Super size her credibility
Sue Bradford is putting her money where her mouth is by giving half of her back-dated MPs’ pay increase towards the youth rate campaign. Her release says:
The $850 will go toward the SupersizeMyPay.Com action aimed at increasing the minimum wage to $12 an hour, achieve more secure hours of work and abolish youth rates.
Ms Bradford was outspoken when MPs were granted a 4 percent wage increase just prior to Christmas and says in this case she was happy to contribute a significant part of her back pay to a campaign she feels so strongly about.
“I am pleased to also be launching as part of this a campaign to gather support for my private member’s bill aimed at abolishing youth rates for 16 and 17 year-olds.
Ms Bradford is working with unions and young people’s groups to muster support from other political parties for her Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill, which is to have its first reading in the House on February 15.
“It’s an outrage that young people are still subject to the same kind of discrimination that used to happen to women. Why should a 16 or 17 year-old receive less pay than an 18 year-old doing exactly the same work.
“Employers should recognise the fairness of paying a young person the same rate as their older workmates for the same job.
So far, the opponents to her bill have tried to claim that 16 and 17-year-olds simply aren’t worth paying full rate because they’re not as experienced. But that’s true of anyone who lacks experience and training.
If training or experience are needed, you pay the worker less when they start and increase their rate as their expertise increases. Thus apprentices get paid less than fully trained co-workers, whether they are 16 or 18 or 24 has nothing to do with it.
But if a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old are both working behind the same counter or on the same forecourt and they have the same level of experience and training, they should be paid the same. As it stands a 17-year-old with a year’s experience can be, and often are, paid less than, say, a 20-year-old who has done nothing since they left school.
Youth rates are not about providing opportunities, they’re about providing cheap labour and discriminatory assumptions about the competence of young people.
January 24th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Hear hear. Now about the vote for 16 year olds!
January 24th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
one of those battles that makes you proud to be green….
it’s hard to see how anyone could argue for the current inequities..unless profiting from them….
phil(whoar.co.nz)
January 25th, 2006 at 12:04 am
I would have had the current policy too - not that I have any arguement to challenge the case above.
However.
The people are school age and working part-time, while living at home - linking this to rates for youth on the dole and eligibility to support while at uni under 25.
Thus this is part of a wider issue.
Maybe those under 18, living away from home, could get full wages. And or they could get full wages, when working full time.
A short term compromise, while the wider issue was under review?
TWO - do we won’t to encourage young people into work rather than complete school/education, at least until 18?
January 25th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Do we want to?
January 25th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Stuey: the general rule is no taxation without representation, and, IMHO, adult responsibility should be put off as long as possible for fun-based reasons (ie you have to be an adult a fecking long time, so kids should be encouraged to stay kids as long as possible).
So I reckon no one under 18 should be taxed, rather than extending the franchaise to 16 and 17 year olds.
Of course, this would best happen after youth rates are gone, otherwise a lower tax for the young could be used to justify paying them less.
The obvious problem is adults avoiding tax by laundering their money through their children, but there should be some way to head that off.
January 25th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
It’s always been fairly obviously discriminatory to me. I always worked as a child, typically delivering papers. I got steadily paid more and more as I got older, despite the work being exactly the same and a no-brainer anyway. Then when I turned 16 the boss decided he couldn’t afford me any more and laid me off to hire a 12 year old.
It’s simply exploitation, always has been. Workplace pay scales are very similar, IMHO. They often have very little to do with competence and everything to do with having the guts to demand better money. Kids are soft targets for this, as any money is better than no money.
January 25th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Work for under-15’s has always been at the risk of exploitation, since the school leaving age was raised from 12 to 15 years, and schools were state-funded to educate all children up to 15 years of age. (around 1900-1910, when my granpa was a boy…..)
This has left us with a working-class residual memory of education up to 15years being a priviledge; concurrently, employers feel they are doing a favour to under-age workers by paying them at all; and the lack of union support for young workers since the Youth Rates legislation came into effect has exacerbated this effect.
My early years in the workforce were paid at the same rate as uni students doing the same vacation retail sales jobs; not now, 15 or 16 year olds are extremely disadvantaged, and work terrifically long hours if they have a weekly goal amount to earn (say, their rent….) Not all children working are doing it for pocket money, or to save for future education costs, many are still working to cover their own weekly expenses, just as the generation before them did when school cert scaling pushed thousands out to work every year, convinced they were not of academic standard and must take an unqualified job.
Our “knowledge economy” policies reflected the lack of unskilled work opportunities, and tried to re-educate a generation of parents to beleive that every child can succeed, and earn the right to skilled, fulfilling employment.
Now we just need to educate the employers about the better-skilled young people they’re hiring, and what that’s really worth.
January 25th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
One other thought - the first year of the three year election cycle is the right time to push 16/17 year old issues/causes.
Perhaps the Green Party might like to consider getting in on the ASSESSMENT ISSUE. While the rushed implementation (and Mallard now admits he was wrong to accept the advice from “the ministry” on this), has occured, the NCEA can still be streamlined. I prefer attainment standards at the first year level. This would reduce teacher and student workload, as many would show they had attained the basic standard fairly quickly and move on to acquiring further knowledge and skills. This would allow resources to be focused more on bringing some up to speed. This leaving the levels 2 and 3, to identify the achievement levels reached. Here I would consider reintroducing a stand-alone exam alongside level 3 NCEA achievement results (essentially restoring the old Bursary exam - this would allow “the public” to check school NCEA results against a national standard).
Another issue is the lack of government investment in facilities for young people. The concern of the moment is youth socialising through gatherings to drink. So why not provide in towns and suburbs of the country - youth venue centres (alcohol free) for this. A big screen for sport and music videos. A sound system/DJ and dance venue. A stage for bands. Karaoke. A cafe. An internet video conferencing capability for linking youth groups across the country.
January 25th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Will this now publish rather than say it already has, when it hasn’t?
One other thought - the first year of the three year election cycle is the right time to push 16/17 year old issues/causes.
Perhaps the Green Party might like to consider getting in on the ASSESSMENT ISSUE. While the rushed implementation (and Mallard now admits he was wrong to accept the advice from “the ministry” on this), has occured, the NCEA can still be streamlined. I prefer attainment standards at the first year level. This would reduce teacher and student workload, as many would show they had attained the basic standard fairly quickly and move on to acquiring further knowledge and skills. This would allow resources to be focused more on bringing some up to speed. This leaving the levels 2 and 3, to identify the achievement levels reached. Here I would consider reintroducing a stand-alone exam alongside level 3 NCEA achievement results (essentially restoring the old Bursary exam - this would allow “the public” to check school NCEA results against a national standard).
Another issue is the lack of government investment in facilities for young people. The concern of the moment is youth socialising through gatherings to drink. So why not provide in towns and suburbs of the country - youth venue centres (alcohol free) for this. A big screen for sport and music videos. A sound system/DJ and dance venue. A stage for bands. Karaoke. A cafe. An internet video conferencing capability for linking youth groups across the country.
January 25th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
About ASSESSMENT issues, as someone who has recently gone through it in the sciences i have some opinions. First the work load is a lot, so much so in fact that it is rediculous. THis is symptomatic of a wider problem, the emphasis is on passing, qualifications etc rather than actual knowledge gaining. Ultimately it’s set up to be all about getting the biggest meal ticket, as Jeanette put it in her speech, and it permeates through. The actual teaching of knowledge and wisdom is second place to getting through the requirements of subjects, so it’s very easy for people to be left behind, and even if you do keep up and pass well, alot of your information is exam specific and soon forgotten.
This comes through at the other end with all these highly paid experts in different fields who do society little good or often great harm helping corporations make money from bad technology i think. Basically, in my opinion, the relentless push of commercial interests for streamlining students, makes it easy for people struggling or not, to have a cynical attitude, and at the end of the day society has probably never had so many experts yet so little wisdom, with the result that the planet and societies are dysfunctional and getting worse.
January 25th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Thing is, supersizing youth pay leads to a level playing field cost-wise as between youths and experienced adults. Guess which group employers would then favour? Effect on Modern Apprenticeships? Employment of school leavers? Worth of education itself?
(Exits, with sound of potential unintended consequences chirping quietly, stage left).
January 26th, 2006 at 6:14 am
Sue’s Bill doesn’t propose to increase the rates for apprentices and genuine trainees. It recognises that when there is a substantial ongoing training element to a young, or for that matter older, employee, then a wage rate lower than the adult minimum can be justified.
The Bill is about equal pay for work of equal value, and the arguments used to justify paying lower rates to young people seem to be exactly the same fallacious arguments that were used to justify lower rates for women decades ago.
Who, today, would dare to argue that women should get less? So why young workers?
January 26th, 2006 at 5:50 pm
While, it’s not the whole amount, It’s a gesture that impresses me a great deal. One thing that can be said for the Greens, they make a political stand personal (Rod Donald with the Tibet flag is an image that I remember from last year)
I’m happy that Sue has taken up the challenge I made to her and Rodney Hide last year, I only wished it happened sooner:
(from http://thorndon.blogspot.com/2005/12/more-money-for-mps-what-time-to-b ring.html)
“…I call both of these MPs to stick their pockets where their mouths are, and give up the extra funding, to the very organizations that will be supporting middle and low income New Zealand this Christmas. Imagine if they did, the press story would be great. But alas, it won’t happen and because of that, they lose as much credibility as anyone else in the debate by their flagrant lip service on the matter.”
PS: And extending greenfrogred’s point, who would argue that our elderly should get less as well?