Spent an enjoyable lunch hour on the picket line with members of the Service and Food Workers Union protesting a zero pay offer from the IHC. These workers do difficult work, helping people with intellectual disabilities live an ordinary life. A 2% wage increase doesn’t seem unreasonable in my view.
The union says the IHC has already received a 2% increase in funding from the Ministry of Health for their residential services but it is refusing to pass any of that on to their front line workers. It also seems reasonable compared to the kind of pay increase Bill English is dishing out to highly paid executives courtesy of National’s tax cuts.
There was a classic moment of unintended irony when a passerby started yelling at the workers: “What are ya worried about? If you are not getting paid enough why don’t you just bugger off to Australia? I am!”
Precisely. The exodus to Australia figured large in National’s campaign rhetoric, but they have done nothing since the election that makes me think they want to close the trans-Tasman pay gap.
That’s pretty darn stingy
Says Spud an hour into the future
What are ya worried about? If you are not getting paid enough why don’t you just bugger off to Australia? I am!”
I can’t.
Hmm – how much was the new sleepover rate costing IHC? and was this funded by the 2% or another payment?
Backlash anyone
Sadly it is something worth considering.
I live in a part of the country where we have virtually no health care. To go to a GP you have to have an interview with a nurse to see if you require an emergeny visit or if you will need to wait 3-5 months for an apointment. This is exactly what i have just gone through to get a medicle over some concerns i have. I now wonder why i live where i do, the obviose thing is to move, and aussie is a better choice than NZ now.
In case you are wondering,I live in a provincial centre, not in the middle of nowhere.
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Where do you live waterboy?
Waterboy I know what you mean! We moved into our current area in 2006 and had to wait for over a year to enrol with our local medical centre – 20mins walk away because despite their claim that “casual patients were welcome” they weren’t and we weren’t as there was a shortage of doctors so the books were closed. Luckily we were still enrolled with our old GP (who have since closed their books). It was a HUGE battle trying to get jabs for our then 15 month old. They expected me to drive an hour our way to get it done at our old GP even though our local medical centre could have easily done them. Highly annoying!!!!
Phil out of interest can you remind me what the migration rate to Australia was during Labour’s 9 year term? Is it your opinion that wages in NZ were low then, in supposed boom economic times of low unemployment, surplus budgets and higher expenditure on public services?
Good post Phil and thanks for the support on the picket line.
Jeremy asks whether IHC are not paying the 2% because this has been gobbled up in the extra cost of paying sleepovers at the statutory minimum wage.
The two issues are quite separate Jeremy, but the short answer is that IHC are paying neither the 2% nor the sleepovers as per the December 2009 Employment Court decision.
On the sleepover front, after nearly four months of ignoring our demands to make arrangements to pay, they are asking the Employment Court to allow them a stay or proceedings while they hope that either the Court of Appeal will get rid of their problem or the Government will agree to fund what is owed.
On the wage increase front IHC have received an extra 2% of their contracted price for residential services from the Ministry of Health and are refusing to hand over any of this to their front line workforce through the collective employment agreement.
@ indiana – My view is that wages at the bottom end are too low. And that low paid workers haven’t properly recovered from the hammering they took under National in the 1990s. The 5th Labour Govt however did much more than National in the 1990s and National now to address this: annual increases in the minimum wage, significant injections of funding into public health system, big pay settlements in health and education, ongoing work on pay equity.
National had great sport with the trans Tasman pay gap while it was in Opposition but in Govt it has no interest in ensuring low paid Kiwis get a fair deal. If it did, we would see:
1. serious strategy around productivity
2. decent increases to minimum wage
3. reasonable pay increases instead of the current freeze
4. tax relief for low and middle income Kiwis instead of Key’s ridiculous tax cuts for the rich.
I think we need to look again at our industrial relations laws to make sure low paid and casualised workers are better able to bargain effectively for a fair share of the wealth they produce.
Havent IHC created a commercial arm IDEA Services to run this part of the operation.
Their actions sound like the normal EMA type of industrial relations, ‘make them earn their increase by daring them to take action’
Phil there are more people on $70k than there are on over $100k this means calling the proposed tax cuts as being aimed at the “rich” is a fallacy and hype and best.
Thanks to inflation & unfair tax policy by Labour that refused to amalgamate the tax thresholds with ‘real’ income, these people were allowed to drift into the top bracket for tax while faced with massive increases in their basic cost of living – including an exorbitant 70% increase in power.
Sorry, but while Labour seemingly did much for the lower incomes, you did nothing for this group. You merely exchange one form of poverty for another. It is this group that have been increasingly turning up at the foodbanks over the last few years as they have to make a choice between their mortgage, school donations/uniforms or food.
Slight exaggeration, but you get my point. Stop blaming a government that has only been in government for 18 months for problems that have arisen over the past 10 years or more. And yes, I agree, the old National stripped us even more bare than what Muldoon and the 4th Labour govt did.
But the past is the past. You list 4 solutions above but the first one is an idea not a solution – what strategies? What would Labour do differently? How would you create jobs? How would you reduce unemployment? How would you make the tax system fairer for all instead of the current top heavy system? How would you stop the rorters you allowed to take the mickey for 9 years? How will you ensure the welfare system is a safety net, not a way of life? How will you get our health system into first world status? How will you do these things in times of economic uncertainty when you failed to do them (except for unemployment) in times of unprecedented economic prosperity? You boast of buildiing new hospitals etc yet the Wellington region DHB didn’t have the money for the new Wellington Hospital so they had to borrow. How is this possible?
As for suggesting things like MORE tax relief AGAIN for the low to middle income kiwis is still penalising those in the top bracket – that is, those who are self-employed, entrepreneurs, professionals etc all who have skills who are contributing to the economy in a real way through the skills, employment of others and more importantly, their spending & savings. This group of people give far more than they receive. This means they are contributing.
Why is Labour so determined to discourage this group? It is for this reason that THIS group in particular was leaving for Aussie in their droves during Labour’s 9 year tenure. You have to start acknowledging these things or you will not get elected back in. It is that simple.
Hey National chose to hike GST!
GhostwhowalksNZ – yes IDEA Services is a company wholly-owned by IHC, which employs nearly all of their front-line staff.
IHC has, the at least the last six years, adopted a very transparent policy of passing on the percentage MOH funding increase into the wage rates of these front-line disability support workers.
This year they have told us that their priorities are not wage increases but paying the increases in prices they have experienced in power, transport and groceries.
What about the increases in power, transport and groceries for the disability support workers? Who pays them?
John Ryall – I agree.
Spud – it’s not a done deal yet so you never know, maybe they will finally do what Labour didn’t and change the law so that there is an increase of GST on luxury items and make all raw/staple foods GST exempt.
Phil, you say “My view is that wages at the bottom end are too low.” And what brings you to that conclusion? If wages were too low there’d be a labour shortage but we face the opposite problem- rising unemployment. No matter how much the government raises the minimum wage people like Phil will always think it’s “too low” because of “inequality”.
This is because they don’t understand the concept of capital and the role the entrepreneur plays in directing capital to its most profitable uses. New Zealand’s wages are low because of New Zealand’s low capital stock and raising wages above market-clearing levels simply makes some people unemployable as their labour is not worth the price employers are forced to pay.
1. serious strategy around productivity
I see examples such as the mining option as serious strategy – New Zealanders need to let go of some of their precious views on “clean and green” – we still have much of the country that we can be proud of and conserve.
2. decent increases to minimum wage
I’ve never been to happy about the concept of minimum wage. I just think it makes it to easy for employers to set wages at this rate and diminishes the influence of supply and demand effect in labour.
3. reasonable pay increases instead of the current freeze
If a company has no additional revenue, how can it possibly pass on wage increases? If a company puts all its profits into wage increases, what is the incentive to own a company let alone invest in one?
4. tax relief for low and middle income Kiwis instead of Key’s ridiculous tax cuts for the rich.
Rebecca at 10.04 has said it all.
@theresaj I live on the West Coast. It was particularily bad last year with teh swine flu, if you went to the Hospital they sent you away to go to a GP (not sure if they can legally do this?)and unless you were very sick you had to make an appoinment 3-6 months into the future.
I live in an area where over the next decade many men are going to die very young from cancers etc that could have been diagnosed early, but due to the need to have an interview to get an appointment with a doctor it puts guys off as being to hard and a waste of time.
The latest is that the services in our DHB are being downgraded and they are going to send patients to christchurc. Which isnt that far away from greymouth, but up to 10 hours drive from some parts of the provence and if its in teh winter you have to drive over the southern alps.
Aussie looks very enticing, and drier at certain times of the year.
That figues, waterboy lives in rain country.
@Rebecca – It doesn’t help people like me, those who consider alcohol to be a food group.
Spud!!!!!
Indiana, what a sad contribution. I regularly spend time in Australia on business, my businesses not the pretend stuff playing with other people’s money from the comfort of a fat salary and expenses, and let me tell you the place is booming. But talk to any employer, and they will moan about red tape, and health and saftey, and the cost of employment, and the highly unionised workforce. And they all think they are way over taxed. Where they differ, is they tend accept the realities of business life and get on with making money and enjoying life.
@Rebecca.
I know what you mean. If I hadn’t been enrolled at the doctors I currently am I when I was a child, I would have been but on the waiting list too when moved back to the area. With 2 under 18mths at that stage and no car, it would have been impossible to get to another doctor. I was really lucky.
@ Rebecca & Mother – I just got sick of ringing round for Doctor for pregnant partner, finally got her to ring, and she started crying. Took three goes but got a “come down at closing time & we’ll see what we can do.” Tears will work eventually. Lucky, a good Dr too.
Myself I recently found out that I was biffed off the books after not going for 5 years?? But City surgery & Ropata can always find room with the production line doctoring.
If all those people in the $70-100,000 income group keep going to Oz, how come their numbers keep on increasing?
Jeremy that is just appalling! Yes I have found tears have worked too.
A mother- yes you are very lucky.
waterboy, I have relatives in Westport and that is precisely the case for them, an interview with a nurse to see if they can see a doctor on a saturday in a small window of time… many of them dread Greymouth Hospital not just because of the time to get there but the actual hospital.
There are certain things I dont believe we should compromise on…
Heath, electricity and water are three things which should be the same cost where ever you are in the country (electricity and water) and available (health). I just dont get why we cant offer bonding schemes for doctors. If you want us to pay you thru medical school then we will and in return you go where we tell you. I spoke to a trainee doctor who spent 3 months in Greymouth, he said he learned much more in his time than his fellow students who were in main centres. He saw bits of everything from day to day to heavy trauma.
@ Indiana. Yes this country needs serious strategy. But mining rocks for export is not it. That’s actually what I call a lazy strategy.
Would you like to mine a kilogram of raw silicon which sells for US$4/kg or would you like to design silicon based computer chips which sell for $US40,000/kg?
Everyone, we are seeing signs that NZ is a country which is gradually getting poorer year by year (although some individuals are of course getting wealthier year by year). Corners have to be cut on basics and things considered essentials scrimped on.
Time to make NZ a wealthy country.
Mining and exporting rocks might be one strategy. But its definitely not the one with the biggest payoffs or the least costs.
We do seem to be stuck in a “looking back” strategy. Many people and the Govt seem to think the past , or at least repeating it is the key to moving forward. Education is a prime example of this idea that education methods and assessment that “worked” 30 years ago must be right for “today’s young people”. Hogwash technology alone has changed the face of teaching and inside kids heads.
If mining is the answer, I have to ask, “what the hell was the question?”
The gap between Australia and here will be huge once the GST rise kicks in, and if we go ahead with this ETS scam expect more to go into bankruptcy, think of NZ as the Zimbabwe of the Pacific!
Rather than tax the hell out of voters, why not introduce the Robin Hood tax being promoted around the world, let the banks pay interest on their transactions so as to provide a cushion from the mistakes they make that sent the world into recession in the first place!
Tracey: If mining is the answer, I have to ask, “what the hell was the question?”
Probably something along the lines of: “What can we copy from Australia which we can do here, get done within one Parliamentary term, and share with a whole lot of our corporate friends?”