Fairness at Work Rally- Wellington
Posted by Grant Robertson on August 21st, 2010
Great turnout on a sunny day in Wellington. Strong speeches from a range of people- but the two women who had been unfairly dismissed under the law were the most important for me. Good people, who were doing their best, and fired for no reason. Its just not fair.
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Great!
Fight fight fight! 
!
A Labour Department evaluation found that half of the small employers who hired new workers up to May this year used the trial period, and that 40 per cent of employers who used it said they would probably not have hired the people they hired without it.
There was no evidence that employers used the trial period as intended to hire people with “disadvantages”, except possibly for young people. Ten per cent of those hired under the scheme were first-time workers and 43 per cent were aged under 25.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10667838&ref=rss
“..but the two women who had been unfairly dismissed under the law were the most important for me. Good people, who were doing their best, and fired for no reason.”
Fired for no reason?, how do we know Grant, we have just heard one side so far.
If they were unfairly dismissed then they can take legal action. Technically, under this law as it stands they were not ‘unfairly’ dismissed. Unless of course you mean for moral reasons they were unfairly dismissed, but you really should make that clear, libel lawyers i’m sure have a good nose for these things.
“Fired for no reason???” It’s just that they weren’t told the reason. Otherwise maybe they were also hired for no reason.
@ Richard – Why would you hire someone for no reason?
Hehehe the Right Wingers know that Key has picked a fight he doesn’t need and it is going to drag on into an election year.
let me think…to employ someone an employer must need more bodies on the line doing the job and more pairs of hands at the wheel. That must mean that the employer has more jobs on than his current staff can cope with, and so needs to hire an extra person.
But wait – according to you, without this law, 40% of those employers requiring an extra person would simply have stayed short staffed and not hired anyone. Never mind that they would have been unable to fulfil their customer orders and meet production demands while shortstaffed.
Bottom line – employers who needed extra staff would have hired them anyways because not doing so would have meant not being able to keep up with customer demand.
@sweetd : the DOL evaluation only interviewed 13 workers, and more than 3000 employers. Of course employers are going to support it, because it encourages lazy sloppy management where they don’t have to bother treating workers fairly. One in five workers in the evaluation were fired within the first 90 days – that’s an alarming figure when you extrapolate it out to the 700,000 workers who start a new job every year. Then we have the poster-boy employer in the Herald today who says he has been in the Employment Court 7 times in 3 years and NZ’s system is “archaic”. That’s a record to be proud of – NOT!
Let’s hope this doesn’t turn like the ‘fired two weeks before Christmas’ video did.
What a debacle that was.
The stupid misguided Kiwi fools who abandoned Labour in 2008 in their thousands are now seeing the socialist light and will return to Labour in 2011 and beg forgiveness. Yeah right.
This is a very very popular policy and government
It looks like `Rent a Mob’ were out in full force.
Great headline in Herald , “Hundreds turn out for protest”.
the tally across New zealand as reported is less than a third the amount of people who turned out to watch Sonny Bill Williams play a low grade game of club rugby.
kind of puts it in perspective dosent it
Fight fight fight!
!
This issue, particularly the main highlighted one of the 90 Day law, hasn’t really touched most unionised workers, yet, as they are more likely to already be in a relatively secure job. The people it’s most likely to impact are young people who are just entering the workforce, and they are less likely to belong to a union.
In Auckland, especially for people working in the public sector,the issue most taking their attention right now is the shift to the super-city. This is a focus for their actual content of their work, as well as for their conditions of work and pay. For the latter focus they are looking to their unions for guidance.
I see INV2 over at Keeping Stock is confirming my previous observations on various Red Alert threads that Phil Goff – your leader – originally publicly supported this legisislation.
He was then over ruled by President Andrew Little.
Sorry I cannot do links.
“Stand up, Fight back!”
Hehehehe Jonkey and co. better gear up for this to drag on into election year
I doubt that Goff would support such a thing!
Loota – it’s pretty simple. A business the owner may decide not to hire a person even if one is needed if they believe that the quality of applicants is such that hiring one of them will be more hassle than it’s worth.
Just because you need someone doesn’t mean you should hire anyone.
For the record, I think Grant is focusing on the wrong part of the equation. Would the two women who were fired have even been given a chance if not for the probationary law?
They could have been given a trial run. Sigh, the sooner I get my cabinet together the better, we’ll have a lot of mess to clean up
Attended the Rally in Auckland. Well organised. Great speakers and entertainment.
Query. How do we motivate our young, our middle classes, our public servants and in fact everybody, to stand up and be counted.
Congrats to UNITE who seem to be doing a great job bringing the younger workers on Board.
Is it that there is a complacency we need to break about “things not happening to me” syndrom-
or
is it there was a lot of local sports finishing for the season on that particular day –
or
is it people don’t react now until they are hurt????
What about..people don’t think it’s worth getting your tits in a tangle about.
Jonkey has bought into a fight which will drag on into election year. Then we’ll see who’s tangling with who. Again I will say, proud of Dunedin who produced a march with 450-550 people, maybe even a few more, on Sunday.
This is an excellent, and IMO, the correct question.
I would suggest broadening the appeal of the march by making it a fun event, family friendly, certainly enjoy the militancy of the protest but make sure that it is much deeper than just that, have great informative speakers, make people feel welcome, included and their presence important. Difficult balance to make the experience strident and motivating without being too overwrought or aggressive but that is what is required if you want university and academic staff, workers who would like to bring their families, employees and relatives of all ages young and old etc.