Written By: - Date published: 1:31 pm, November 19th, 2018 - 70 comments
Ngai Tahu and Tainui remind us that they like exploiting working people as much as the next capitalist. They’ve locked out their Waikato bus drivers for asking to be paid the Living Wage.
Written By: - Date published: 11:35 am, July 1st, 2018 - 50 comments
Deserving workers and undeserving workers in the public service.
updated
Written By: - Date published: 2:13 pm, June 15th, 2018 - 42 comments
The Government has announced that all employees in the core public service will be paid a living wage from September 1, 2018.
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, May 17th, 2018 - 20 comments
The National Party has recently been on the Government’s case for increasing strikes under their watch. But is that really a fair criticism, and does it jive well with the other things the Opposition has been claiming to value?
Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, February 21st, 2017 - 30 comments
The living wage rises, and an odd argument for abolishing the minimum wage.
Written By: - Date published: 8:05 am, August 15th, 2016 - 30 comments
Our wages are too low generally, and this is one of the main economic challenges that we face. A few more employers committing to paying a living wage would be a good place to start.
Written By: - Date published: 3:25 pm, June 30th, 2016 - 60 comments
It is tragic that a family working 80 hours a week cannot make ends meet.
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, March 1st, 2016 - 110 comments
Credit where it’s due for an increase in the minimum wage – but the gap between that and a living wage keeps growing…
Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, October 12th, 2014 - 22 comments
Excellent piece by Bernard Hickey in The Herald this morning.
Written By: - Date published: 3:17 pm, February 5th, 2014 - 47 comments
Charles Waldegrave has slammed Brian Scott’s critique of the method used to calculate the Living Wage in New Zealand. He shows Scott’s critique, and that of the Treasury, lack an informed understanding of the definition of a living wage and confuse market wage rates and welfare transfers. The living wage level was set at $18.40 per hour in February 2013. Scott’s paper has been given prominence on Kiwiblog 3 January 2014
Written By: - Date published: 10:03 pm, December 19th, 2013 - 91 comments
It was the best of times in Wellington today. Council workers will get a living wage, and parking wardens will become council employees so they will get decent pay also. It was the worst of times in Auckland as the right-wing Scrooges having failed to remove Mayor Len Brown took it out on their workers by overturning his call for a living wage for Council staff.
Written By: - Date published: 7:42 pm, November 13th, 2013 - 11 comments
Max Rashbrooke talking about his book Inequality: a New Zealand Crisis and more on Monday 18 November, 5.30pm @ Auckland Trades Hall, 147 Great North Rd, Grey Lynn
Written By: - Date published: 7:48 am, November 7th, 2013 - 15 comments
Len Brown will today propose to Council that it funds a living wage for all Council and CCO employees. It is intended that this is funded through savings, particularly with high level wages, and efficiencies and will be brought in over three years if supported by the Council.
Written By: - Date published: 6:29 am, October 10th, 2013 - 139 comments
David Cunliffe showed that he wasn’t just pandering for votes in the leadership race by reaffirming and strengthening his commitment to work rights at the CTU conference yesterday. When David is PM the minimum wage will rise to $15 an hour, the public service will set an example by paying the living wage, and the Nats’ attacks on rights will be reversed – no more Fire at Will, no more youth rates.
Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, September 27th, 2013 - 164 comments
Imagine that your job was to clean 130 toilets every day. Imagine the grinding unpleasantness of it. Imagine the horrors some disgusting person would regularly leave for you to deal with. Imagine you do that for just above the minimum wage, barely enough to support your family, far from enough to live a real life. And imagine seeing one of the people whose shit you clean sneer at you.
Written By: - Date published: 9:34 am, September 6th, 2013 - 168 comments
Cunliffe & Robertson stress the need to improve employment laws, jobs, wages, the economy, workers’ rights. Cunliffe invokes Savage-like social security & the need to end the Nats beneficiary bashing. Wider community pressure is needed for there to be real political change away from the destructive neoliberal scam.
Written By: - Date published: 10:06 am, August 15th, 2013 - 19 comments
Percent of New Zealanders with not enough money to make ends meet: 15
Percent unemployed: 6.4
Written By: - Date published: 11:57 am, July 21st, 2013 - 8 comments
The Government has been warned that the Employment Relations Amendment Bill is likely to breach ILO conventions. Bridges has responded by saying that the breaches “may not be significant”. Why is it that the Government gets all hard core when dealing with beneficiaries legal obligations but is so casual when it deals with its own obligations?
Written By: - Date published: 7:34 am, May 8th, 2013 - 66 comments
The Warehouse has adopted a policy of paying a living wage of $18.50-$20 an hour for longer-term employees. It’s a really positive move and The Warehouse is to be congratulated. It’ll cost about $2.5m a year, or 5% of profits. As we’ve seen in the NZ Power debate, it’s a rare thing for major companies to look beyond their balancesheets to the community they exist within. Now, who’s next?
Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, March 15th, 2013 - 13 comments
Bravo to TONZU, the first employers to sign up for the living wage for all its workers.
Written By: - Date published: 2:21 pm, February 24th, 2013 - 118 comments
The thing I like about the Living Wage campaign is the branding represents strongly both the problem and the solution. The Prime Minister fell into its trap when he said that the Living Wage was not a priority for his Government. The statement says it all really. The Government don’t want you to work for a living, they just want you to work.
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, February 15th, 2013 - 22 comments
Irony meters everywhere pegged their meters as Bill English accused some bosses of being “greedy”, and not paying their staff enough. Hey Double Dipton – those greedy bosses? – they’re just following your example…
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 pm, February 12th, 2013 - 49 comments
The concept of a living wage is one that just makes good sense to me. A wage should be enough to live on, right? Because it’s a wage? Because what’s the point if it doesn’t?
Written By: - Date published: 5:31 pm, December 11th, 2012 - 25 comments
In these troubling times, it was uplifting to see the flax-roots, practical and collaborative action at the Onehunga Recession Busting rally for beneficiaries today. Volunteers in front of the WINZ office in Onehunga Mall, are giving support and assistance to those most in need.
Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, August 27th, 2012 - 2 comments
The Living Wage campaign is holding an event in Wellington on Thursday.
Written By: - Date published: 10:34 am, May 23rd, 2012 - 17 comments
The Service and Food Workers Union is launching a campaign for a living wage at 12 o’clock today.
[Update: Campaign site]
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 pm, April 19th, 2012 - 23 comments
David Shearer’s delivered his second “Vision” speech. It’s good to hear he wants to lead a government that tackles inequality, wants proper jobs rather than casualised ones and our kids earning or learning.
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, June 18th, 2011 - 239 comments
We are hearing no end of job loss stories in the news and the government has no plan for New Zealand jobs. Their best idea is to cut the wages of the young, rather than to create jobs of real value. We need workers paid a Living Wage so all Kiwis can have fulfilling lives.
Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, February 19th, 2010 - 15 comments
John Key’s recent stint at the Big Gay Out wasn’t all target marketing and niche political branding. He also had a run in with living-wage campaigners who took him to task for his government’s poor response to minimum wage earners and asked if he could live on the minimum wage.
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