchestrated photo op the other day, as John Campbell waxed even more congratulatory than usual and all involved were sitting smug.

   As if it were job done.

   Fools.

   And really folks, are your memories that short?

   Have y’all forgotten what the Government did to family carers in response to losing against Atkinson and Others?

   (Or don’t we family carers count?… There were concerns from some of the unions at the time that if family carers were paid it would cost the jobs of ‘real’ carers.

   Despite the absolute FACT that in many cases, those of us who support a loved one 24/7 unpaid cannot take a break as there are simply not the ‘real’ carers available who can even remotely meet the very high and complex care needs of those we support.

   The only option being the horror of residential care.

   Have y’all forgotten that while we unpaid family carers were battling for our rights (and being shat upon from a great height in May 2013), disabled people were being abused and neglected (sometimes to death) in residential care by those ‘real’ carers who now have collectively been raised to near sainthood.)

   Spare me.

   Oh….and Labour could have addressed Pay Equity and paying family carers but chose not to.

   They’re ALL assholes.
   • adam 7.1

     23 April 2017 at 12:12 am

     Well summed up Rosemary McDonald.

     I don’t trust any of them, they think to much of money, and not of the people involved.
8. SpaceMonkey 8

   21 April 2017 at 11:59 am

   This is just nasty and mean. How can anyone honestly believe we have a representative democracy when a Goverment responds to losing a legal case in this way? Disgusting.
9. Hum 9

   21 April 2017 at 1:00 pm

   Its an exposure draft you fool. This is what it is for, to flesh out inconsistencies etc. Ok, the tribalism on here is understandable but at least show some basic understanding of the process and how it works.
   • red-blooded 9.1

     21 April 2017 at 1:26 pm

     Hey, Hum – I think we all understand that this is a proposal rather than the final version of the eventual Act. However, it reveals the real agenda of this government – to try to limit the flow-on effects of the settlement with paid carers. (And let’s remember that settlement was only reached because of fear of a more far-reaching decision from the courts.) Do you really see the essential issue here being remedied in the final Act? Because I don’t.
     • The Chairman 9.1.1

       21 April 2017 at 2:08 pm

       Indeed, red-blooded.
   • mickysavage 9.2

     21 April 2017 at 1:40 pm

     It is not an inconsistency. It is a deliberate design fault. Read the cabinet paper I quote above. The Government is aware this is the result.
   • SpaceMonkey 9.3

     21 April 2017 at 3:10 pm

     You mean it designed to test the waters and subequent reaction. If no one hollers vociferously then it will continue on as is.
10. greywarshark 10

    21 April 2017 at 3:18 pm

    In the USA the economy is down partly because people aren’t being paid enough, and are becoming wary of spending, paying their debts down and shrinking the consumer economy. And women though more have entered the workforce, are in female-heavy such as care roles and retail, much more than men.

    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/unemployment-rate-growth-trump/

    The Jobless Economy
    “In the US case, the long-term problem is that the squeeze on wages and living standards that began in the early 1980s succeeded in raising corporate profitability (and in making the rich very much richer), but at the expense of undermining the foundations of an economy dependent on high levels of mass consumption. That contradiction was resolved for a while by rampant levels of borrowing, which compensated for stagnant wage and salary income.

    But with the financial crisis of 2007–8, that aggressive borrowing was thrown into reverse, and households began to reduce their debts — which made sense at the level of the individual household, but put a lid on consumer demand.

    That problem could be mitigated by policies to shift income downward, [upward?] through higher wages and more generous spending on social programs and infrastructure, but those routes look politically impossible. In other words, the neoliberal model has run out of steam, but there’s nothing to take its place….

    Why has the US economy failed to generate enough jobs to return to pre-2007 levels of employment? (I’ll bracket the gender angle for now, except to say that long-term structural changes have taken a toll on male-heavy industries like manufacturing while they’ve boosted female-heavy ones like retail and health care.) It’s not that robots are taking our jobs. Productivity growth is close to zero now — a sharp contrast with the years leading up to the 2000 employment peak, when it was very strong, as was employment growth….

    And yet another explanation is that despite copious profits, firms are shoveling vast pots of cash to their executives and shareholders rather than investing in capital equipment and hiring workers.

    From 1952 to 1982, nonfinancial corporations distributed 17 percent of their internal cash flow (profits plus depreciation allowances) to shareholders; that rose to about 30 percent in the 1980s and 1990s, and to 48 percent since 2000. (In 2016, the average was an incredible 64 percent.)

    This is one result of the shareholder revolution that began in the early 1980s: the whole point of corporations’ existence is to raise the stock price and make their shareholders, who contribute literally nothing for all their taking, richer. More on all that in a future post too.

    Our new issue, “Journey to the Dark Side,” is out now. Subscribe today.”
11. greywarshark 11

    21 April 2017 at 3:41 pm

    That piece on the Jobless Economy is by Doug Henwood, sorry I didn’t get that in.
12. Skeptic 12

    21 April 2017 at 7:21 pm

    My first reaction to this news was – surely they can’t be serious, but no they are going to take this proposal forward to “test its feasibility”. I take from that double-speak that if there isn’t much resistance it’ll go through pretty much unchanged.

    My questions are:

    How does the real impact of the proposals get sufficiently well known as to rouse the necessary resistance?

    What sort of polling showing massive unpopularity will be sufficient to get meaningful change to the proposals?

    Because it is patently obvious to me that unless there is polling that suggests a substantial voter shift from traditional national support, we’re dead in the water.
13. Antoine 13

    23 April 2017 at 12:23 am

    Hehe that was indeed a rather short lived flirtation with cross industry pay equity
14. KJT 14

    23 April 2017 at 9:42 am

    National MP’s funders must be absolutely furious, that their puppets let this one through.
    Gross incompetence!
15. ianmac 15

    23 April 2017 at 9:59 am

    The first part of Media Report this morning was about the Equity issue. How come little was said in the Media about how Government, Business and the Unions sorted it out? And doesn’t that Mike idiot sound pathetic when played alongside better informed?
    http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=201841249

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