Pay freeze controversy enters second day, with Greens and National pressing Labour
The Government’s decision to freeze the pay of many public sector workers has spilled into Parliament.
Greens and National put pressure on the Government during Question Time on Thursday. Ministers faced heat on the mounting bill for consultants, with the total cost increased under Labour despite attempts to bring it down.
Green Party public services spokesperson Jan Logie asked Finance Minister Grant Robertson whether he was “happy to grow the economy through astronomical levels of housing debt but not through higher wages for our teachers, our nurses, and our core public servants?”
Robertson wouldn’t answer that question, saying he rejected its premise.
For most Kiwi’s, earning $100k is a dream, so the Greens decision to back 100k gold plated public servant privilege feels like an odd ditch worth dying in.
The middle class Greens are connected at the woke hip with the PSA and Wellington elite unions so they can’t help but rush in to defend their ability to buy a do up in Khandallah.
The Greens are attempting to paint this freeze on 100k salaries as against nurses and teachers.
Bullshit.
Some senior teachers, some senior nurses, but it’s mostly bureaucratic managers, hell, the way Labour has structured this will help those between 60k-100k in jobs we urgently need and those earning less than $60,000, (about a quarter of the state sector), will still be eligible for pay rises!
Last year the private sector saw a 2.5% pay rise, the public sector got a 3.9% pay rise so let’s drop the hysterics shall we?
I’m not sure how ‘But that $100k MSD Manager who spies on beneficiary Facebook profiles to see if they are in a ‘relationship’ won’t get a pay rise’ or ‘But that $100k WINZ Manager who turns down your benefit won’t get a pay rise’ is going to marshal much support.
Working class unions doing the coal face mahi like UTU will find solidarity amongst many, but well funded Wellington Public Service Unions with their plush holiday privileges, retirement funds and $100k pay packets are an odd victim to rush and support.
If only we cared about the poor in NZ as much as we do about property speculators untaxed gains and Wellington bureaucrats take home pay.
Helen Kelly would not have defended 100K pay packets.
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$100k is a laughable amount of salary if you are paying a mortgage, have kids and earn that money so don’t get any other subsidies….
$100k seems a lot because NZ has gone to a strategy of a low wage economy with neoliberalism, and many have to exist on less, (but they are not exactly thriving) due to our obsession with low wages.
$100k salary still qualifies you for Kiwibuild as a low paid worker.
The ‘NZ’ workforce now bring their money with them as they come into the country so they can afford to work here. In fact our wages are lower than China and India and the third world, because the neoliberals here have found a way to pay, lower than slave rates, by making people pay to work here. What is next, harvest an organ? At this point joining a gang seems like a good idea if you are a local. Hard to compete with people paying to work in NZ and not paying any taxes when you can also earn huge money by helping the cash economy thrive through illegal labour and other cash goods and services. It’s happening to the professionals too being ‘restructured’ out.
It’s a strange world where people are driving around have a car accident and $450k in cash and Meth in their cars is found https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300283182/two-arrested-after-cash-and-drugs-seized–following-car-crash-at-mount-bruce and millions in cash in rubbish sacks. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/115014183/cigarette-smuggling-case-defendants-keep-names-secret-to-protect-children-employees Don’t worry they can claim hardship even with the piles of cash found if you can afford a good lawyer. If you want to get free drugs, try walking the beaches, you never know what you might find these days. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/huge-amount-of-cocaine-washes-up-on-west-auckland-beach/VVRZTEYM7D3LA6PO57Q536X2GI/
Don’t forget the doctors and others just got a big fuck you, because the tax rates went up 6% under parliament urgency.
Meanwhile banks are doing well. No need to cut their profits with additional business taxes!
ANZ half year profit up 18 per cent to $930m
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/anz-half-year-profit-up-18-per-cent-to-930m/QUASJDZD4RLYVHKA5WRN4H3RZA/
Financial services tax???? Funny enough, the corporate working group never actually seemed to get any traction with a financial transaction tax. Business tax rates are low and business corporate welfare high.
Lefties are getting caught up in braying about some doctors salary while hundreds of millions of profits are ok for businesses and the cash economy and crime is booming in NZ.
It’s our brighter future where being a professional is laughted at (NZ doesn’t care about the brain drain) when you can earn decent money by running a business and exploiting others. And it is not just the blue collar criminals expanding, it’s becoming normalised in NZ for corruption and white collar crime to defraud others, Eric Watson being a celebrated early adopter.
Is not minumum wage casual job,got any grasp,of past capitalism0 hope gift of ownership.
https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/turtle
… or sack the idoots responsible for wasting public money
Yes the Greens disappoint yet again.
Presumably they’ve been taken over by forces that wish to destroy any option to vote for a GENUINE green party. Just look at the USA, over there they’ve inflitrated almost all green organizations and turned them neoliberal.
Exactly. I admit it is an effort to apply the leftist standard “solidarity with all workers” to some PSA members. Courts, Corrections, WINZ/MSD, ACC, and a host of other Govt. depts are well known for making working class peoples lives more miserable than they need to be. And we are meant to care about the Labour “wage freeze” on these workers?–as misguided as it is. PSA members did diddly during nine years of Key and English National Govt. by the way.
Has the PSA ever run delegate workshops for MSD case workers as to why unemployment exists? It is usually traceable back to capitalist requirements for a reserve group of unemployed to put downward pressure on wages and achieve a compliant workforce, and the neo liberal macro economic decisions, than any personal failings or bad choices! “Just doing my job” has never cut it with me for public servants crapping on the underclass from a great height.
If Labour had increased benefits and slapped on a rent freeze I might give more of one on this.
Yes whilst I agree you have a point aren’t the Government as the employer bound to good faith bargaining?
The issue is this:
“Those earning between $60,000 and $100,000 will only be eligible for a pay rise if there is serious recruitment pressure in their area”. That pay band is most teachers, nurses, health workers, cops, Customs workers, etc, etc. In other words it’s a pay freeze just the same and 60k plus in todays superheated property price meltdown doesn’t cover it. Not even close.
It’s dumb. It’ll just piss off government workers, Labour will lose votes and this sacrifice to the neo liberal gods will solve nothing.
Well said XRAY . If this is how Labour treats it’s friends no wonder farmers are afraid.
This would be one of the few times I would agree with the Greens
Well said X-ray. My first thought was how this will impact on the front line Covid workers, working at a risk which politicians safely ensconced ,in quarantine certainly were not subjected to. Many of the nurses are imports eg Filipino, working under contracts. I don’t know how Corrections manages to recruit staff for such a lousy job, many of them are from WINZ’s books of unemployed people, likewise security guards,
whose second job is looking for a better job. These are occupations where, in time, the armed forces could have to be brought in to do their jobs.
A three year pay freeze sounds very punitive, and in fact could be, for the reasons outlined by savenz; it will make a home of one’s own, that much more difficult for some families to buy, or rent. For public service minions bearing the brunt of their greedy political masters’ policies, motivation to perform well, and to assiduously strive to improve their own or others’ lots, a pay freeze virtually renders their already sadistic performance appraisals, a thankless dispiriting process to anticipate.
The price of shoes and food and clothing and electricity and gas and petrol and car repairs and rates and insurances and plumbing disasters and family crises and sudden unexpected anything, are not going to be frozen in time over a three year period.
Any politician who ever had to be a child going to school and telling a teacher that Mum says they can’t afford to cough up for the latest, even quite small money-ask , would be looking as askance at this pay freeze, as many of us do at govt’s grim- jawed
determination to keep poor people poor, and beneficiaries struggling beneath the poverty line.
That’s right. How to make hard working people who have stressful and sometimes dangerous jobs, feel unappreciated. Who you gonna call when you have a life threatening situation? The people labour are taking a giant dump on. Labour are putting the public at risk by trashing our public service. Those amongst them trying unsuccessfully to buy a home will now be getting the message loud and clear from our government- you are not welcome or wanted in NZ
But Rose, many of them ARE New Zealanders. Where else can they go to ? At least the Brits crammed the Highland Scots in the cold and dirty holds of ships and transported them to the cold and dirty wharves of Canada, when they were no longer wanted or welcome in the cold and dirty hovels and caves and hillocks and ditches which were the places they called home.
Here we are talking of persons often carrying out significant services for the benefit of others, and Parliament should be saluting them, and thanking them, and saying, “ Well done.”
That’s right.. They mostly are New Zealanders and are not welcome in their own country
…Yep and wait until the borders open up properly we will see a mass exodus across the ditch and around the globe of our motivated, experienced and skilled workers similar to what we saw in the 80s and 90s, lured by higher wages and cheaper living costs. The up side I guess will be a surplus of houses for sale and rent when they leave.
Teachers, Doctors, Nurses, etc.
Why shouldn’t we care about them?
Not to mention the ammunition this gives private sector employers.
Exactly the point. Private sector employers will be in boots and all.
Thank you! Been waiting for someone to say this. I live week to week as I am on the sole parent benefit and work part time, so it’s really hard for me to feel sorry for people whinging about not getting a payrise on their already huge salaries . $100k would be a dream come true for me – hell even $60k would be amazing.
We need a “Refuse to rule” party who get into power and do absolutely fuck all. At least then the country won’t be destroyed by the ruling elites like it has been of late. I had hopes in Jacinda but what a mess she has made. The grand canyon between the haves and have nots will now never be closed she has made it so wide. The refuse to rule party leaders sole job will be to sit on a couch and watch Netflix. They will be on webcam and if they attempt to interfere with running (ruining) the country they will get an electric shock. How did our democracy become so painfully cruel?
They’d have my vote. Worth every penny to pay them to sit and leave people the hell alone. Anything but labour and national MPs paid handsomely to wreck lives
The Policy so far seems a bit short on detail – I’m guessing the rates apply to Basic Pay for a 40 hour week I.E. excluding shift allowances, overtime, etc.
For years we have seen inequality grow – a contributor to this has been pay rises based on the application of across the board percentage increases. This system over time exponentially fuels inequality. It seems to me that pay rises should first recognize that everyone’s basic living costs go up by the same amount in dollar terms (essentially the increase in the Living Wage). After that is applied there should be a percentage increase applied that maintains relativity of pay rates. To maintain the current across the board percentage pay rises will only continue to increase inequality.
If the Government’s intention is to try and reset this inequality it is a rather blunt way of going about it and needs to be quickly followed by changes that address the underlying causes of the ever increasing inequality.
In my experience, the only place neoliberal trickle down religious philosophy actually works is in departments and ministries where public servants are able to exercise a little power tripping over the plebeian lesser beings, such as with dirty filthy bennies, or ‘other people’ such as essential workers.
Elsewhere, worker bee public servants – frontline staff, or back-room support people slavishly work in spite of their $200K overlords, rather than because of them despite the fact that most of their overlords will be in possession of a library of various management theory and economic management spiel.
Like the essentialistas, there are also the martyrs teaching, or nursing or merely wiping geriatric bums, or basically being not too bad citizens providing the necessities of life in communities. Again, most work in spite of their overlords rather than because of them.
So here’s a novel idea, and in keeping with how a few masters of the universe in the Ministry for Everything where the concept of ‘the higher you’re paid means the better and more valuable your skillset must be’ was devised.
Rather than cap at $60k (which is bound to have a shitload of unintended consequences), how about we survey those ps permanent staff on salaries over $200k. Maybe $220k (to be kind). The PS Commissioner should of course be able to immediately provide the details.
Then for those people – lets do a performance review or appraisal, or whatever the fuck they call it these days.
Then let’s knock say $10k off for each KPI or deliverable they haven’t met; maybe $5k for any employment dispute that’s part of their delegation; perhaps $2k per OIA request that hasn’t been delivered on time or that they’re obfuscating and dreaming up bullshit about. I suspect rather than salary payments, we might be looking at fines. Because we’re kind, we’d give them time to pay of course
Pretty sure Chippie and Grunt might find more savings there than they’ll ever get from what they’re proposing. I’d like to know who the hell it was that thought this was a good idea in the first place – and hopefully we’ll get to know in the fullness of time, in that space going forward. The likelihood is they could even be a candidate for deportation.
Jesus Grunt!, and Chipchip for that matter. Are you trying to sabotage Jacinda’s reign? I mean, ultimately, she is responsible and wants to be transparent and held to account in this space. But fukme – some think doesn’t add up.
This:
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2021/05/incoherent.html
With Working For Families earning $100k is pretty much exactly the same as earning anything under $100k because every extra dollar you earn over about $50k gets abated away to nothing.
The whole system reinforces government dependence and subsidises employers to sustain our low wage economy where it’s very difficult for people on a fixed income to make any headway at all. Meanwhile inflation further reduces purchasing power and the price of assets continues to climb.
+1 Alex, Exactly. NZ is going from a highly skilled, reasonably paid workforce to the Natz dream which seems to be also Labour and Green policy and default left policy, aka “subsidises employers to sustain our low wage economy where it’s very difficult for people on a fixed income to make any headway at all.”
The government have an ideology and even though it is clear that it doesn’t work they keep pushing it.
Example this family were renting and their house sold (which is what the government apparently wants aka all the landlords to sell up for first home buyers), now there are few private rentals anymore so they then ended up in emergency housing. They found this full of drugs, crime, etc, then started camping around Gisborne instead https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/442020/axle-s-family-was-homeless-before-moving-to-tolaga-bay-mum-reveals….. then their son nearly dies after getting lost…
This man felt so unsafe in social housing he’s written to the minister with all the police call outs and a murder the other day, but zero response. He would prefer to live in his car https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/i-told-you-someone-would-get-killed-christchurch-man-angry-after-complaints-about-social-housing-problems-fell-on-deaf-ears/OQEZ4OSINXDVNVJM43PEV7CK4U/…….
This poor kid just died in emergency housing after suffering major abuse. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/william-james-sio-admits-murdering-abusing-neglecting-and-ill-treating-his-5-year-old-son/SSLKGRY2RCOLLZIN7ACP5UC4GE/
I’m sure these are just the lazy local racists that deserve it, though! Get more plane loads of diverse races with bags of money to buy up the first homes, into NZ with their supermarket workhttps://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/house-prices-landlord-sells-rental-to-tenant-below-market-value/ZD52P5P2HRUAKFZSBO5BTOHA2M/! And keep the foreign millionaires flooding in, buying up NZ mansions and farms who also need to import in their staff. aka in James Cameron types https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018791897/james-cameron-explains-dairy-cows-on-wairarapa-farm
I guess the renters will eventually get a warm, dry house with global warming. Maybe in 2050 like the zero net Greenhouse emissions target?
It seems everything with neoliberalism, involves destroying the quality of the better system before it – from education to housing to employment. All while pretending it’s better, with marketing slogans that gets more offensive and less believable, the less it works.
If your house was an employee;
They’d be earning $3,300 a day untaxed.
If your business was an employee it would be earning millions in corporate welfare from the taxpayers while firing people and earning their bosses a knighthood.
And if you were an exploitative employer you could make your workers pay you to work for them and your workers host country pay their benefits and those of your workers family. That’s even better than slavery!
@ denpaoa The other problem is that if you sell your house, you then have no where to live and then presumably join the rest of the country heading towards emergency housing and needing government support for your housing! Getting to be a stupid argument of envy.
Land is appreciating too, should Maori have to pay for appreciating land values and their houses? I guess under Chinese rule with Lord Xi Jinping, nobody is allowed any land, so a nice warm, dry, re-education camp could be the ticket to answer all NZ’s housing problems, sarcasm.
nobody is allowed any land, so a nice warm, dry, re-education camp could be the ticket to answer all NZ’s housing problem
You hit the nail on the head there, well said
Well done to the Greens. Solidarity with working Kiwis. A pay freeze is immoral when rent and house prices continue to skyrocket. Bad take Bomber.
Oooo…. I love this stuff. It shows me that Labour are going after the neoliberals.
The Green Party are a tie dyed hippy window dressing on ugly old national so no wonder they’re kicking up a fuss.
@ Chloe Swarbrick!? Go to Labour. Go now!
Martyn 100k was a decent salary in 2012, not anymore if you’re trying to buy a home. Any home.
Let’s not forget this is the Party that threw money at big business, some who ended up paying dividends and not all returned their unused wage subsidies. Also throwing money at hair brained schemes. Labours policies are basically – spend heaps on hair brained schemes, dither for years over house and rent prices and ignore warnings, then tax and wage freeze actual workers the public relies on for basic life support, law and order. Let’s do.. THIS??
We are now,mask up,like a decadent ball of a land,a.Wear your mask,why,humanity care,why its that!s why. Can are we able,to come to New Zealand.
Second time now,third, why, eh!.
Dare, socialism.
Its! how your coffee,morning.Socialism,are u having a laugh.
Their we are,breath,understand..
Shall we,what,shall we stand and say,heat from our sun,is more burn intense,more intense than anywhere on our planet,where here New Zealand,its serious burn ten seconds no,ten, find the answer,not a lie allowed.
What a amazing place to live, where, New Zealand. We can come down here away from all wars, and their threat. Eh!, five eye!s, ever been to Waihopai, all sorts of nuclear missiles pointed their.
Socialism,compulsory Unionism,what,fair wages for a fair suck of the sav.
Can you give us a line of the next house sitting,who I, can, but won!t. How you going.The next election.
I was informed yesterday that the two Auckland DHBs are short of about 200 nurses. The refusal to make allowances at the border to bring in special categories of workers means that ours are fast draining away to Aussie while leaving nobody to replace them (NZ has long relied on Philippino nurses to make up the numbers as NZ nurses move to places with higher salaries). I’m also told Middlemore looks like a war zone these days with patients lying in corridors on stretchers.
Should havevthoughtvsnoutvyhat while National was reducing the budget by 15 billion 🙂
.. And the kind competent Filipino nurses we do have are shut out of buying a home in NZ and looking to leave
@ Andrew, Giving NZ residency to over 100,000 foreign pensioners into NZ under neoliberalism, doesn’t help our health situation or our superannuation system. During Covid it sounds likes plane loads of people with Covid could then access our health system who did not live here but somehow now have a claim to be cared for under the NZ health system, free MIQ, charter flights, due to getting NZ residency and citizenship under stupid rules.
Time to call a halt to the immigration lies that is actually being used to prop up neoliberalism. AKA when they implemented Rogernomics in the 1980’s and 1990’s many Kiwi’s left NZ and started working overseas to pay back their student loans or get higher paid work in places like OZ. Remember the unlucky Gen X had to pay huge interest rates on their student loans compounding daily, mortgage rates were high at double figures and jobs not well paid.
So to combat that, NZ implemented a ‘bums on seats’ immigration policy to get as many people into NZ as they could. They abandoned the language test and most immigration criteria, got people in as students who somehow passed while not even being able to speak the language with laughable courses, and welcomed the new foreigners onto our welfare system to work low paid jobs and open low level businesses, that started importing in other migrants to work in their low level businesses.
This approach has sky rocketed NZ into the one of the highest mass immigration per capita in the world and created NZ as a drugs/guns/contraband Mecca due to the ease of drug smuggling, easy money laundering conditions and lots of willing people to do anything for some money while a captive market on benefits.
Many lies were told, such as we needed immigration due to our ‘ageing population’ but the Rogernoms didn’t mention that for every foreign supermarket worker and aged health care worker that created enormous profits for big business like food and aged care, we could get up to 4 aged parents and a lot more children, tagging along on the residency.
This means now, instead of immigration being a help to superannuation it’s the opposite, NZ now has more foreign pensioners from Asia alone, predicted to retire in NZ than Maori and Pacific Island pensioners. NZ now also needs more retirement places and aged care workers and nurses and doctors than ever before.
NZ foreign work and student visas allow many foreign family members to tag along, is also a huge cost to the health system. Even if they work in the health system. AKA
“Zara’s mother, Aileen, a nursing support worker, came to New Zealand first on a student visa in 2014. She was joined by her machine operator husband, Arnold, 41, two years later after she got her work visa.
They have another daughter, Zia, 8, and a son, Aaron, 15, who have also come as dependent children of worker visitor visa holders.
“We didn’t think Zara needed a visa at birth to remain with us because she’s born in New Zealand … she didn’t have a passport and wasn’t travelling anywhere,” Aileen said.” https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/immigration-nzs-threat-to-deport-2-year-old-nz-born-girl-leaves-family-in-shock/5CGUHPRAHHMDMQ56B5H5E7IGAE/
This type of policy, where a nursing support worker comes into NZ as a student, then does low paid work, but can bring her spouse, other children while having children in NZ, means that for 1 nursing support worker, somehow our health system just got an extra 5 people to support – with much higher levels of care, aka maternity care and a child’s first 3 years of life are one of the biggest costs and needs to the health system.
Likewise the last 3 years of someones life is also one of the biggest costs and needs to the health system. Many aged ‘visitors’ start living in NZ, and when things go wrong are very high needs people on our health system. Most of the time their care seems to become free via ACC.
ACC approved for the “Not-Botulism” Kochumman Family
http://community.scoop.co.nz/2018/01/acc-approved-for-the-not-botulism-kochumman-family/
Family ‘shocked’ after grandparents hospitalised for smoke inhalation
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/07/family-shocked-after-grandparents-hospitalised-for-smoke-inhalation.html
At a free doctors clinic in a wealthy part of Auckland, a friend was disgusted when they noticed the car park was full of expensive vehicles and it took a long time to see get their child looked at, due to the demand in this highly expensive, area. We seem to be importing in wealthy but low income or non taxed income bludgers who have ample time on their hands to wait at free health clinics, and pop out a community services card while exiting their Mercedes. On the other end of the spectrum, many are so poor and desperate that any drugs smuggler or boss offering a bit of cash or low pay to do some jobs for them, has many willing workers.
No that’s Neoliberalism’s legacy! Still going strong!
two Auckland DHBs are short of about 200 nurses…. ok a pay freeze will help. LOL
SaveNZ – “Two Auckland DHB’s are short of about 200 nurses”. But we are never ever short of self-servers queuing up to become members of Parliament, and usually ensuring a very comfortable future for the rest of their natural lives, no matter how divisive or destructive or useless or plain dumb they are at their jobs. Funny that.
Mouthing platitudes does not save lives, nor does it generate decent-paying jobs, or conjure up houses or even employment security or tenancy security. Sweet -talking about getting it right with anything plucked out of thin air, or jumping on a band -wagon shouting “ I hear you,” and “ What bastards your ancestors were”, achieves nothing constructive or useful, but it can damage, and it does.
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