The biggest increase in the history of the minimum wage will have a huge impact for workers on low wages, says the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.
From tomorrow, the minimum wage will rise to $22.70, up from $21.20. This increase will benefit 223,000 people and lift the incomes of the lowest paid workers across New Zealand by around $350m a year.
NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff said a worker on 40 hours a week would benefit by $3,078 a year – or $59 a week.
“The minimum wage has increased around the same rate as inflation at 7%. This will mean our lowest income families and communities will be better protected from the cost-of-living crisis.”
Wagstaff said raising the minimum wage was a far more effective policy than cutting taxes.
“This increase is 27 times more than a minimum wage worker would get from National’s proposed tax cut of $2.15 a week.
“Our best economic evidence also shows that increases to the minimum wage do not contribute to higher inflation or unemployment. Credible estimates put the likely increase in inflation from the minimum wage lift at around 0.1% – effectively zero.
“This is simply good policy. We have huge numbers of working poor in New Zealand whose lives will be made easier by this change.”
The problem is that the minimum wages might be rising but the formally professional wages like nurses, teachers and police are not rising much, so are starting to look very close to minimum wages. NZ needs wage parity to Australia for the professional classes to avoid brain drain.
In addition it has become the norm to pay cash in areas like construction to workers who are not even legal to work in NZ.
Thus the fairness and integrity of the wage system is now completely dysfunctional with a two tier system of wages and work that is below the minimum wage – dropping wages, decreasing quality across the board, while incentivising those also to be on a benefit while having a full time cash job.
Since being woke is more important than output for government and council contracts, it explains why the roads keep costing more and more but never get completed and engineering doesn’t have to accurate anymore.
Sky Path where after a resource consent was granted, tens of millions of dollars to consultants and over 10 years of pretending, before it was canned as not being possible, shows the woke construction cycle.
Pretend you have solution, spend millions on consulting and consultants, get a resource consent and tens of millions of funding, milk it for a decade, then reveal it is not going ahead and no interest in where all the money went and why it was allowed to go down the toilet.
P.S. On Skypath, met one of the people who was hired from overseas to ‘project’ manage the job. He had nothing to do and bought his family over who all needed schooling etc, was astonished that the tenders were allowed to communicate to each other and then go in together for the bid, Aka illegal cartel behaviour but all ok in NZ.
NZ had the worst brain drain in the world in 2010, but gave up and stopped measuring the brain drain to Australia in 2019.
NZ, New Zealand brain-drain worst in world
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/7973220/New-Zealand-brain-drain-worst-in-world.html
Statistics New Zealand no longer measuring ‘brain drain’ to Australia
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/03/statistics-new-zealand-no-longer-measuring-brain-drain-to-australia.html
NZ brain drain which used to be a topic of interest each election has instead been sidelined for the past 15 years while politicians gone on a mass immigration ‘body shop’ that instead of getting high level skills here, somehow instead netted foreign pensioners, terrorists, high needs grifters, scammers, exploiters, gullible victims of scams, cash tradies who speak zero English and variations of the above, ever since with predictable results.
When a large potion of the 1 million people coming to NZ turn out to be depressed or a criminal type drug smuggler, or entire families being welcomed into NZ on wages that are well below the poverty line, no English skills, it’s pretty clear there is going to be a hell of a lot of social and skill problems on their way.
Even the overseas students seem to be completely gullible which does not bode well. This weeks headline of a foreign student who managed to be scammed out of $42k when he applied for a job on seek. The idea of having to pay to work and put so much cash into a crypto account (which he was interested in) didn’t raise any red flags. No doubt he will get a wonderful job at Waka Kotahi when he graduates.
Now government departments are just making up statistics (which is fine), they can’t even measure correctly any more, seemingly more interested in concentrating on blowing vast sums on mega mergers/re naming of government departments and the army of managerial consultants – from health care, water, to polytechs.
Te Whatu Ora admits figures used by Health Minister are ‘not accurate’
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/485599/te-whatu-ora-admits-figures-used-by-health-minister-are-not-accurate
NZ has become a country that celebrates incompetence and grifters and doesn’t care if things don’t work anymore, they will be paid regardless, in fact more profit for big business when things don’t work as then they never leave!
P>S> Someone posted that the overseas student studying in NZ ‘job’ was part of a wider scam to put positive hotel reviews on travel sites. Have been victim to this, by staying at a so called 4 star hotel that had positive reviews, but was more like a one star hotel, literally had rat poison under the beds in Rotorua. Of course was run by an overseas firm that was taking over large hotel chains in NZ and filling them with what looked like exploited staff who were probably paying for their job to get residency in NZ – but obviously could not run a hotel and many similar experiences in the tourism industry that they don’t seem to care about.
NZ ‘tourism’ industry. And it’s not pretty.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/07/woman-horrified-after-filthy-taup-motel-refuses-refund-despite-mould-grime-stained-bed.html
Note authorities don’t seem to care that people are being ripped off everywhere in NZ and widespread scams. Sounds like they are then getting overseas students to post fake reviews on the hotel sites saying how great they are and then scam the gullible reviewers out of $42k.
That is the state of many of NZ’s minimum or (paid wage), (scam), industries like tourism.