Cleaner hits out at Willis’ plan to scrap Living Wage for new contracts
The government plans to scale back the number of rules agencies must follow when tendering contracts, which it says will make it easier for New Zealand businesses to access government contracts worth $50 billion a year.
Minister for Economic Growth Nicola Willis wants to axe one third of 71 rules which include paying the Living Wage in contracts for cleaning, catering and security guard services.
Union E tū said this would send some of those workers into poverty and was “heartless”.
Taking from the poorest workers to ensure the richest can get huge tax cuts is literally taking from the poor to give to the rich.
It’s not trickle down economics, it’s trickle up!
Our children get corporate slop, vulnerable people are thrown onto the street, public health is underfunded, privatisation for their donor mates is rife and we are now taking the living wage off the poorest workers paid for by Government contract!
This is such an anti-worker Government.
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Sending a message to the wealthy investors that we will happily screw the workers over for you to lower your wage bill so you can make more money from the hobbits .Just like John Key did for the hobbit films so Peter jackson could make several millions more and get a knight hood for paying the lowest pay rates in the movie world .After all the $15 per hour he paid here is $7 us and the minimum wage in the USA at the time was $8 .
So horrible. Yet another horrible act to add to the others against children, the homeless and the environment.
Shame is not the word. Seasonal workers, Winston, as you said the other day, just like contract workers, will never loose, their minimum wage, winnie, contracts for seasonal and yearly workers have to negotiate, the exploit they try to avoid in their annual contracts.
This picking season coming, Kiwi and the rest, my son so looking forward to productive pay and productive care for Aotearoa
How fucked me his father, yer minimum wage has gone, contract what contract, only the Past Government insured living wage.
Fuck tell yer children no longer minimum wage for Cleaners, Security, Seasonal WORKERS, GONE, WINNIE WHAT CONTRACTS HAVE YOU NOW PASSED A LAW, THAT WILL HAVE NONE, SEASONAL WORKERS, PEICE WORK IS YOUR DESPERATION WORK HARD AND OUR CHOICE OF PAY FOR YOUR WEIGHT PICKIN SHALL WE DECIDE, THE EMPLOYER EXPLOYTER.
The union should stop cleaning loos in the Beehive used by CoC members and their staff, if the physical layout of the place allows it. And they should demand that all government contracts require that cleaners are paid the living wage, and that their own contracts that mandate a living wage will be honoured and that this provision will not be removed from any future contracts.
Because basically, the (most likely) poor, brown woman who scrubs Nicola’s crap from the side of the Beehive toilet bowl deserves a decent life.
Good comment !
This has taken decades of campaigning : with part 6a of the ERA to ensure vulnerable contract workers are transferred on existing pay and conditions enacted under a Labour Government in 2004. Then campaigns by the LW movement and unions to get LW as part of government procurement contracts – like the cleaners in Parliament, the caterers in Copperfields/Bellamy’s who are all contracted out and getting Parliamentary Services to sign up as a Living Wage employer, so security staff are included. And extended through Councils, schools and many employers with the simple proposition ; you can’t be a LW employer if it doesn’t apply to contracted out workers as well. It is a devastating proposal and I hope everyone will take the time to push back hard on this. Undercutting removing the requirement to pay Living Wage is an easy way to ensure that workers’ wages and conditions will go backwards.
We should not give Govt contracts to tax rorting corperations for a start ,,,, ie “Dividends and royalties were taxed by Inland Revenue (IRD), and loans were not. Compass New Zealand paid $2m in tax last year, just over 1 percent of its revenue of $170 million.”………
“Catering company Compass is under fire for the food it’s been serving up to hospital patients, but now questions are being asked about whether the multinational is paying enough tax.
Compass New Zealand has lent its British-based parent millions of dollars while the fees and royalties it has paid to the UK have quadrupled over the last four years.
“Accounts filed with the Companies Office show its New Zealand arm has been lending the company’s British parent millions of dollars.
Those loans increased six-fold over the last four years to $33 million for the year ended September 2015, up from $5.5m in 2012. Royalties and fees quadrupled over that same period, from $805,000 to $3.5m.”
Every dollar they stiff New Zealand of has to be paid by average New Zealanders ,,,,
“RNZ News asked Compass to explain why a multinational that made a global profit of $2.5 billion last year needed to borrow $33m from its New Zealand arm.”
Luxon himself worked at “a multinational tax dodger classic” ,,,, So he probably thinks Compass ‘has it sorted’,,, https://michaelwest.com.au/unilever-a-multinational-tax-dodger-classic/
These multinationals have many layers of bad ,,, ” ‘‘The Compass Group made $170 million in revenue last year, yet only paid $2 million in tax – little wonder they are able to outbid New Zealand businesses for the food contracts in public hospitals.
‘‘This means that not only is New Zealand missing out on tax revenue, but food service providers in the regions have been robbed of a fair shot at delivering this vital service for their local communities, costing economic opportunities, including jobs, for regional New Zealanders,” https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/curran-calls-compass%E2%80%99-tax-arrangement-amoral
…. and they pay shit wages if they can
I think the blog post’s title describes it exactly.
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It’s not trickle down economics, it’s trickle up!
Our children get corporate slop, vulnerable people are thrown onto the street, public health is underfunded, privatisation for their donor mates is rife and we are now taking the living wage off the poorest workers paid for by Government contract!
This is such an anti-worker Government.
Agreed.
As the former leader of Mana what would you be advocating to resist and fight against this onslaught of right wing attack on our vulnerable people who have no protection or a voice to say no. We will not tolerate this class war being waged against us.
Bernie is standing strong and despite huge risk is providing a counter movement against the entitled class and its billions of revenue taken from the enslaved working class in the States and here in Neo Liberal Aotearoa.