Living Wage rise shows what’s possible – now parties need to say what they’ll do about low pay – NZCTU

More than 64,000 workers are being paid at least $29.90 an hour from this week as the new Living Wage rate takes effect – and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi is challenging every party contesting this year’s election to say how they will lift pay for the hundreds of thousands of workers the rate doesn’t reach.

The 2026/27 Living Wage rate, which takes effect from 1 September, is up 95 cents on last year’s $28.95. It is paid voluntarily by more than 340 accredited employers and covers both directly employed staff and contracted workers.

“Every one of those 64,000 workers got this because people organised for it – cleaners, security guards, caterers, unions and communities who refused to accept that poverty pay was just how things are,” says Sandra Grey, NZCTU President.

“But it’s voluntary. It reaches the workers whose employers chose to do the right thing. Hundreds of thousands of Kiwis are left on or near the legal minimum that is nowhere near enough to live on.”

The Living Wage is independently calculated by the Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit as what a worker needs to cover basic costs and take part in their community. At $29.90 it sits $5.95 an hour above the $23.95 adult minimum wage – a gap of more than $12,000 a year for a full-time worker.

“That $5.95 is the distance between what the law says you can be paid and what it actually costs to live in Aotearoa. It has been widening, and no one running for Parliament should be comfortable with that. The NZCTU believes that the statutory minimum wage should be set at the Living Wage,” adds Grey.

“Working people have seen the cost of everything climb while their wages go backwards. They are not interested in sympathy. They want to know what each party will actually do.”

Grey says the NZCTU is asking every party for clear commitments on lifting the minimum wage, restoring fair-pay agreements and pay equity, and locking the Living Wage into public sector procurement so the workers who clean, guard and administer our public services are paid enough to live on.

“Nine weeks out, this is the question on the table: are you going to fix low pay, or are you going to leave it to the goodwill of employers? Workers will be voting on the answer.”