Working for Auckland City Council is a tale of two cities.
Firstly there’s the Pacific Island woman I met at an election meeting last week who cleans the Auckland Central Library for three and a half hours each day, seven days a week. That’s 24.5 hours per week for which she is paid $14.10 per hour (the minimum wage is $13.75)
She drives to work by car (the bus is too expensive) from her home in South Auckland each day, leaving her three school age children behind. Although she didn’t say so it’s obvious transport would take up a big chunk of her very low income. She said she struggles to pay the bills and when her children say they want to go to university she says there is no way the family can afford it. She lives week to week and had nothing left at the end – it would be astonishing if she had.
Her story is the norm for families in low-income communities with the council contractor being just another miserable employer.
Secondly there’s the other city of senior council managers, 123 of whom are paid more than $200,000 each. The Chief Executive is the highest paid at $768,759 while the Mayor receives $240,000.
From working for Unite Union for six years I’m familiar with minimum wage jobs but I was gobsmacked when I saw that figure for senior managers’ pay.
A generation ago the council cleaner would have been paid much more and the CEO vastly less but New Zealand inequality has grown faster than in most OECD countries over the past 20 years and our supposed egalitarian society has been trashed.
Those who actually do the work which keeps the city running – such as our bus drivers, cleaners and park maintenance staff – are getting poorer while private sector values of looking after oneself at the expense of others have permeated the council’s upper echelons.
Under Rodney Hide’s private sector structures they have used contracting out of services to screw down the pay of the lowest-paid workers while rewarding themselves with exponential pay increases and salary ratcheting with the private sector.
This tale of two extremes is not acceptable. Senior managers have forgotten they are public servants and that we pay their salaries. It’s time for change.
All council employees and employees of council contractors should be paid a minimum of the living wage ($18.40 per hour) which would be funded by cutting the salaries of the mayor, CEOs and senior managers through a restructuring of these positions.
Let’s set the Mayor’s salary at four times the living wage (reducing it to $153,088) and the Auckland City CEO’s salary at five times the living wage (a reduction to $191,360)
This new CEO salary would set the benchmark for other council salaries for senior managers which have gone completely out of control.
It should also be a condition of all contracts where people are employed to do council work that casual and part-time employees will have their hours made up to 40 hours per week before new employees are taken on – a “security of hours” provision. This helps to stabilize employment and income for people doing council work.
The council has a role to lead the way in improving the pay and conditions of Auckland workers. For example the council can ensure that consents required by large corporations are issued conditional on the living wage and “security of hours” provisions applying to its employees.
It’s disgraceful that corporations like Skycity continue to pay many of their staff a fraction above the minimum wage while they rake in massive profits from an exclusive gambling monopoly. Similarly corporations such as McDonald’s thrive on low-paid, insecure work for their employees. The council can provide the right incentives for these large corporations to clean up their act.
Policies like these have been successfully applied in many cities overseas. Baltimore for example has had a living wage since 1994. Two years later contract cost increases had been just 0.2%. A 2003 study of 20 cities and counties concluded that in most municipalities “contract costs increased by less than 0.1% in the overall local budget in the years after a living wage law was adopted”. In Los Angeles big business complained that a living wage would increase costs by $30 – $40 million while the actual increase was just $2.5 million per year.
Auckland can’t be a livable city when it pays unlivable wages. It’s time for those that do the real work that keeps the city running are recognized at the same time as we stop senior council staff pillaging the public purse.
John Minto
Mana Movement candidate for Auckland Mayor
Have not plunked down loose change for a dirty filthy Herald in two decades now. Suggest others do the same. Admit to looking at the online version but that will crash and burn too if they go pay way. If you see a printed copy in your home, workplace or cafe, bin it and do us all a favour.
Daily Blog and suchlike is the future.
…and what haappened to Tapu Misa?
John Minto as mayor would be a breath of fresh air.
When the Herald isn’t indulging in casual racism it’s reporting about casual beneficiary bashing or casual gay bashing. It’s not a authentic newspaper it’s just a tabloid due to its lack of neutrality. Excellent article Lord Mayor Minto this needs to be read by all ratepayers.
Great post, John. It’s kind of amazing that this low wage craziness has gone on so long. Best of luck with your campaign.
Great policy! – same for the CCO’s?
That the NZ Herald “wins” the the Canon media award, beggars belief.
All those that work there or support it, should hang their heads in shame.
It is deplorable, woefully short of any considered journalism.
Just print the news, leave out the bias.
n.b. Same could said for all other NZ mainstream media.
Nope, the maximum should be $100k/year and a minimum of $20/hour.
Of course, I think that should be central government legislation that enforces those numbers across the entire public sector including SOEs.
I support John’s post, but I think that all of those self serving politicians should be on similar tight reins. MPs, mayors etc for life is just not right. Several people have challenged me on my views about that ‘wonderful’ man giving away US$99 billion. Just why does Gates need US$1 billion for himself and how did he manage to get that much dosh in the first place. For every wealthy person on the planet many have to be living on or below the poverty line. It is all obscene!
My view is the minimum wage is fair enough for many immigrant workers and under 30s. The sort of workplace’s the Unite supports and John Minto is seen protesting alongside a lot of attractive hamburger fryers or video sellers, should in my view be confined to employing under 30s.
In terms of the council workforce and the hospital orderlys cleaners, my own view is these workplaces and industries should have much smaller number of employees but a minimum wage of $1000 to $1100 for 200 hrs week is required for bus drivers, competent literate cleaners, orderlies etc. Doctors, Specialists and University Lecturers should be paid Australian rates. Competent academics should get twice present pay rates, but like Stalin I’m determined to return academic education to credible standards and a test of intelligence and verbal differentation not skills, presentation or second rate skills like writing, grammar or spelling. I’m not interested in the skills NZ shopkeepers want, I want people who can think logically and reject the cant of the NZ Political Class. All Arts, Social Science and Social Work courses will cease to be funded in NZ. We might introduce military and naval history as alternative. The Greer/Faludi/Woolf ideas of History belong in the trash heap.
The rail loop will be scrapped to free up funds for bus drivers, high speed rail to Hamilton and Cambridge and a improved line to Northport and Tauranga to replace the Auckland Watersiders.
Bravo Mr Minto, you will certainly give the ‘priviliged’ of Auckland something to consider. The hard working folk, like us, need representation,like yours,that listens to us. We have been struggling for too long. I am fortunate that the work I do, means I need to be qualified, which means my employer provides me with the neccessary training, which happens to be an NZQA qualification. I have been studying for 3 years now and my income has certainly not adjusted to my qualifications. There are some Greedy Kiwi`s out there, and I loathe that they share the same land mass as my loved ones and I.
“Go Hard” Mr Minto, we need someone like you who will turn this city around and make an example for others to follow. Kia Kaha.
Great job John. Minto and Mana both. You are raising the issues that need to be raised that are stopping Auckland from becoming a truely livable city. You deserve to win and on an even playing field you would. But I am told by those whose job it is to know such things that you need a campaign budget of at least $100,000 to even get a council seat never mention Mayor. But good on you. You are doing an important public service raising the matters that count. That the Herald refuses to carry your statement shows the hatred the privileged and powerful have for those they are driving into the ground. Thank Goodness for the Daily Blog.
It is impossible to deny the logic of your analysis here John. Of the bureaucrats – how many of them do they really need more than the cleaner at the library? Probably the latter is providing the only essential service.
A Bit Rich
According to that report, cleaners are only paid about 1/10th of what they’re actually worth.
I am almost convinced to vote John Minto, just to send a bloody message to the crap establishment we have in Greater Auckland and the whole of NZ! I am sick of all these deals for business, for elite circles, for casinos, for large scale investors, for large shipping companies trying to pressure Ports of Auckland and the workers, of all the shit that goes on. I am sick of central government having a Len(ient) mayor who is desperate to broker deals with him, and I am sick of bans for beggars, for privatisation agendas for public housing, and so much other shit that goes on.
It is time to take a damned stand. I have before never been a fan of Minto, I have been very critical of some of his stands, but with his free transport and some housing and other plans, he is putting a fresh air agenda up, which one must take serious.
It is time for a radical change, even if it is just and attempt for a change, as we cannot rely on Key, his Natzy government and clowns like the Epsom tea party, to run this country. Get also beyond employing people suffering amnesia (sorry, I have a social conscience, in the right place), to back up rotten policies by one vote.
An awakening, fresh air, left of centre, progressive, affordable, smart and alternative agenda is on offer. It is Minto and his team this time. Len get a life, you have become too much of a sell-out!
When your Mayor John, maybe you can pass a bylaw.
If you buy a house in Auckland you have to own it for 5 years Min, personally i think that would cool your house bubble over night.
Good luck with the election too, if i could vote, you would have it.
[…] “A tale of two cities” or “The column the NZ Herald declined to publish” By John Minto – See more at: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/08/28/a-tale-of-two-cities-or-the-column-the-nz-herald-declined-to-pu… […]
Whenever I see facts about figures like this I ponder the questions that , if pursued , might reveal The Great New Zealand Institutionalized Lie .
Big , fat , safe , resource rich New Zealand ?
Only 4.3 million people ?
Where’s our money then ?
Sir Michael Fay ? ( Amongst many others ? )
Reported nett wealth ( February 2013 issue North and South magazine . )
790 million ?
Is he the tip of the gigantic moneyberg floating in a sea of working class blood , sweat and tears ?
Does he soak his feet in buckets of Farmer blood collected from an oozing head wound as a result of the most recent suicide ? ( Chief Coroner was heard saying on TV )
The statistics you’ve just quoted here should have Aucklanders raging down Queen Street to the Super Swindle City’s Council Offices with a length of stout rope and a step ladder .
I had the company of a young real estate sales person the other day . She’s going to sell my house . She sat and talked house selling strategies with me and went in to detail about the psychological methodologies she would apply to snare any potential buyer and as I leaned over to listen to her , a chill leaped from for her to me and galloped up my spine .
She explained how vulnerable people were to being unconsciously , psychologically manipulated and I thought ” I hope to God this girl never becomes a politician . ”
It could be argued that ‘The NZ Herald’ is the syringe that delivers the apathy toxins that dull the mind and over-power the emotions . It’s like a paper television . The more banal it seems , the more dangerous it is .
Terrific Post John Minto . Auckland would be insane to vote for anyone else . What you’ve just written here is more important than any other thing any other Auckland mayoral candidate has written in the last thirty years . Or more . There should be no doubt . You MUST be the next Mayor of Auckland . I’m cringing in fear down here in Bill English-land otherwise I’d vote for you in a heart beat .
P.S. You remind me of an Invercargill Mayor who almost single-handedly saved that city from a terrible death . Prior to Tim Shadbolt becoming mayor there , Invercargill was a dying , micro Detroit of crumbling buildings and bleak , empty streets . Now , it’s fabulous and it’ll take more than vultures like Rio Tinto to bring that town down .
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