Someone just woke up the CTU – finally economic leadership!
Boom!
After a few years of drifting without Helen Kelly and some jaw dropping calls like denouncing the Parliament Lawn Protestors and supporting the gold plated 6 month tax payer funded holiday plan for the Professional Managerial Class, political commentators may have been forgiven for thinking the CTU had gone to sleep at the wheel of their mid range EV.
That’s all changed with an impressive feat of economic think tanking released this week…
Council of Trade Unions calls for four-day work week, better employment conditions
The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) is suggesting a Ministry of Green Works and a comprehensive pilot of a four-day working week as parts of a strategy to develop the economy.
It has launched the ‘Building a Better Future’ plan to make New Zealand a better place for workers as well as businesses.
CTU economist Craig Renney said the current economic system and the disruptions caused by the pandemic had increased divisions within the country.
“We reject a future in which we simply return to all the problems we had before – such as homelessness, inequality and economic insecurity.”
The report has put forward five economic “missions” with associated policies, to improve on worker and national wellbeing, tackle climate change, housing, work-life balance, and economic equity.
The proposals include a national investment bank to finance key economic goals, with a levy on bank profits as a source of funds, along with a new government-owned default KiwiSaver provider.
It is also suggesting a Ministry of Green Works to tackle key infrastructure projects, housing, climate resilience, economic equity, and ‘decent work’.
On climate change, the CTU proposed national plans to mitigate its impact, and manage the transition away from fossil fuels and the adoption of new fuel sources such as hydrogen.
The CTU also called for A Decent Work Act to replace the Employment Relations Act, including a proper pilot of a four-day work week, and providing for free early childhood education.
…FINALLY!
Replacing alienating middle class virtue signals with actual economic justice proposals!
- 4 day working week
- Ministry of Green Works
- Windfall tax on those bloody banks!
- Government-owned default KiwiSaver account
- Free early childhood education
YES! YES! YES!
For a Labour Party utterly devoid of vision because of the intensity of Covid, these ideas are mana from heaven and should build the basis of any agreement between the Greens, Labour and the Māori Party.
A 4 day working week is exactly the kind of post growth infrastructure we need that also allows for stress relief for public services that are increasingly becoming more stressful.
A Ministry of Green Works is the the exact type of adaptation Ministry we urgently require with climate change becoming more catastrophic.
Make the banks pay! A windfall tax is a great start, we also need a Financial Transaction Tax!
A Government owned default KiwiSaver could be ethical investors and keep the money here for NZ rather than the Australian Banks!
The gender pay gap is far less important than the simple fact working parents can’t access free child care to go to work in the first place!!!!!
This is the CTU at its best and these ideas must be the base line policy planks alongside free dental, sugar tax, Vice tax on gambling, alcohol and tobacco profits, a Financial Transaction Tax, first $10 000 tax free, free public transport and turning our Golf Courses into State Housing.
Add the Fair Pay Agreements into that and we would collectively be making Helen Kelly proud!
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Dont be surprised if “4 day work week” becomes another PMC privilege. Its no surprise the data showed no productivity change whether the apparatchiks do 4 or 5 days. They are an unproductive parasitical class.
Factory process workers, building teams, couriers, static guards etc – different story. Big drop in economic output would be the result.
This , office workers will be better off , and everything will cost 20% more to actually build
A big vision from the CTU here. I’m all in favour of refounding the Ministry of Works. the word ‘Green’ in the title is pure virtue signalling to give people the warm fuzzy feeling (you know who you are).
But surely the Government can do all these Great Works without founding another bank and helping itself to KiwiSaver funds.
The Government should not be involved in KiwiSaver. Its subsidies (so-called ‘tax credits’) should cease, and KiwiSaver should be entirely a private savings arrangement between worker and employer. KiwiSaver is simply the current iteration of the savings scheme Roger Douglas imposed on the country in the 1970s and Robert Muldoon mercifully rescued us from.
KiwiSaver is an instrument whereby those who are able to save can do so efficiently (and till we stop it, with a state subsidy) because they are in secure, lifelong, well-paid employment. It is useless to people who are too poor to save, and all but useless to the underpaid and precariously employed.
It was Robert Muldoon who had the good sense to see that what ALL New Zealanders need, not merely the lucky Kiwis who can save, is a national pension for which the only qualifications now are to be (1) over 65, (2) a New Zealand resident, and (3) present in New Zealand.
Improving NZ Superannuation, doubling it to cover the cost of renting, and putting people who get it on a high tax scale for other income so that it goes only to those who need it: these should be the goals of any Government that cares for all its citizens, not merely the lucky ones represented by the CTU.
As for the Government taking over the KiwiSaver default funds, this is lunatic. Presumably this is a hissy fit because National exploited Labour’s incompetent PR and helped the Aussie banks avoid paying GST. The answer to that is for Labour to be less spineless, not to seize the default funds and hand them to a state bureaucracy to invest in green projects for zero return. Stop it, I tell you! Just stop your nonsense!
Long-term infrastructure adds to the nation’s (the state’s) wealth; it can be paid for simply by printing money. No need to seize people’s savings, which might or might not do better with non-government fund managers investing the money overseas.
For ordinary folk, what we need is for everyone to have an account with the RBNZ using a central bank digital currency that allows payment directly from person-to-person or person-to-company, bypassing private banks, whose role can be reduced to competitive deposit-taking and mortgage-lending. Such a cbdc opens a path to a painless financial transaction tax to replace some or all of GST.
The CTU’s enthusiasm for getting its hands on KiwiSaver is rather like its enthusiasm for Grant Robertson’s social unemployment insurance: a scheme that benefits the haves, and is of little benefit to the have-nots.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2202/S00026/unemployment-insurance.htm
Oh they forgot liveable wages (surprise, surprise), NZ wages are increasingly well below Australia… probably why so many people leave NZ.
Even the migrant nurses leave faster than the Kiwi trained nurses.
NZ Government still haven’t twigged that NZ keeps giving fast residency to people that are leaving NZ but can come back and claim welfare when it suits them.
Meanwhile, OZ makes it hard to get Australian residency and citizenship but pays workers better and that is what is more desirable for working locals and migrants.
Decent wages is what working people want – but NZ doesn’t seem to attract and retain working people very well! https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/475710/health-ministers-queried-why-nurses-not-on-fast-track-residence-list-papers-show
NZ business likes slaves and consumers who don’t work (50% of fast tracked migrants were dependants) or are unskilled!
Greenshoot thinking. Of course must be regularly watered, lightly fertiilised, and not get stolen in the night from nocturnal emitters of want but might get to flower, with judicious weeding and tip pruning.