NRT – National: Restoring discrimination

Written By: - Date published: 1:57 pm, March 23rd, 2013 - 7 comments
Categories: class war, national, wages, workers' rights - Tags:

I/S at No Right Turn on youth rates…

National: Restoring discrimination

National’s bill to restore age-discrimination in pay rates passed its third reading last night. So, from May 1st, National’s cronies will be able to pay someone less simply because of their age. And this is apparently how National “closes the wage-gap with Australia”: by cutting wages. No, that doesn’t make sense to me either.

We wouldn’t accept “Maori rates”. We wouldn’t accept “women’s rates”. We wouldn’t accept “gay rates” or “Catholic rates”. So why are we accepting youth rates?

Any reintroduction of discrimination is a backward step. But its so very, very National, isn’t it? Impoverishing the young and poor to enrich the greedy old.

7 comments on “NRT – National: Restoring discrimination ”

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  1. ianmac 1
    23 March 2013 at 2:11 pm

    And challenge the Minister to produce the “Research” that proves that lower wages mean more jobs? Not likely. And I wonder how many of the cheap young labour will be gone by 89 days?

  2. lprent 2
    23 March 2013 at 3:50 pm

    Good – someone just saved me a task. I noted this down earlier as a must-repost from NRT.

    It is absolutely characteristic of National. They target the relatively defenceless with senseless hoops and proscriptions that do nothing to correct the actual problems or issues. They do this because they are easy targets. They do this whilst doing nothing much towards the wealthy and well guarded – for instance corporations avoiding tax or banks wanting to mitigate risk to their owners.

    In this case there aren’t enough jobs so young people find it hard to get jobs. Any competent employer will employ youth at normal rates if they can do the job, or they won’t employ them at all. That is because in almost all industries labour costs are not that significant amongst all of the costs and the cost of employing someone that is incompetent is far too high.

    So this bill just gives license for employers to exploit youth doing something that they are perfectly capable of doing anyway.

    However it also means that National can avoid to the hard yards of actually creating jobs – something that they are remarkably incompetent at.

  3. Matthew 3
    23 March 2013 at 3:50 pm

    The fact that the Attorney-General ok’ed this obviously discriminatory policy tells me that the AG needs to be apolitical. This obviously breaches the Bill of Rights & needs to be challenged in court.

    • One Tāne Huna 3.1
      23 March 2013 at 4:07 pm

      Totally agree.

      The sooner the rules of evidence apply to policy proposals the better.

  4. Lanthanide 4
    23 March 2013 at 4:32 pm

    “We wouldn’t accept “Maori rates”. We wouldn’t accept “women’s rates”. We wouldn’t accept “gay rates” or “Catholic rates”. So why are we accepting youth rates?”

    Probably because most of those things can’t be changed by someone, whereas “youth” is a condition that naturally sorts itself out, and which everyone experiences at some point in their lives. In that sense, it’s not as much discrimination.

  5. Populuxe1 5
    24 March 2013 at 4:23 pm

    I think it’s terrible, shitty and unfair, but it is entirely consistent with neoliberal philosophy. Not really discrimination (no one’s going “right, now – what can we do to fuck over those kids”) so much as prioritising a completely wrong-headed approach to economics.

  6. AsleepWhileWalking 6
    24 March 2013 at 4:48 pm

    The whole idea is flawed anyway as it doesn’t create new jobs, it just shifts them and ironically will be the cause of discrimination against anybody who is over age, but has an entry level type of position.