by frog
There were three Members’ Bills drawn from the ballot today.
The good Bill is Green MP David Clendon’s Smart Meters (Consumer Choice) Bill. It gives effect to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recommendations to ensure all electricity meters have functionality that enables them to automatically control loads and to talk to smart appliances. It will also require meter installers to give consumers the choice to have real-time information about their electricity use and variable tariffs so they can make use of this function to minimise their electricity costs.
The bad Bill is National MP Tau Henare’s Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill. I don’t have a problem with the substance of the Bill. The reason it is bad is because it is a waste of Parliament’s time – it addresses a problem that doesn’t exist, because in practice unions make decisions on strikes by secret ballot already. Surely Tau could have found a more pressing public issue to make the subject of a Member’s Bill.
The ugly Bill is Roger Douglas’ euphemistically titled Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill. Not content with the unemployment and suffering he caused back in the late 1980s, Douglas is now proposing to cut the minimum wage for young workers in the misguided belief this will somehow create jobs for them.
Disturbingly, there are indications from the Minister of Labour that National might support Douglas’ Bill. Let the battle begin on this one.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | THE GAME by frog on Tue, February 23rd, 2010
Tags: David Clendon, electricity meters, Kate Wilkinson, Minimum wage, roger douglas, Sir Roger Douglas, smart meters, Tau Henare, youth rates
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
The more moderate bills National MPs put up, the better – it reduces the odds of the bad ones being drawn.
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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“Happy 18th, you are fired…”
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@Bluepeter
Many adults aren’t worth employing at adult wage levels. Legislate against them too? If not, why not? (Actually, you might be in the abolish minimum wages completely camp, so this point may be moot)
That aside, if you took a job alongside a youth who had been doing that job for two years already, do you actually think you should get paid significantly more than them regardless of whether you’re competent or not?
Say we reverted to youth rates and you employed one of these so called risky youths who proves to be just as capable as an adult, how do you justify continuing to pay them significantly less than the adults alongside? Assuming you’re a fan of probationary periods for new employees in general (to mitigate risk), then don’t you think youths should be paid the full rate once they’ve successfully proven themselves? If not, why not?
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Whether they employ an adult in preference to a young person is hardly relevant – someone is going to be jobless. I would rather it be a young person, who might be encouraged by his/her joblessness to leave the labour force to improve his/her qualifications, be jobless than an older person who has a family to support and has less option to do that.
From a fiscal point of view, it costs the taxpayer much less to support a young single unemployed person without children than to support an entire family. I would have thought that was something you, of all people, would consider to be of signifacance.
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I paid a person what they were worth to me, not what the government specified i.e. at above market rates.
I’m not interested in a persons age once working, only their ability to deliver. If a youth delivers more than an older worker, they get paid more.
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BluePeter: “I paid a person what they were worth to me, not what the government specified i.e. at above market rates. I’m not interested in a persons age, only their ability to deliver. If a youth delivers more than an older worker, they get paid more.”
Just to clarify, does that mean you don’t support a youth minimum wage? Instead do you support no minimum wage whatsoever?
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a world without a minimum wage would be good in theory with everyone being paid on the basis of good merit but that would be reliant on the total good faith of employers of which are out for a profit , a minimum wage is essential to make sure that people have a basic income to fall back on. The Current system of a 90 ‘probationary’ period in my opinion works very well for those of the ex youth wage age as it gives the employer a chance to see whether they are actually worth employing and doesn’t cost the employer as much
BluePeter’s raised the area of ‘above market rate’s and the thing is many employers do pay above the market rates and many youth in NZ are now being paid at the adult minimum because of the trouble of administering 3 months of one pay set and then changing it over. Bringing back the youth wage will deprive many university students of a viable income and make their work suffer as many do not want a student loan and have bills to pay meaning they would have to drop university and ruin their lives (aside from the argument that many should cease buying 4 12x stubbies a week :p )
I would personally say there is greater risk when employing someone on the adult minimum wage because they have that work experience and history and have not been able to raise above 12.50$ an hour , which many 18-19 yr olds do within months of their first job, if a person is still earning such a low wage it means that the employer does not wish to invest any more in them because they feel they are only worth what the government forces them to pay out. Personally if I was an employer I’d gladly pay out 15$ an hour to a positive young employee who got results and who I could teach than 12.50 an hour to a inattentive late middle aged employee who is attempting to get back on the dole and set in their own ways of going about work.
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Yep, fair call I/S. Best the Nats are wasting everyone’s time over a Bill that is a non-event than doing the stuff Brownlee, Wilkinson and Bennett have on their respective agendas to stuff our ecosystems and biodiversity and do over low-wage workers and beneficiaries.
Much as I hate to see Parliamentary time wasted, you are right on this one.
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Many adults are not worth employing at adult levels.
A high percentage are Public Servants.
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Ideologically, I don’t support a minimum wage.
In the real world, I have some sympathy for it.
The problem is, if it is set too high, then the labour markets can’t clear. This results in unemployment. Is it better to be employed on a low wage, or unemployed on an even lower one?
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I’m not worried about how old they are, but how about a lower wage for people employed in the agrarian sector.
Muldoon had the right idea with Supplementary Minimum Prices, but since then we farmers, who are the backbone of the economy, have had to struggle like everyone else.
Why can’t the government give us a break?
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Steve,
Your Many adults are not worth employing at adult levels.
hath a distinct ring of familiarity to it. You wouldn’t be one of these poor folk would you?
Just asking..
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frog,
Simpe question. Genuine ( I really don’t know and several conversations with the industry of recent date have been no use whatsoever ). Who owns the meters/meterbox?
I’m assuming that the owner has a distinct right to rent or lease them out to power users..
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It is inconsistent to deny the dole to those under 18 (to encourage further edcuation or training) and promoting the employment of those under 18 by reintroducing a minimum wage.
People ending their education and training to work minimum wage jobs could end up in poverty for life.
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Farmergeddon, it is a bad look to steal my avatar.
Yep, I know I got it from the web so intellectual property rights are not on the agenda, but I really don’t want anyone to think I am associated with a comment like yours above.
Please change it.
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BP notes:
Thats a really good question.
From an employers perspective, as I’ve noted before, low paid workers that need government (ie taxpayer) support are a drain on sucessful businesses. The good businesses owners make bad business owners fat through wealth transfer. Those bad business owners the good business owners may make fat may be the competition. So you end up subsidising your competition.
When did turkeys start voting for Christmas?
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The Smart Meter bill is probably the most important and far reaching bill the Greens will ever put forward.
Everyone of all persuasions should campaign for this as we will all benefit from it, maybe not in the next couple of years, but in years to come.
Frog – how can we help.
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BP,
Your question “Is it better to be employed on a low wage, or unemployed on an even lower one?” can be answered a couple of ways.
From the worker’s point of view the answer is quite simple: more money is better than less, because the bills need to be paid.
From the employer’s point of view, unemployment is beneficial; it keeps a downward pressure on the wages of those who are employed. This is not to say that all employers (or even most) think unemployment is good, but the fact that a pool of unemployed workers can be beneficial to employers profit levels cannot be denied.
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Great spoof on Douglas’s Youth Minimum Wage Bill over at The Standard:
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Toad,
I see the point you (or The Standard) is trying to make, but I think it is wrong and does not help the argument against youth rates. I believe the attack on youth wages is simply intended to lower the wage bill for employers who rely heavily on younger workers, and should be fought on those grounds.
Of course the supporters of youth rates will put forward some arguments why youth rates will be beneficial to young people, but this is just an attempt to make a blatant attack on workers (or alternatively the government blatantly siding with employers) look nice.
The reality is that with youth rates a significant chunk of the working population are going to end up going home with less money in their pockets. Some will be OK, they’ll have parents to fall back on, but for others this is going to cause major problems. Either there will simply be less money coming in to support their extended family (maybe children supporting their extended family is not such a common thing with Palangi families, but it is common in other parts of the community), or they are over 18 and they lose their job to an under 18 worker.
The point The Standard is trying to make is that youth rates are discriminatory. I guess they are, but this is really only a secondary issue (to the primary issue which is lowering certain employers wage bills). To then imply that ACT would like to extend lower wage rates to Maori is incorrect; I’m sure they have no such plans. Rather, I would expect their next attack will be on the pay and working conditions of a much broader range of working people.
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samiuela, I actually agree with you – the primary arguments in opposing this should be the evidenced-based economic ones, although I see no harm in highlighting the discriminatory aspect as well.
ACT’s policy is actually to abolish the minimum wage altogether, so I think we can also consider Douglas’s bill in that context – the thin end of the wedge.
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tomfarmer – the awkward answer to your question about who owns the meters is that the person who owns them owns them. Sometimes it’s the lines company, sometimes its the retailer. The ‘rental’ gets bundled into your power bill, regardless of who your line company or retailer are. What is clear is that they must be owned by an industry participant – which has all sorts of legal hoopps to jump through. In part this is good because they must guarantee the accuracy of the devices. In part this is bad because it means that you or I could not own our own smart meter. The truly gray area is who owns the data that your meter produces? I say it’s the customer. Retailers think it’s them. Lines companies think they own it. What do you think?
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dbuckly – I have fallen off my chair after your supportive comment! I agree, this is a Bill that every right minded person could support. How can you personally support it? I assume that you and I run in different political circles, and that is fine. I humbly request that you talk it up among your networks, at least to get it to first reading, and that you talk to your local MPs and ask them to get it throught the first reading. The Select Committee can find any niggly problems or unintended consquences and sort them out.
It is important that the National Party constituency does not see this as a threat – it doesn’t force the Minister to regulate smart meters, but it does give him power to do so if the market goes pear shaped. What it does do is force the people installing these things to make sure that the consumer is involved and informed about the choices and options they have to save money on their power bills.
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I’ve been saying for years that with today’s technology power companies can easily offer special low prices like telephone companies do at offpeak times, when lakes are flooding and dams overflowing, just by sending a ripple control signal to your meter to change the hourly rate.
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I’m pretty left leaning on most things, but for once I kinda think the smart meter thing is one of the places where “market forces” would work better than legislation. I think most people, left, right or centrist would agree that less legislation is better… Anyway, with companies like pulse energy, etc., getting into the market, surely people will realise that if no-one is at home during the day, then they’ll save loads of money with these kind of suppliers. The next logical step is to turn off the hot water tank on the way to work every morning and turn it back on when you get home…maybe local councils will give some subsidies for adding timers to specific devices…they’re only really necessary for some devices (the water heater being the main one)…maybe a leccy company will give it for free to get you to sign up for a 12 month contract with them, etc.
Personally, I would love to know what I’m using by the minute, and which device is costing me the most, etc…, but I doubt most consumers will, they’ll just want some simple way to bring down their energy price. As a country, we need to get people to adopt a system, no matter how detailed it is (so the growth of our peak energy generation decelerates – I doubt it will ever drop), so let’s go with an easy one for now, and maybe in 10 years we’ll need to upgrade the meters, at least we’ll be part way there – 80:20
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Hey, DJMatus23 – a smart meter is something simple (logically, although somewhat advanced technologically, but not to the extent that we would be guinea pigs – the technology is already proven to work) that will tell people how to bring down their energy price.
It will tell you that it is really dumb to run a clothes drier between 5:30pm and 8:30pm – something that is intuitive to anyone who knows anything about electricity consumption peaks and prices, but probably escapes 90% of consumers.
It also provides the technological capacity for consumers to generate their own electricity through small wind turbines, solar panels etc, and instead of wasting the excess or having to buy environmentally unsustainable batteries to store it, feed it back into the national grid and get credited for it.
Problem is, that one is too bigger headache for the IRD (most consumers are not GST registered, so do GST offsets apply?) and the electricity companies, who are (even the state owned ones) driven by the need to maximise profit to shareholders, don’t want small players, and consequent administrative costs and potentially reduced profitability, in the market.
In this instance I think that “less legislation” as you advocate, just results in people being ripped off by extortionate electricity prices.
I might add that from my reading of David Clendon’s Bill, it does not make anything mandatory, other than advice to consumers who can then make an informed choice.
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