PARLIAMENT | PARTY | GRASSROOTS

Red Alert

Posts Tagged ‘jobs’

Keeping Kiwis in Work

Posted by Chris Hipkins on July 13th, 2009

Phil Goff and his team have done a great video clip on the number one issue facing New Zealanders today – jobs. He points out that over 1,000 kiwis a week are joining the dole queue and the rate of job losses is likely to be significantly higher. Phil argues that there needs to be a plan and there needs to be fresh ideas. The Budget and the Job Summit didn’t come up with either. The government has been missing in action when it comes to saving and creating jobs. Phil outlines some of Labour’s priorities, including investing in education, skills, research and development. All that in just over a minute…

Tags: ,
Filed under: jobs, labour
24 Comments

Has the Minister seen any reports…

Posted by Grant Robertson on July 6th, 2009

One of the favoured parliamentary question approaches of recent times has been for a government  backbencher to ask ” Has the Minister seen any reports of alternative approaches to dealing with the economic crisis” (or whatever issue).  This is followed by (often irrelevant and meaningless) comparisons to something a former Labour Minister said 20 years ago.

Well, for the benefit of the Ministers of Finance and Education, here is an alternative approach for dealing with the effects of the recession.  The Australian Government is providing training places at TAFEs (polytechnics)  for those who lose their jobs.  This is exactly what could have been part of the nine-day fortnight, or indeed  a stand-alone policy.  It recognises that if you are serious about improving productivity, training and skill development are the key. 

I am particularly taken with Kevin Rudd’s quote

The government cannot stop the global recession from bearing down on communities across Australia but it can reduce the impact by taking local action to support training and jobs.

John Key seems to understand the first half of that quote, but is a lot less focused on the second half, and NZ is the poorer for that.

Tags: , , ,
Filed under: education, finance
12 Comments

Who should pay for swine flu?

Posted by Darien Fenton on June 17th, 2009

With swine flu numbers escalating, there needs to be some resolution to the argument about who should pay for workers sent home because of suspected swine flu. Critical to preventing the spread of the virus is ensuring workers stay home when they have symptoms or are exposed others with the flu.

Factories and workplaces are now sending staff into home based quarantine where there is one or more suspected cases of swine flu among the workforce. In one case this week, a seafood processing plant sent its 100 factory staff home for three days but say they will not pay staff who have no sick leave entitlements.

Other workplaces, such as the NZQA who placed 29 staff members in quarantine took a different approach to ensuring the virus is kept out of the workplace by paying the workers full pay for the time off.

Unions are arguing that workers told to stay home because of swine flu should not have sick leave entitlements deducted and the employer should pay. The workers are not sick. They are fit and able to work and the decision to send them home is out of their control, so sick leave entitlements should not be affected.

Many workers have as little as five days sick leave entitlement per year and few workers can afford to have up to a week off work without pay.

On the other hand some employers say the only way they can deal with quarantining staff is to require workers to use sick leave entitlements when they are sent home. Others are saying the government should help because businesses can’t afford the losses and it is at the government’s direction that staff are being sent home.

As swine flu numbers rapidly rise, this will become a bigger issue. Employers do have a responsibility to their staff to protect their health and safety. The law requires employers to take all practicable steps to ensure the safety of employees while at work and employees may refuse to perform work that is likely to cause serious harm.

But what’s not clear is where the responsibility for the financial loss lies when workers are prevented from working because of the pandemic.

The critical issue here is reducing the spread of the virus and something has to be done.

What do you think?
Should workers or employers pay?
Or should the government be helping out?

Tags: , , ,
Filed under: consultation
14 Comments

What’s that sucking sound?

Posted by Phil Twyford on June 12th, 2009

Here’s another angle on the super city issue that hasn’t had any airtime in the public debate so far:  hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of economic output will be sucked out of Auckland’s peripheral cities.

Let me stress again that Labour is not campaigning against the super city per se. But one of the problems with the Government’s handling of the super city is their failure to front up and explain the costs of the project.  They’ve been clear that Auckland ratepayers will pick up the tab for the transition but much less forthcoming about what the transition will cost. So I commissioned an economist to come up with some numbers by re-modelling the Royal Commission’s numbers based on the Government’s preferred super city model. That research found that ratepayers will pay up to $750 each for the transition costs.   I also found that ratepayers in Manukau, Waitakere and North Shore will also face a hike in their water rates due to the imposition of volumetric pricing – that’s an extra $700 a year for a four-person family.

But these figures are dwarfed by the likely economic impact of the super city on the peripheral cities of Manukau, Franklin, Rodney, Waitakere and North Shore.  University of Auckland public economics lecturer Rhema Vaithianathan has used the Royal Commission’s modelling and adapted it to reflect the changes the Government plans to impose, to determine the economic impacts on the cities and districts outside of Auckland City. The Government’s plans will result in a massive centralisation of resources within Auckland City and the research shows how detrimental this will be to the other cities and districts economically and in terms of jobs.

Dr Vaithianathan’s work calculates:

Rodney: annual regional GDP falls by up to $74 million and 270 job losses
Waitakere: annual regional GDP falls by up to $139m, over 680 job losses
Manukau: annual regional GDP falls by up to $189m, 702 job losses
Franklin: annual regional GDP falls by up to $41m, 113 job losses
North Shore: annual regional GDP falls by up to $162m, 658 job losses

The negative economic impact is likely to be even greater than this analysis shows, as it is also likely that council contracts that currently go to small local businesses will be lost. These contracts will be centralised and will probably go to larger firms which can operate across the entire region.

I think the Government hasn’t been upfront about this, but Aucklanders deserve to know how the changes will affect them and their communities. Labour has consistently supported the idea of a unitary council but, like the Royal Commission, supports a model which gives local councils the powers and resources to deal effectively with local issues. This would lead to less centralisation than the Government model, fewer lost jobs outside of Auckland City and less loss of spending in local communities.

* Dr Rhema Vaithianathan is a member of the Labour Party.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Filed under: Auckland, democracy, education, local government, mt albert
19 Comments

Water staff get the jitters

Posted by Phil Twyford on June 10th, 2009

Council water staff in Auckland have been given a case of the  jitters  after Councils received a letter from the new integrated water company asking for lists of staff with their age, sex, CVs, salary levels and whether they are union members.

It is an odd approach to employment relations and certainly not one designed to give confidence and security to staff.

Integration of bulk water supplier Watercare with the councils’ water retail operations is one of the big planks of the whole super city scheme. It is likely the merger will  generate some efficiencies which over time may lead to job losses. But asking for age, sex and whether people are in the union? Crikey. You can only wonder that they are drawing up lists of staff and working out who might get the chop.

Watercare tell me there is nothing sinister about the request for info, which came as part of a much bigger due diligence request. They say that the information is needed to help them plan for what positions are needed. I reckon it is understandable that it has set alarm bells ringing with Council staff.  I think it is vital that the Transition Agency take a careful approach to managing the changes for local government staff. Staff deserve fairness and certainty.  Aucklanders also want to know that the new super city will have the skilled staff it needs to work effectively.  A slash and burn approach is not what is needed. Auckland Mayor John Banks blurting out that he thought 40% of council jobs could go, and Rodney Hide’s cabinet paper on local government reform which advocates a radical scaling back of Council operations, will add to anxieties that big job cuts are on the agenda.

Tags: , , , , ,
Filed under: Auckland, democracy, local government
1 Comment

Budget day

Posted by David Cunliffe on May 28th, 2009

Today is Budget Day. I will be flat tack working with Hon Phil Goff on Labour’s response. It should be a Jobs Budget. It won’t be.

This looks like being the budget of the Great Lie – the cancellation of the tax cuts that were the centrepiece of  National’s 2008 election campaign. You could even say that deception compromises National’s right to govern at all.

Expect this to be a conservative budget that wastes opportunities to put jobs and people first. It will compromise growth by failing to invest sufficiently in skills, innovation and productive infrastructure.

It will impose near-impossible assumptions of low or zero growth in Crown expenses in out years in order to make the long term fiscal picture look better.

The smoke and mirrors may hold off the ratings agencies for today, but in the long term will do little to address their core concerns that the NZ economy is not diverse enough, innovative enough or exporting enough to pay our way.

But the answer to that problem is a real plan for growth, skills and jobs – not the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff of government surpluses being used to offset the under-performance of the real economy.

Ironically then, the ratings agencies are closer to Labour’s view – gear up the engine and the fiscal balance will be easier to manage over time.

Kiwis are decent folks. They elected this government and they are happy to give them a fair go. But when they realise that the 3 years of tax cuts they were promised were NEVER going to happen, and that there is NO PLAN to take us out the other end of this recession – they will begin to ask whether they’ve done the right thing after all.

UPDATE: A “Standard and Poor” Budget

First impressions

This Budget has all the vision of a possum caught in the headlights of the world recession. It does nothing for jobs. Nothing for growth. No constructive new ideas. No positive vision. No game plan. At best “Standard” In reality ‘Poor”.

It manages to turn the debt curve down from a peak of 42% only by rosy assumptions like:

 - suspending Super Fund contributions for 10 years leaving a $30 billion  hole for our kids to pay

- permanent “deferral” of tax cuts – surely revealing the greatest electoral lie in modern NZ history

- capping government expenditure growth to a 1% per annum  (nominal – a real cut that impies a virtual wage freeze across the public sector)

- rosy growth assumptions of 2.1% by 2011 and 4% by 2013

- $2 billion of cuts over 4 years to government expenditure including:

- gutting innovation, skills and training – hardly a growth strategy!

- cutting back new funding for international trade

- the much heralded insul-fluff is only really $35 milion per annum of new funding – the rest is poached from Heath and EECA

All in all this is visionless rubbish that does NOTHING to lead NZ into a “brighter future”.

One is left wondering what the National government has been doing for the last 6 months.

Given the most serious crisis since WW2, NZ deserved better than that.

Tags: , ,
Filed under: Budget
14 Comments

Job Losses

Posted by Grant Robertson on May 15th, 2009

Tonight, during the Auckland Governance debate Bill English came down to the House and gave an angry speech bemoaning that he could not be in his electorate today so he could sympathise with workers laid off at the Bright Wood Sawmill. He blamed the Labour Party for this and suggested that we did not care about job losses. We do care, and our sympathies are with the Bright Wood workers.

But I have a message for Mr English- the reason you are still in Wellington is because your party is seeking to by-pass the democratic process, and push through the most fundamental changes to governance in our largest city under urgency. This means no opportunity for Aucklanders to have their say. Labour (assisted by the Greens, and from time to time the Maori Party) are the last line of defence for debate on this major piece of legislation. We have made the offer to National that the we will let the legislation go through , if they will send the bill to a select committee. But they have refused.

For Mr English, I have a suggestion. If he wants to talk to people who have lost their jobs- he can do that in Wellington. There are hundreds of public servants here who have lost their jobs in this town, at his hand.  Or do those people losing their jobs not count Mr English?

Tags: , ,
Filed under: Auckland, democracy, labour, national
3 Comments

Newer Entries »