by Denise Roche
There’s an hilarious take on the old Monty Python skit about the Romans called ‘What have the unions ever done for us?’ It lists some of the many things that workers and their unions have fought for and won – including weekends off, paid annual leave, sick leave, health and safety laws, paid parental leave, and the abolition of child labour.
On Monday, it is Labour Day, and workers have a paid day off to celebrate those wins in whatever way they wish. But what about our young people?
New Zealand has often led the world in the struggle for workers’ rights, for human rights. How ironic, then, that on the eve of Labour Day we should be battling yet another attack on young workers.
Yesterday, the Government’s youth rates bill passed its first reading in Parliament. It sets a minimum wage of $10.80 an hour for 16 and 17-year-olds during the first six months of a new job, a rate that is 80 per cent of the $13.50 adult minimum. It allows employers to pay 18 to 19 year olds entering the workforce after spending more than six months on a benefit significantly less than the minimum wage.
As Council of Trade Unions youth spokesperson James Sleep has stated, this Bill will not address the very high levels of youth unemployment in New Zealand. Young people aged 15-24 comprise 41% of total unemployment in Aotearoa New Zealand. One in four young Maori aged 18-24 are unemployed, and almost 30% of Pasifika youth. This Bill won’t create more jobs. But it will push some young people into poverty, and it will price younger and older workers out of the job market.
This Bill discriminates against young workers not only on the basis of their age, but also their employment status. Those 18 and 19 year olds who have not been on a benefit face missing out on jobs, and those who have been on a benefit face missing out on pay. That’s why the Greens have lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.
At a time when the need for a Living Wage has never been more evident, when inequality is higher in New Zealand than it has ever been, we should not be expecting our young people to live on $10.80 an hour. We should not be rolling back the human right to receive equal pay for work of equal value. Sounds suspiciously like a step back towards child labour to me.
We need to invest in our young people, not discriminate against them. Then perhaps they’ll have as much reason as the rest of us to celebrate on Labour Day.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Society & Culture by Denise Roche on Fri, October 19th, 2012
Tags: human rights commission, Labour day, unions, youth rates
More posts by Denise Roche | more about Denise Roche
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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That’s a good question, and well written.
May I make a request for next time anybody writes one of these blog entries? Please lay off the smart quotes, they look terrible in a plain text email, as they are replaced with ‘?’ place holders, since ASCII doesn’t have smart quotes. Just a minor irritation.
Please don’t let this be seen as a criticism of the article as a whole though, just I’ve been putting up with this for ages. And there are these normal quote characters people could use instead.
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I look forward to you also taking a case that people are being discriminated against on the basis of employment status, where those with higher incomes are being forced to pay more taxes.
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But it will push some young people into poverty, and it will price younger and older workers out of the job market.
Actually, if your argument that it will reduce overall wages holds (an argument that I disagree with, incidentally), you should realize that lowering the median wage will, by definition, move people out of “poverty”.
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Yep, discrimination. Disappointing to see that no other political party picked up the conflict with Human Rights law, similar to the Health changes Jenny Shipley proposed in the 1990′s which also discriminated but fortunately did not succeed.
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Spam – Sorry to break it to you, but the Father of Capitalism… you may remember a guy named Adam Smith? HE said that the wealthy needed to pay more… too.
The fact is that with a debt based currency and free market capitalism the ONLY way to prevent wealth disparity from growing to levels that foment civil unrest, is a strongly progressive tax system that redistributes the money.
I personally do not hold a strong opinion about “youth wages” and their effect or lack of one, on employment. That’s for others to argue. But for the wealthy in this country (or in the USA) to complain about their taxes is EXCEEDINGLY absurd, and is an insult to our intelligence… and I will not pursue that thought to its logical conclusion in the interests of civility.
That someone making 10 times my income can pay taxes at a LOWER rate than I do, is absurd. The notion that we are “overtaxed” is risible given our having one of the lowest effective tax rates in the OECD AND no Capital Gains tax… and there are just a few other rorts and perks in the tax code that have the effect of shielding those who make money by “owning” from the same sort of burdens imposed on those of us who make money by “working”.
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Interesting how you frame it as an attack on young workers. How about restoring the opportunity they once had to gain work experience whilst living at home (which i’m sure the majority of them do) so when they do leave they at least have some experience behind them?
So what proportion of 16-17 year olds still live at home? I did a quick google but couldn’t really come up with anything.
Paying 18-19 year olds coming off a benefit the starter wage – a little easier to attack, but again depends on whether getting them off the benefit and into work is seen as a positive, assuming that at a lower wage unemployment will decrease.
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That someone making 10 times my income can pay taxes at a LOWER rate than I do, is absurd.
..and is a claim that is rarely backed-up with any hard data. And there is a clear difference between “rate” and “total taxes”.
If you are so concerned about people earning more than you playing less than you, do you also complain about middle-class welfare in the form of ‘working for families’ that allows those with children to pay less tax than those without?
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Spam
Go ahead and work out the Capital Gains tax that is paid by our more wealthy citizens. Really. Go ahead. I PAY the top rate, most professionals do… but I don’t have anything to make a capital gain on… so I miss out on that source of TAX FREE income which is so important to the wealthy.
claim that is rarely backed-up with any hard data. And there is a clear difference between “rate” and “total taxes”.
I find your argument quite unconvincing as a result of that failure and many other examples. The argument to not tax the wealthy fails on the observation that after reductions the GINI, already excessive, rises. It fails on the violation of the principles of Adam Smith.
Since you brought up working for families, can you remember what the marginal tax was on a dollar earned for a family of 4 BEFORE that correction was brought in? Between $60k and $90k income? Ninety cents on the dollar. You remember that? But over 150k it went back to 39 cents on the dollar (I am pretty sure that was the rate then). That’s what WFF is all about really. Maybe you’d like to go back to that situation?
I don’t think much of National’s thieving ways, ripping off my kids by selling assets. Ripping me off by making the debt bigger instead of having a few more taxes. Letting the banks rip us all off by borrowing money from the banks instead of from ourselves. Trying to eradicate poverty by punishing the poor. Making the nation poorer by selling allowing the environment to be destroyed for the profit of a few….
Nope… you aren’t making much of an argument at all… just displaying the breathtaking ignorance that is common among people who support the notion that the wealthy should not pay a progressive tax.
In a capitalist society with a debt based monetary system, that is simply a disaster. The society WILL disintegrate in the growing inequity.
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Hemi, we have a problem getting enough people to complete schooling, how is assisting youth into unskilled work going to help? How is making these people dependent on low paid unskilled work for the rest of their lives to their benefit?
Is there really more unskilled work out there, if only the wage is set low enough? Or do employers have as only the staff they need to get the work done?
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That marginal tax rate is due to welfare abatement. The welfare is the thing that causes that! It was due to working for families in the first place!
How much income tax do people on $50k pay?
I’m not 100% against a capital gains tax… But that’s not the only thing you’re arguing for. No; that’s not enough for you is it? You want to have a highly progress income tax on top of that, don’t you?
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No… there was no WFF… that was before WFF. The abatement of OTHER programs was ( and still is) not coordinated with respect to the tax schedule and as a result there was a severe problem… which WFF somewhat mitigates.
Having written to and received answers from, Cullen on this topic (among others – and I have NEVER received a reply from Bill English) the problem is not unfamiliar to me. It is part of what gave us the housing bubble too, as that was the only way a family on a reasonable income could shelter ANY of it… through the Capital Gains exclusion, from a 90% hit.
That negative gearing setup still exists. I don’t blame National for it, I blame a wholly dysfunctional housing model (top to bottom just wrong) inherited from the British.
The issue was and remains that there are too few brackets in the tax system, but he refused to consider that because he did not think it would gather enough additional money to make a difference. The secondary effects are invidious but those have nothing to do with revenue. A little blindness on his part… people trained only in business and economics tend to be that way.
A highly progressive tax is the only thing that keeps wealth from concentrating when you have market capitalism and debt based money. It is the only mechanism left to prevent the society from devolving into the the rich and the hopeless.
Change to a more accurate monetary system and the need for progressive taxation diminishes… (possibly vanishes?) because the inherent flaws in debt based money that cause excessive concentration of wealth are removed. The problem is that we don’t have that… we have debt based money.
Which gives people who have a lot, many extra opportunities to “make their money work for them” and get lots more, without them actually working or producing a thing. Worse, it gives them control over government in many instances.
How much income tax do people on $50k pay?
I’ve no idea what they would pay as it depends on what the source of their income is. Lets go to the IRD for a single person with a standard wage.
http://www.ird.govt.nz/how-to/taxrates-codes/itaxsalaryandwage-incometaxrates.html
Looks like about $7000 to me. No? We can leave out ACC if you like…
Given the cost of living in this country I’d hate to have to try to raise kids on it. Yet the median income here is not very different.
If you are so concerned about people earning more than you playing less than you
Crux of the issue Spam, is that the ability to accept being taxed is related to the perception of the burden of it being shared fairly.
When the effective rate of tax for the wealthier people in a society is actually less than for the middle class? That is the source of deep dissatisfaction with the society as a whole AND a motivation for finding ways to cheat/avoid/structure on the taxes. People who perceive that they have a civic duty have that perception undermined. Cynical self-serving folks take over… and the government of the day reflects THAT, and it successfully has sold a fair few people in this country that they are benefiting from having the wealthy get wealthier.
I reckon that National’s policies benefit the top 10%… neutral for the next 10% and cost 80% of us more… the wealth IS transferred
- upwards
- and the rest of us experience trickle down as a “golden shower”.
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SPC – i’m talking about those still at school, living at home and looking for after school work. Your argument could easily be turned around to say that a higher wage would be more incentive to leave school (even though we know that isn’t true). I worry that those looking for part time work after school can no longer find it as they are priced out of the market, and if youth unemployment figures are anything to go by it appears that is the case.
I’m not against the minimum wage per se, however it is a worry to me that it continues rising yet there seems to be little impact on poverty. Also the percentage of workers on the minimum wage has been steadily rising – I believe it’s around about 10% at the mo. Where does it end?
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The Greens “concern” about youth unemployment is totally fake.
When Labour and Greens abolished the youth wage, within months youth unemployment started skyrocketing compared to overall unemployment.
It went up TEN TIMES MORE than adult unemployment (15% compared to 1.5%)
Here’s the graph of youth vs adult unemployment
http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/files/images/ericgraph_0.png
The Greens and Labour decimate job oportunities for our youth, then claim “We need to invest in our young people..”
Totally hollow words.
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More Photo-stats.
When the Labour department and MSD researched the effect they said it is inconclusive.
Especially as recessions have a disproportionate effect on youth and low skilled employment anyway!
$10.80 an hour is considerably less than it would cost to keep a SLAVE.
Even worse is that most of those jobs are casual and often less than 40 hours a week.
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Employers are now just using up our human capital. They have shuffled off almost all the costs of training onto either tax payers or employees and still they want more.
Not realising that the less they pay the more their business suffers.
Employees are also customers.
This race to the bottom can only have one result.
If Photo and his fellow sycophants were really concerned about youth, they would be expecting those under 19 to be in training or school, not doing dead end jobs for peanuts to support poor employers, and multinationals who can well afford to pay more.
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Kerry says “More Photo-stats.”
No – they’re from Statistics NZ.
More proof you’ll say any nonsense, no matter how untrue – to back your extremist positions.
20% increase in food prices over a year – I’m still laughing about that one.
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As he uses up $30 of petrol to find the cheapest veges.
That is what you expect from an uncaring RWNJ though.
At least I have reality to back up my position. Unlike those who want to repeat comprehensively failed UK and US experiments with education, austerity and other RWNJ disasters.
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Kerry can’t help himself, making up yet more fiction to prop up the fictional world he lives in… “As he uses up $30 of petrol to find the cheapest veges.”
“At least I have reality to back up my position.” – says Kerry.
Some advice – if you’re going to make up looney claims of 20% food inflation and don’t want to look like a fool, don’t choose the exact same year that is noted for the lowest inflation in more than a decade.
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I’am describing reality.
Extremists are those that are happy to fuck up our country and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people for failed ideology, Or cynically just so they can make a few more dollars.
And their authoritarian followers, http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ Photo.
You have already shown you have either parked your brain at the door, or you are another thief. Which is it?
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