Fastbike,

Sorry for the late reply.

In short, yes. I am a Green party member, as is BJ. There has been a fair amount of discussion on this topic on the internal forums and from my conversations with other party members it would seem there is a substantial group who do agree with me.

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Anyway back on track – looks like there will be Greens attending several of these meetings tomorrow. Good to see the focus on all of our four pillars/principles.

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Sapient

Have you engaged with GP members to find out how they rank them – or would you rather spout your opinions here as gospel instead

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Fastbike,
And those four pillars have no place being equal always. Some are vastly more important than others in relation to survival and thus the realisation of other pillars.

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jh
We have 4 pillars – social justice is one amongst equals. Now what was your question ?

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“Last month the Green Party signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Service and Food Workers Union – Nga Ringa Tota. The MoU is a commitment between us and one of New Zealand’s largest unions to forge allegiances in order to work towards a fair and sustainable New Zealand society.”

Is this a way of ensuring support for red greens?

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bliss – I agree with your sentiments about greedy and top heavy management, however the reality is that for many large companies total managemnt fees are only one or two percent.

In other words a reduction in management pay will make negligable difference to power prices.

In fact they could all work for free and it still wouldn’t make much difference.

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photonz1

Whilst I acknowledge not all employers are rip off artists public companies are often not run for the benefit of the shareholders but for the benefit of management. So if you are being ripped off by your power company buying shares in it will not help.

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SPC – I’ve just been through exactly the situation you describe, and yesterday gave my employee a 2x CPI payrise backdated 7 months.

My wife once had an ex-employer(who she hadn’t worked for for years) send her $1000 as he couldn’t afford to pay her much during the short period she worked for him.

There is a problem with attitude to employers though – the attitude that all employers are bad. In my experience the vast majority are very fair.

However I do agree that at the top end there are some obscenely large wage and salary packages.

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Drakula – there are benefits when a company lists on the stock exchange.

If you think the banks are ripping you off, you can buy shares in the bank.

If you think the electricity companies are ripping you off, you can buy shares in the electricity company.

However what you often find is that companies you think are rip-off merchants, are in fact only making a 5 – 10% profit margin.

That of course does not necessarily have any relationship to how they treat their workers.

However it does give you an idea that profit margins are usually pretty narrow and there’s not much spare for workers or shareholders.

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photonz1

Let’s guess

In a recession governments go into deficit and expects its workers to take a pay freeze

In a recession employers have it tough and expect workers to take a pay freeze.

When growth returns and governments return to surplus they then

1. paybackdated pay increases to workers to at least cover CPI increases since the pay freeze

2. hand out tax cuts to those whose wages were not frozen

(correct answer is 2 most times but its never 1).

When growth returns and businesses make good profits employers

1. pay workers backdated pay increases to cover the CPI increases they miss out on

2. any other option

What private sector employers have ever done 1 (we know the government never has)?

Now why does the income disparity between the top paid and the lower income worker always widen …

Hardworking people work for no pay increase – take a real cut in income in the tough times but when the times get good do they ever get compensation? Na. But the hard working “boss” does … and yet who bleats here how seeking some justice for the worker is somehow being anti-employer …?

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Rubbish!!! During the Clark Labour government the unions were very active and they are active regardless of who is in power BB.

Photon; I have run a small business and I know what it is like waiting for the next sale when there is an economic downturn especially one is turning out luxury items.

Yes I recognise the fact that small businesses are the ones who are getting clobbered when they should be getting the tax breaks.

When we are talking about capitalism we are talking about the national and transnational corporations who are adept in exploiting all the anomalies of the tax regime. They have a totally different ‘modus operandii’than your local dairy and that is squashing the opposition to gain a monopolistic advantage.

At some stage one can mutate into the other and the line there is very blurrey.
I would say that the rot begins when a company is floated on the stock exchange and that’s when it looses it’s virginity. But then there are exceptions to this rule when there are large family dynasties like Cargill in the US who have been quite nasty.

Maybe it’s a spiritual thing ‘ What shall it profit a man should he gain the whole world and loses his soul’

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the leopard doesn’t change it’s spots does it!?

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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.

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Yer, Right on Keith! Is this Govt. working it’s way out of office or what!
Speaking to a wide range of people (as one does). I’ve yet to find an enthusiastic supporter of the current way Bisiness is being done in the House.

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist” .- Dom Helder Camara

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Actually toad – the story was talking about the Food Workers union quite a bit – how about all the small businesses that have been hardest hit of any – cafes and restaurants (quite a few have recently gone bust)

As for public service workers – their paymasters (all US other workers) are clearly rolling in dosh and can afford much more tax to be taken from our measly hourly rate.

What you are giving to one lot, you have to take away from someone else.

Small employers are already contributing way more than their fair share to the country.

Take a owner operator with one employee – they pay SIX lots of ACC
Employer ACC for the worker
Residual Employer ACC for worker (to cover old claims)
Employer ACC for the themselves
Residual Employer ACC for themselves (to cover old claims)
Earner ACC for themselves
Residual earner ACC for themselves.(to cover old claims).

Yet after being absolutely hammered by ACC and IRD, the hourly rate for owner operators is often below the rates above that you are complaining about.

The economic wellbeing of NZ will continue to drop while we have polititians who think the main purpose of busineeses are places to extract as much money as possible.

Clearly a 50% fail rate for new companies after 5 years (and the worse statistic of 70% after 7 years that few people hear of) is not a high enough failure rate for polititians – they want more to fail than that.

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photonz1 & sendthestuff

FFS, we are talking District Health Boards and schools here – not struggling small employers whom I admit in some cases cannot afford to give their staff pay increases at the moment.

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