Banks’ assertions that he did not know about the donation of the two $25,000 cheques from Kim Dotcom may well be a hair-width’s line inside the requirements of the Local Electoral Act 2001, but hell, it smells fishy and sounds like a rort and his reputation as a Minister in John Key’s Government is totally tarnished.   When you put that together with his lobbying his mate Maurice Williamson, the Land Information Minister, so that Mr Dotcom could get approval from the Overseas Investment Office to buy property it all adds up to a nasty picture of mutual-back-scratching cronyism.

As an MP, Mr Banks wouldn’t be able to get away with declaring two $25,000 donations anonymous under the rules that govern spending and returns in General Elections. Voters – whether they’re voting in the General Elections or if they’re voting for their Mayor – should know who’s funding them.

That’s why the Green Party has had a Bill in the ballot since 2009 (which is currently in my name) to require more accountability and transparency around what candidates spend during local government elections.  As it says in the general policy statement at the beginning of our Local Electoral (Finance) Amendment Bill, the purpose of the Bill is also to “prevent the undue influence of wealth on electoral outcomes.”   The Bill would ensure no donations over $500 remain anonymous and cap donations at $5000.

In the first Auckland Super City mayoralty campaign in 2010, each candidate could spend up to $500,000.  It’s important we know where that money comes from so that we can at least guess at what favours are expected in return.

Picture: NZ Listener, David White

And just for the record in case anyone asks:

Even though I am “anonymous” in the photo on the front page of the NZ Herald today, yes, I was sitting next to Mr Banks on a flight to Wellington yesterday.  I had a nap.  He had a nap.  So I guess you could say we slept together.  But I bet he won’t remember that.

Up to 5,000 children in places like Moerewa, Horotiu, Rangiuru, Wairoa, and Whanganui are affected. Yet most New Zealanders know very little about it.

The story of how one New Zealand family owned company has come to wield so much power over so many other New Zealand families has a very human element.

Affco, New Zealand’s fourth largest meat processor and exporter, began life in 1904 as the Auckland Farmers Freezing Cooperative. After an initial share float in 1995, by 2010 it was 100% owned by Talley’s – that well-known New Zealand ‘family business’ and purveyor of frozen goods. The NBR rich list estimates the Talley family’s wealth at $300 million.

The New Zealand Meat Workers’ Union has a long-standing core collective employment agreement (CEA) with Affco. Alongside this there are site-based agreements which provide for local work practices – daily production levels, work speeds, staffing levels, pay rates, start and finish times, and shift patterns. Core pay rates range from $13.48 to $15.76 per hour. On top of this workers are paid a rate based on the number of animals killed each day. If the daily “tally” is reached, wages range from $15.76 to $31 per hour. The work is seasonal: two to eleven months per year, with many short days and short weeks even during the season. Seniority – the last on first off principle – is enshrined in the collective agreement and helps ensure some kind of job security for the workers who live in these small communities.

Talley’s behaviour since it took 100% ownership of Affco has been, quite simply, appalling. The company has bullied workers into processing more lambs per minute without consulting them.  It has chosen not to consult on staffing levels, length of the working day, wages, productivity payments and penal rates. It has taken to re-employing inexperienced workers on individual employment agreements while not reemploying experienced workers who are in the union (that seniority clause).  Many inexperienced workers end up getting hurt and leaving the industry, never to return.

Like Ports of Auckland, Talley’s has actively set about to bust the union. Managers have offered meat workers a 3% pay increase, a $1,000 ‘attendance allowance’, better jobs and more training if they leave the union.  Workers have been taken aside for one-on-one meetings where they have been told to adapt to new work practices or expect to be replaced.  Understandably, many workers have felt compelled to accept individual agreements and leave the union as a way of trying to appease the boss.

On 31 December last year the union’s collective agreement with Affco expired.  Two months later – on 29 February – Affco indefinitely locked out 700 of its 2,100 employees, after only 10 hours of negotiations. This number has risen to 1,300.

Those employees who did not choose to accept individual agreements chose instead to take one day of strike action in support of locked out workmates at Moerewa, Imlay, Horotiu, Wiri, Napier, Wairoa and Manawatu. Affco then locked out a further 250 employees at Rangiuru.

Since the first one day strike, Affco employees have taken 4 separate one day strikes, 1 separate two day strike and most recently 2 five day strikes. Striking workers are ineligible for WINZ support.

At the heart of this dispute is the need for the employer and union to negotiate in good faith, the underlying premise of the Employment Relations Act 2000.  Yet like Ports of Auckland, Talley’s actions can fairly be described as corporate bullying.

The company, and the industry, is doing alright. It has enjoyed high commodity prices, heavier lambs, and falling real wage costs, and has been free from industrial unrest for 21 years. Statistics NZ calculates that the volume of meat exported per person employed has increased from 23 tonnes in 1980 to 37.8 tonnes today, a productivity gain of 64%. Last year alone, the Talley’s Group made $20 million profit.

But this profit has been subsidised by New Zealand taxpayers who have stumped up thousands of dollars to pay for this dispute to be dealt with in mediation and by the Employment Relations Authority.

On ANZAC day Talley’s locked out its workers for a second time.  The day before, the following post appeared on a community noticeboard. It had been handwritten by Pam, a meat worker and mother of four, who doesn’t have the internet so had given it to Council of Trade Unions President Helen Kelly to post on her behalf:

Whole communities are feeling the effects of the lockout. Doctors, supermarkets, petrol stations, mortgage lenders, power and phone companies, finance companies etc. For my family not only has this been financial but it has been an emotional rollercoaster also. I walked out of work feeling pretty low at having been locked out of a job I enjoy doing and walking away from many friends who are still working…

My message to the Talley family…
You have locked out many honest, hard working and loyal staff. Show us your loyalty. End this lockout now and get pro-active around the bargaining table. Good Business 101 really.

The Green Party believes that we all benefit from healthy, productive workplaces.  None of us benefit from corporate bullying.

The meat workers are doing their share for New Zealand. Is Talleys?

Tomorrow is May Day, the day we remember the sacrifices that workers and their unions have made to win basic work conditions for us all. On May Day, show your support for the Meat Workers by donating at http://www.mwu.org.nz/donate/.

For: National + United Future = 60

Against: Greens + Labour + Maori + Mana + NZ First = 60

That leaves just one vote to decide whether the dirty deal goes ahead or is dead in the water. That vote belongs to my old sparring partner from our days on the Auckland City Council, John Banks, who is now the ACT Party’s sole MP.

Banks was a National Party MP back in 1999, and here’s what he had to say in Parliament then on legislation about the extension of casino gambling:

I say to the member who spoke previously that I do not care what some rich wide-boy who might meet our ambassador next week thinks about what he can spend his money on. If he wants to invest in the misery of the lives of the people of New Zealand, then our ambassador should tell that wide boy to stay on his ranch somewhere out West in the United States of America, because we do not want his money.

But the casinos want the money of the most vulnerable people. It appals me that the Tainui tribe want to invest in a casino to perpetrate the misery of their people. I salute Tuku Morgan and his courageous stand. Is it not significant that every Maori member of Parliament in this House has similar views to myself on this issue because he or she knows the habits that these dens of gambling – euphemistically called “casino entertainment centres” – wreak on the vulnerable?

Go and watch the Polynesian-Maori office cleaners at 2 o’clock in the morning in the Auckland gambling den, to see what point I am making. Witness what they are doing with the livelihood of their families.

That’s pretty strong stuff from Banksie.  I just hope the political pressure he will undoubtedly come under from his confidence and supply partners, not to mention the $15,000 donation he received from SkyCity for his failed 2010 Mayoral campaign, doesn’t persuade him to resile from the principled stand on casino gambling he took back in 1999.

John Key’s doing this, even though he knows that pokie machines target low-income people. While he witters on about hoping for a Kiwiana theme (and I don’t think interior design is really his thing), he’s ignoring and disputing the research from Government agencies such as the Health Sponsorship Council that says casinos are more likely to attract problem gamblers or people likely to become problem gamblers.  Mr Key reckons casinos are safe places. Safer places to neglect your children if you’re a problem gambler, I guess!

On top of that, we had the announcement last week by then Local Government Minister  Nick Smith about the Government’s plan to overhaul local government – basically hindering their ability to meet the four ‘wellbeings’ outlined in the Local Government Act: social, economic, cultural and environmental wellbeing.  My colleague Eugenie Sage has described last week how the Government has manufactured a rates crisis to support their plan, and has detailed the potential impact.

From an Auckland perspective, I’d say the local government shake-up proposed by the Government is a further assault on us while we’re still dealing with the bruises from the supercity amalgamation.

The supercity has not resulted in better or cheaper governance of our city.  And it certainly hasn’t resulted in better local decision making – ask any Local Board member.  And we just have to look at the Ports of Auckland dispute to see the ghost of Rodney Hide and his mates who hand-picked the directors of the CCOs that have responsibility for the city’s major infrastructure, like Auckland Council Investment Limited, that is responsible for the Port and other Council profit making investments, still at play.

When I look closely at the POAL dispute with the Maritime Union I become increasingly worried. The Ports have been a highly profitable council asset, but the sheer mismanagement of the entire dispute and the hard-nosed approach the Port bosses and board are taking with the workers makes me seriously wonder about whether they are deliberately running down the reputation and productivity of the port in order to flog it off to their mates.  It’s either that, or their management and Board are incompetent or mad.  Just to re-cap, since December the Ports management and Board have:

• negotated in bad faith during the collective agreement negotiations
• shown an unwillingness to settle even when all their demands for more flexibility  ̶  but not complete casualisation  ̶  were met
• displayed a reluctance to enter mediation
• decided to contract out the jobs to private companies while negotiating the collective agreement (and a leaked document dated months before outlined this strategy)
• allowed workers leave details to be leaked to a right wing blogger
• made a mockery of a facilitated agreement they’d reached last Thursday with the Employment Court to go back into negotiate in good faith
• illegally locked out the workers  based on the Port bosses unfounded and unproven beliefs that the union members would harm the other staff
• issued a lockout notice for an indefinite lockout following next week.

From that list, you have to conclude that the management practice is seriously flawed at the Ports.  If ever there was a case for the Mayor to exercise his executive powers it’s now.  I mean, how can a Council allow an organisation they own to act illegally?

This issue will be discussed at the Auckland Council meeting on Thursday.  I sincerely hope common sense prevails and the Council steps in.  Because, quite frankly, there’s been very little sense shown from the CEO and the Board of Ports of Auckland Limited.

National’s announcement has been planned to coincide with the public release of the long-awaited report of the Better Public Services Advisory Group, a group which included the ex-head of the Ministry of Social Development, Peter Hughes.

Not all change is bad, of course. In his recent paper in Policy Quarterly, ahead of the release of the BPSAG report, Hughes signalled the kinds of change he believes we badly need to see; among them, an end to silo-isation of government departments so that public servants can provide a more integrated response to people’s needs. No one can argue with that. The public service was blown to smithereens during the 80s and 90s ‘reforms’ and has never really recovered.  Changes to the State Sector Act and the Public Finance Act are well overdue.

Sadly though, Hughes’s virtuous public policy agenda is about to run up against the realpolitik of round two of a National government.  There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since the 2008 election campaign – where, possibly with all sincerity, Key promised a gathering of 200 Public Service Association delegates that  he was not going to cut jobs, just cap them.

Actually what has happened since then is that the cap on public servants has sunk, and sunk again. After that election, National promised to cap public sector job losses at 38,859, but then it let the lid sink further until public sector numbers fell to 36,475. Today, it has adopted that figure as the new ‘cap’ – and the $1 billion savings it’s demanding from departments will see it fall even further. It’s pretty ironic that a government that can’t seem to enforce a sinking lid on pokie machines doesn’t seem to have a problem putting a sinking lid on public servants.

At the time Key also said “a National Government is not going to radically reorganise the public sector… few problems are solved by significant reorganisations… in fact, many more tend to be created.”

Already more than 2,500 jobs have been cut; many regional offices have been closed; public sector workers, and the public, are feeling the pain. Last year the PSA calculated that along with jobs left unfilled, actually over 5,000 jobs have been cut or lost.  District Health Boards are looking to shed medical staff; police are looking to cut staff; Housing New Zealand and MFAT are laying off staff and replacing them with call centres. The jobless rate in Wellington is the highest it’s been in 16 years. The cuts aren’t confined to Wellington either; they’re nationwide and they have a contractionary effect on the wider economy.

This latest announcement isn’t about solid, thoughtful, change to bring about a Better Public Service. It’s about job cuts, and it’s about the government skimming whatever it can from the public sector – getting people to do more for less.  Like all of us, public servants need job security and they need meaningful work. Lack of security, constant change and unmanageable workloads are not a fertile ground for innovation.

We need a strong, responsive ‘results-driven’ public service, but these changes aren’t going to get us there.  The government wants to cut $1 billion from the public service, and ultimately that means contracting out bits and pieces of government departments that used to be done in-house – either to under-funded community organisations, already heaving under the strain, or more likely, to private companies looking to make a quick buck.

Is that what we want? Because that’s what’s about to happen.

Like the city councillor from my area Mike Lee I’m sickened by the approach the board and management of the Ports have taken.

Like Mike I believe the Ports could be making more money – but not at the expense of the workers and their rights. The shipping companies that use all the Ports of NZ are exempt from the regulations of the NZ Commerce Commission and have ratchetted down the price they pay by playing each port off against each other.  The Government can do something to resolve this – a New Zealand Ports strategy would benefit all the ports in New Zealand.

Meanwhile the Ports of Auckland management is looking to pay around $11.5 million dollars in their bid to rid themselves of the Maritime Workers union by making the port workers redundant.

This, and their expensive self-serving full page advertisements in the NZ Herald, doesn’t seem like prudent financial management to me.   As an Auckland rate-payer they manage that port on my behalf.  They’re doing a crap job.

So I’ll be on the march on Saturday because we need to tell the Council – and the National-led Government that allowed the ports to be governed by a council controlled organisation when they created the super-city – that the families and workers at the port deserve a fair deal.

Today, hundreds of those carers are hitting the streets again for another strike to highlight their claim for a decent pay rise.  Six hundred of those workers are earning $13.61 an hour – just 11 cents more than the minimum wage will be next month. They are asking for a 3% pay increase, in line with the 3% increase in funding that Oceania have been given by the Ministry of Health.  Oceania has offered 1%. That doesn’t even keep their wages in line with the Consumer Price Index increases. Oceania is a privately owned company whose profits go to shoring up the investments of their shareholders.  In 12 months to May 2010 year they made a profit of $16.2 million.

What does it say about our society that we pay carers so little? These women workers maintain the health and social well-being and dignity of the vulnerable seniors in our communities.  It requires considerable skill and strength and compassion to do this work.  So why are they paid so little?

I suspect it’s because many of these women workers are part time and they are simply undervalued because caring for our elderly is seen as women’s work – it’s somehow different to men’s work.  We’re still stuck in those long ago halcyon days of the nuclear family, when families could survive on just one income – usually the dad’s.

Well guess what?  It’s not just pin money. It’s how we get by.

Tomorrow – March 8^th – is International Women’s Day.   It’s time women workers were given the respect, and women’s work given the pay, they deserve.

This climate of industrial unrest has not simply appeared out of thin air.

The Ports of Auckland workers have been negotiating their employment agreement since 6 September last year. Despite offering to make significant changes to provide more flexibility, including a 12 hour shift option for some workers, they’ve been stalled by the management’s demands for more and more “flexibility”– to the point where the company now says it wants to make them all redundant and contract out the workforce.

In the provincial towns of Moerewa, Manawatu, Imlay (Whanganui), Horotiu (Waikato) and Wairoa, the AFFCO meatworkers have also been fending off the bosses’ claims for more and more “flexibility” around rostering. The meatworkers and AFFCO management have been negotiating their employment agreements for 18 months. The employer has today locked out 120 workers as a tactic to get them to agree.

This week the Oceania workers are also going on strike. It takes a lot to get nurses and rest home workers to strike, because they care for their elderly clients and don’t want to jeopardise their wellbeing. These workers are asking for a cost of living pay claim of around 3%, with back pay. The company – which is controlled by Australian equity firm Macquarie Global Infrastructure Fund and currently spending millions on new facilities – is offering them a measly 1% over 3 years, and wants to cut overtime.

This is not about workers being greedy.  It’s about employer bullying. It’s about employers seeking to bust the unions and achieve full “flexibility” – aka casualisation of the workforce.  A recent Listener article discussed the exorbitant pay rates for CEOs and the huge disparity between their pay and that earned by average workers. Meanwhile, many caregivers at Oceania earn as little as $13.61 per hour, just above the minimum wage.  A stevedore’s weekly pay for a 40 hour week is $1090. Meatworkers earn about $17-18 an hour during the season, and nothing in the downtimes.  Compare this to the $21 million profits listed by Talley’s in 2011; the $750,000 per year the Ports of Auckland boss Tony Gibson is paid; and the $16.2 million in profits made by Oceania in the 12 months ended May 31 2010.

The push on the part of employers to casualise the workforce and hold down already low wages is also being actively fostered by John Key’s government, which is busy pursuing its own increasingly militant policy agenda.  Welfare reforms play into creating an insecure workforce –   with more sticks aimed at those on benefits as described in yesterday’s welfare reforms there’s a larger pool from the poorest scrabbling for scarce jobs, potentially undercutting those who dare to unionise and negotiate their working conditions and pay collectively.

The Government’s agenda of beneficiary bashing and changes to employment law to weaken workers’ bargaining power go hand in hand. And that creates exactly the right environment for employers to take a hard-line approach to resolving – or not resolving – employment agreement negotiations.

Minister of Economic Development Steven Joyce accused the Greens of not understanding the economics of the deal; and at the opening of yesterday’s Problem Gambling Conference in Auckland, Minister for Whanau Ora, Tariana Turia, suggested the deal had economic benefits that would outweigh the harm of increased gaming machines.

With all due respect to both of them, the deal simply doesn’t stack up. According to the Ministry of Economic Development’s feasibility study, the convention centre will likely provide $397 million in economic benefit to New Zealand over 20 years, offset by $277 million in economic costs.  That’s a net benefit to the economy from the convention centre of $120 million over 20 years.

Now let’s look at the cost to the New Zealand economy of the 500 additional pokie machines SkyCity want in return for building and running the convention centre.  The Ministry of Health’s most conservative estimate of the annual economic cost of problem gambling is $330 million (they actually suggest it could be as high as $1 billion). According to the Problem Gambling Foundation, three quarters of problem gambling can be attributed to pokies, so that’s $250 million a year minimum that pokies cost our economy.

The additional 500 pokie machines SkyCity want would result in an increase of 2.35% on the current nationwide muster, and Problem Gambling Foundation research shows pokie machine problem gambling is directly proportional to the number of machines. So that’s an additional cost to the New Zealand economy of $5.9 million a year from problem gambling.  Over 20 years, that’s an additional cost to our economy of $118 million – almost exactly the same as MED’s net estimated economic benefit of the convention centre over that time.

If, at best, we’re losing as much as we’re gaining on this dirty deal between the Government and SkyCity what on earth is the point of it? The numbers don’t even go anywhere near describing the mayhem and misery that these machines can create for families and communities. They don’t go anywhere near explaining the awfulness of the harm they create. Pokies are a highly addictive product. They’ve been described by a former CEO of the Problem Gambling Foundation as the “crack cocaine of the gambling industry.”

I’m going to be asking what the advice from the Department of Internal Affairs was about this deal too. DIA is the agency in charge of regulating the casino, and there have been numerous incidences of loan sharking and money laundering that they’ve had to investigate in relation to SkyCity.

So if the SkyCity deal is not about economics, then the Government’s push on this comes down to ideology and political patronage. That they want to change the law for their big business mates because they can. Who wins from this?

Frankly, I am appalled that the Minister for Whanau Ora is prepared to sacrifice the well-being of Maori families for dodgy economic numbers. All the research shows that if you are poor, female and Maori you are more likely to have a problem with pokies than anyone else. Her inconsistency is even greater when you take into account that the Maori Party has a Private Members Bill about restricting the harm from pokies that is designed to allow communities more say over the number of pokies in their neighbourhoods.

The Budget Policy Statement sets out the government’s vision for what it plans to do this electoral term. In it we are told that the government’s main priorities are:

1. responsibly managing its finances;
2. building a more productive economy;
3. delivering better public services within tight fiscal constraints; and
4. rebuilding Christchurch.

Let’s hit the pause button on number 3.  It sounds reasonable. But it’s really a dog-whistle for more and deeper public service cuts.

New Zealand’s public services have already taken a substantial hit. According to the Public Service Association, National has over seen the loss of over 5,500 public sector jobs during its watch. It promised to cap public sector job losses at 38,859, but it then let the lid sink further until public sector numbers fell to 36,475, and adopted this as its new ‘cap’. Contrary to popular opinion, when National came into power in 2008, public sector staffing levels were still recovering from the cuts of the 90s – so they were already starting from a low base.

Why should we, the public, care about this?

We all moan at times about the quality of our public services – about the services we don’t get. But New Zealand has some of the best, more trustworthy public services in the world. In fact Transparency International last year ranked New Zealand as having the most transparent public services in the world. Just imagine, for a moment, where we would be without them. We are surrounded and supported 24-7 by public services. They provide us with clean, safe drinking water, they protect our borders and our crops, keep us safe on the roads, provide health and education and so much more.

Public services should be there when we need them.  The principle of universal provision ensures they serve us all. But they also help to make New Zealand a fairer place, by redistributing our taxes to those who need the most support. When public service jobs are cut, we inevitably lose public services. This affects the poorest the most – and with the Salvation Army’s State of the Nation scorecard out today reporting no noticeable improvement in child poverty, we should be worrying about this.

And, they’re there for us when disasters strike. Not many people know that when the February 22 earthquake occurred, the Palmerston North local council’s call centre became, in effect, Christchurch City Council. Public services provide a safety net – one we can’t always see, but one that, despite its faults, serves us well.

The logic for these ongoing public sector cuts doesn’t even stack up. Sacking public service workers won’t help us address our ballooning private debt problem. It will simply push more public sector workers onto the dole queues. The experience in Greece and the UK has shown us that mindless cuts just serve to further contract the economy – at a time when investment in jobs is needed.

Technological fixes won’t help either. What exactly would a ‘virtual’ public service look like anyway? We have all become more technologically savvy. Even me! But many public service users still do not have access to a decent internet connection, let alone a smartphone. Many public services deal with complex, cross-cutting issues that can’t be solved by calling an 0800 number.

In a few weeks the government’s Better Public Service advisory group will report back. The Prime Minister has signalled that it will involve sweeping reforms of the public service. Not all of these will necessarily be bad – more joined up services that cross across departments would be a welcome thing. The Green Party has long campaigned for less competition and greater cooperation between departments. But public sector reform should be driven by genuine need, not merely used as a covert means of cutting further into the services we all need.

On the face of it, the statistics indicate a steady decrease in unemployment – and no doubt John Key’s government will be pitching it in this light.  The headline will be that unemployment has fallen to a 21-month low of 6.3 per cent. But let’s look at what’s really been happening.

In the December 2011 quarter, 7,000 fewer people were unemployed … but only 3,000 more people were employed. How can that be?  Two things have happened. Yes, the unemployment rate has fallen , but let’s look at why.

Firstly, the numbers of unemployed people have decreased – but it’s been on the back of a sharp rise in the number of people picking up part-time work. In the last quarter, the number of people in full-time employment actually decreased by 0.8 per cent – while part time employment increased by 15,000 (3.0 per cent). So, there hasn’t been an increase in people getting the kind of work that pays the bills. There’s been an increase in the number of people doing poorly paid jobs.

There’s a gender aspect to this. The number of men in full-time employment fell 1.6 percent this quarter, while the number of men in part-time employment rose 7.1 percent and the number of underemployed men rose by 6.8 percent. In contrast, the number of women in both full-time and part-time employment rose this quarter, up 0.4 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively. Statistically, it is likely due to the gender pay gap the jobs women are picking up pay less. So what we are seeing is undoubtedly a shift away from higher paid, full-time men’s jobs towards more part time male employment and towards more full and part time women’s jobs, which are more poorly paid.

Regional variations are important too. The Bay of Plenty and Northland had the worst unemployment rate at 8.3 per cent, while in Wellington unemployment rose from 6 to 7.2 per cent, an effect no doubt of ongoing public  sector cuts and their downstream impacts on the local economy.

The second important thing to think about is that the total number of people participating in the workforce has declined; this makes the unemployment rate look better too. In the December quarter participation hit a 12-month low of 68.2 per cent, with the number of people not in the labour force increasing by 11,000 to 1.107 million.  The largest increase was in the 20-24 age group – this rose from 12.4 percent to 13.1 percent. Meanwhile unemployment among 15- to 19-year-olds rose from 23.4 to 24.2 per cent.

With the total number of jobless now at 261,300, we have grave cause for concern.  In the New Zealand Herald this week Simon Collins has been running an excellent series on inequality – today’s feature was on housing. Lack of affordable housing is reaching a crisis point in Auckland and indeed many other parts of New Zealand. There is a direct and pernicious (and completely obvious) link between New Zealand’s low wage economy, the rise in preventable diseases like school sores and rheumatic fever and poor housing/overcrowding. This doesn’t just affect just the unemployed poor – it’s the working poor too. It is becoming a cliché to say that two out of five children living in poverty come from families where one or both parents are in paid work.

We desperately need the Government to make an investment in New Zealand families and communities. It could begin, as the Green Party and many others have campaigned for, by implementing an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour and by announcing a proactive job creation programme in Christchurch and elsewhere – to provide meaningful, decently paid work for those who need it.

50c an hour is not going to help the people that need it most – people like the Bradley family who were profiled in the Herald this week, where dad is having to work three jobs just to feed the family. And even so, the parents are having to go without food some days just to feed the kids.

What we need in this country is a living wage – one which pays enough for families to be able to feed and clothe their children, pay the rent or mortgage, pay the power, phone and doctor’s bills, and not slide into debt when something unexpected happens.

The Government will tell you that increasing the minimum wage to a decent level will cost jobs. Indeed, last year John Key claimed that increasing it to $15 an hour would cost 6000 jobs. This has not been shown to be true – in fact the NZ Council of Trade Unions has done an extensive literature review which indicates there is no clear evidence, either internationally or in New Zealand, of a causal relationship between moderate increases in the minimum wage and employment or unemployment levels. But, despite the evidence not supporting John Key’s claim, Minister Wilkinson is still banging on about the fictional 6000 job losses.

What we do know is that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders are experiencing poverty and hardship on a daily basis – and on this basis 50c simply doesn’t cut it.

The Green Party wants to see an increase in the minimum wage, first to $15 an hour and eventually to two thirds of the average wage. This will help both reduce inequality and poverty and reduce the reliance of many low-income New Zealanders on taxpayer-funded financial support.

We need to lift wages across the board. We need a Government that will actually care about families struggling to get by in New Zealand.

I also expect that the Government’s excuse for consigning workers to live on a wage that is completely inadequate to support their families will be the same as it has been over the last three years – a claim that increasing the minimum wage to a liveable level will cost jobs.  Last year, John Key claimed increasing it to $15 an hour would cost 6000 jobs. That claim appears to be an exaggeration of Department of Labour advice.  The Department  provided no methodology for its calculations, but suggested that a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour could slow job growth by between 4100 and 5890 jobs.

I find the purported Government concern about a decline in job growth completely hypocritical, given the number of jobs the Government is itself shedding in the state sector.

What’s more, John Key failed to mention that Government also had advice from Treasury that countered that from the Department of Labour – advice that suggested increasing the minimum wage would most probably not cost any jobs at all.

(It) has not been true in the past, so without new evidence the balance of probabilities is that a higher minimum wage does not generally lead to higher unemployment.

I’m with Treasury on this one.  There has been extensive research into the employment impacts of increases in the minimum wage over the past thirty years, starting with the landmark 1992 paper by US economists David Card and Alan Krueger. The NZ Council of Trade Unions’ submission to the current minimum wage review contains a literature review of that research (Appendix 1, pages 56-73).  What is clear is that things are much more complex than John Key asserts. There is no clear evidence, either internationally or in New Zealand, of a causal relationship between moderate increases in the minimum wage and employment or unemployment levels, and this has become increasingly evident over the last 30 years.

Increasing the minimum wage, first to $15 an hour and eventually to two thirds of the average wage, will help both reduce inequality and poverty and reduce the reliance of many low-income New Zealanders on taxpayer-funded financial support. It’s time for Government to listen to the Green Party on this issue, rather than submitters like Federated Farmers and the NZ Retailers’ Association who lobby for low minimum wages out of their own members’ self-interest.

Ports of Auckland have consistently said that they want to increase productivity. However the hardline approach and lack of flexibility from the CEO, Tony Gibson, has resulted in days lost to strikes, and now the threat of a lock out doesn’t create a productive workforce.   I wonder what the management’s real aims are, given that the company had previously drawn up a strategy to contract out the workforce, and Tony Gibson is threatening to call for expressions of interest while the contract talks were stalled.  This is hardly ‘good faith bargaining’ – and it quite likely breaches the existing industrial relations laws.

If the Board and management of POA were so concerned about increasing productivity and increasing the profit margins, how could they possibly consider a spend of $5million on redundancies – and potentially much higher costs resulting from legal action from the Maritime Union?

In the mainstream media comparisons are being drawn between the Port of Tauranga and Ports of Auckland.  Tauranga is partially privatised and has a casualised workforce.  Undoubtedly, it is cheaper to offload freight at Tauranga. However, companies like Fonterra who have chosen to move their operations are actually subsidised by taxpayers who pick up the externalised costs of moving that freight further by paying for the roading maintenance and railway infrastructure. Taxpayers pick up other costs too. Casualised workforces have poorer health and safety procedures – in the last five years three workers have died at the Port of Tauranga.

My concerns are that the real agenda is about breaking  the Maritime Union and reducing  the working conditions of the Port workers, but also it’s about privatising our assets and undermining the new Supercity structure.  POA is wholly owned by the Auckland Council, but its Board was appointed by the Directors of Auckland Council Investments Limited, who were in turn appointed by   privatisation advocate and former Local Government Minister Rodney Hide rather than by anyone democratically elected by the people of Auckland.

Auckland Mayor Len Brown was elected in 2010 on a promise he would resist asset sales.  Christine Fletcher, who leads the right wing minority Citizens and Ratepayers bloc on the Auckland Council, has already signalled that she believes selling at least some of the Ports of Auckland will, in her opinion, make vast improvements at the Ports.

This is the same as the National Party propaganda  the government is promulgating for the sale of  our energy companies – that the private sector is better at managing our state-owned (and council owned) assets.  And this is despite reports from the energy companies that their returns are excellent and from the Ports of Auckland that their returns have improved dramatically over the last few years as well.

On the Auckland waterfront, the Auckland Council and its Mayor have already endured meddling from the National government with Murray McCully snubbing Mayor Brown and issuing directives over Queens Wharf after the opening of the Rugby World Cup.  And the Mayor and the former Transport Minister Stephen Joyce have also clashed when the Minister refused to prioritise the Inner City Rail Link as part of the Auckland Plan.   The forced amalgamation that led to the Auckland Council was sold to the people of Auckland on the basis that the Supercity would ensure a better relationship with the government – and we’d have one voice for all of Auckland.  The trouble is the National-led government doesn’t like that voice.

John Key’s government has meddled in union matters before – they changed the law around contractors and employees on the behest of an international movie company in 2010.  But this time they would do well to stay out of the Ports of Auckland dispute. It’s not just capital that has global interests and connections – organised labour has too!

Ms Kelly was part of an Australian and New Zealand delegation looking into allegations that senior Fijian union officials have been arrested and physically assaulted. Over the last few months the Fijian Government has enacted a series of decrees that make it illegal for more than 5 people to meet and union officials have been arrested for undertaking basic organising activities like meeting workers at their jobs. Recent decrees also reduced the freedom of the media, abolished the minimum wage and banned collective bargaining.

These measures are causing grave concern for the International Labour Organisation which has an office in Suva where former Alliance Cabinet Minister Laila Harre is the officer in charge. The ILO is attempting to negotiate with the military government and has called for the government to accept a ‘direct contacts mission’ which would press the government to comply with basic international law.

It’s not just unions that are worried about the breach of human rights in Fiji. On Monday, Business New Zealand backed up the NZCTU’s call for the Fijian government to accept a mission from the ILO to look into the island nation’s labour standards. But the National government has been suspiciously quiet on the matter. It is time for the Government to join with Business NZ and the CTU and stand up for human rights and workers’ rights in Fiji.