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Posts Tagged ‘Skills’

Night classes and the value they bring

Posted by Chris Hipkins on November 8th, 2009

Last week I spent an evening visiting Heretaunga College night classes. When I organised a public meeting here in Upper Hutt some weeks ago many of the people who came along were keen for me to visit their classes so that I could see for myself what they were talking about. It was a real eye opener and upon leaving I was even more convinced that the National government’s decision to cut ACE funding is the wrong one.

The first course was an Intermediate Spreadsheets course. I spoke to just about every participant and they all had very good reasons for wanting to do the course, most of them were work-related. Interestingly, several were small business people who were trying to upskill. One guy I spoke to, a painter, told me that most of his customers now expect to get their quotes electronically. The old carbon copy quote book doesn’t cut it anymore, so he was doing the spreadsheet course so he could do email quotes.

The next one I visited was an Introduction to Computers course. Almost everyone there told me they were doing the course for work-related reasons, either so they could keep their job, get a better one, or in some cases, get off the benefit. Looking through their workbook I fail to see how anyone could argue that courses like this one don’t improve literacy and numeracy skills. They certainly aren’t hobby courses.

I visited a Day Skipper course for people who were interested in boating. Now this does fit the definition of a hobby course, but it’s actually providing a valuable public service. Which would you rather see the taxpayer subsidising, a cheap course or more search and rescue operations when amateur boaties get themselves into trouble?

My visits to a floral arranging course, a stained glass window course and a Spanish course all reinforced the tremendous social value night classes bring to the wider community. People felt connected to others. Several mums told me how important their one evening a week out of the house is for their mental health!

The National government have got this badly wrong. Bill English knows the value of night classes, when he was railing against CPIT and Te Wananga o Aotearoa (yes, remember that?) he went to great lengths to tell people National wouldn’t touch night class funding. So what’s changed Bill?

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Filed under: Skills, education
40 Comments

Ambitious for New Zealand?

Posted by Carol Beaumont on November 6th, 2009

Unemployment  is continuing to rise.   Grant’s post yesterday outlines the numbers and the human cost.  

We have  a Government supposedly ambitious for New Zealand.  That includes wanting to close to 30% pay gap with Australia.   Well a year on from the election where are the initiatives to invest in New Zealanders skills levels and where are the initiatives to increase innovation? 

Investment in skills,  at a time of increasing unemployment and in a country where we clearly have real skill gaps ( not just  in terms of literacy and numeracy but also in  the science, technical and trades areas),  is an obvious and important step for government.  The benefits accrue to individuals, to businesses, to families and communities and to our economy.  

Despite all of this there have been no new initiatives in the skills area and well thought through initiatives from the previous Labour government have been ignored.  Funding for adult and community education has been slashed and tertiary institutions are turning people away!  This is scandalous and far from ambitious.

What has happened to encourage innovation?  Compare the scrapping of R&D tax credits here with the major increases in this area in Australia as outlined here and commented on here.

The Government has  a supposed commitment to closing the wage gap with Australia.  This will not happen without investing in skills and in innovation.  The Government’s stated desire to lift productivity is nothing but hot air without major investment in these areas.  No wonder the Prime Minister was unwilling to state an actual target for closing the wage gap when interviewed this morning on Morning Report.

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Filed under: Unemployment
25 Comments

Speedmatters

Posted by Trevor Mallard on September 16th, 2009

Speedmatters is a good reference from the workshop on open source that Clare ran at conference. Shows a union that is prepared to put its money where the jobs will be and push hard for broadband.

Imagine if Telecom worked with the EPMU to produce this sort of thing rather than sacking hundreds of skilled employees.

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Filed under: Skills, blogs, comms & IT, conference, consultation, democracy, jobs, labour, redundancy, union, workforce
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Does Telecom care more about its land than its workers?

Posted by Clare Curran on September 11th, 2009

I got asked the other day by a senior practitioner in the communications industry (that’s PR) what I thought about the quality of management amongst New Zealand corporates.

I had to think about it, because, while I think there’s definitely a much higher awareness that good management = a happier workforce = a stronger bottom line and solid relationship with the community, many companies still don’t get it.

There’s a glaring example happening right now, where one of our biggest companies and most recognisable brands, Telecom, is engaged in a disgraceful attempt to cut its core labour force and turn what’s left into dependent contractors who have no choice about where they get their work, how much they can earn, and yet they have to buy their own vans, gear and take all the risk. While at the same time taking a pay cut. A pretty big one.

And today, 200 of them are being made redundant. For no apparent good reason. Basically to cut costs.

Apart from the workers, who will be affected? All of us. Because there’s less skilled workers to fix your phone faults and make sure you’re connected to a landline and to the internet. These are people who know their work, know the system. And they’re either being left on the scrap heap or being undermined and devalued.

Good management? I don’t think so.

And get this. Telecom appeared before a parliamentary select committee yesterday in Wellington arguing against a bill that aims to ensure land taken by the Crown for public works, and no longer needed for the purpose it was taken for, is offered back to Maori first. Telecom said they supported the principle behind the Bill, but that it could have “unforseen consequences”.

The NZ Herald article reported that:

The proposed amendments could result in Telecom being forced to offer back sites that form part of our network and that would be prohibitively expensive, or impossible to replace.

If this occurred we maybe unable to deliver telecommunications service to the areas served by those exchanges and sites.”

I’ve heard reports that there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of phone/internet faults in Northland and Auckland that aren’t being fixed because of the current strife being caused through Telecom’s current public relations nightmare.

Telecom could start thinking about its management culture. And its priorities. It’s not rocket science. The strength of any organisation, any business, lies in the people. Treat them well and your organisation will flourish. And we’ll all benefit.

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Filed under: Skills, business, comms & IT, parliament, redundancy, select committee, workforce
73 Comments

OCC v dairy workers – could be big one

Posted by Trevor Mallard on September 9th, 2009

There have been no major strikes  in the dairy industry in over 20 years. The union is generally seen as one that works very constructively with employers especially on productivity and literacy.

Enter Open Country Cheese (and especially Talleys who seem to have the worst industrial relations reputation in NZ).

They have attempted to compete with not only really favourable milk price arrangements but also with  lower wages than other companies.

The union has not been able to negotiate a fair industrial agreement. It has given 14 days notice of industrial action.

OCCs (Talley’s) response has been interesting. Their chair Laurie Margrain has called the industrial action “wildcat” – with 14 days notice – huh.

He has then called for the dairy industry to get the same level of recognition as an essential industry as the Police.  Even Kate Wilkinson isn’t that gulliable. But no offer to have binding arbitration as with the Police.

But now he has issued a lock-out notice for a six week period.

So we have moved from an industry where any strike action was terrible to one where the employer is going on strike for six weeks. Weird.

This dispute has the potential to be a very big one.

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Filed under: Skills, business, jobs, labour, union, waikato
31 Comments

Aussie loses rugby basketball but wins on wages

Posted by Trevor Mallard on September 3rd, 2009

John Key correctly identified the wage gap between NZ and Aus as an issue pre election. NZIER says stemming the flow of skilled workers to Aus will be vital to our successfully charting our way out of the current recession.

Yet John Key says his plan is for 2025, and in the interim the gap is increasing because his government is suppressing wages wherever it has a chance.

How can this make sense?

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Filed under: Pay Equity, Skills, business, economic, jobs, labour, national, redundancy, union
20 Comments

“There are not enough workers because we are not paid enough”

Posted by Trevor Mallard on August 14th, 2009

The title which is a quote from a very bright but underpaid woman just about sums up my morning which I spent with people who work with disabled people – both with intellectual and physical disabilities.

They work very hard and over long hours – often because despite the unemployment situation lots of people can’t or won’t do their work.

They administer medicines, toilet people, bathe them, care for their money, act as counsellors, and are regularly assaulted.

One guy worked 143 hours in the last fortnight and a woman 130. One couple had three nights together in a fortnight.

There has been a job evaluation using the Dept of Labour job evaluation tool. Three jobs that should be the same pay.

Disability support workers $28k – $34k, Therapy assistants $29k – $41k, Corrections officers $41k – $51k.

Why?  Women, brown and older.

Frankly while Labour made some progress in this area it was just not enough. The situation is disgraceful.

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Filed under: Skills, health, inequality, jobs, public services
21 Comments

Youth package where does the buck stop

Posted by Trevor Mallard on August 3rd, 2009

An important difference between the Labour and National youth packages is that under Labour someone, ie the school, was responsible for making sure the young person was getting training  (not that the training had to be at a school) – under Key’s proposal no one is and the most vulnerable kids will continue to drift.

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Filed under: Skills, economic, education, inequality, national, workforce
4 Comments

Steven Joyce has a problem

Posted by Clare Curran on August 3rd, 2009

It’s a bit of a worry when you’ve got $1.5 billion to spend on delivering ultrafast broadband to a big swag of the population (only to their streets mind you, not to their homes)  while many of the skilled workforce that you will  rely on to deliver it are being forced out of the industry.

And I do mean forced out of the industry. I’m getting a steady stream of letters and pleas from service technicians with 10, 20 and even 30+ years’ experience telling me that in six weeks they’ll have their income cut by up to two thirds. And they’re not joking! They’ve done the maths.

There is widespread panic and dismay in this industry and if ever there was a time for a government minister to be paying attention, now is it!

Sometime in the next few weeks Steven Joyce will have to take a deep breath and make an announcement about how to roll out the government’s $1.5 billion campaign promise to deliver broadband to the streets of 75% of NZers.

In the meantime, Chorus, Telecom’s network business arm, has decided to  turn 900 telecommunications technicians across Auckland and Northland from employees of two large resourced utility service companies into stand-alone “owner-operator” independent contractors with control of their work handed to a new sub-contractor, Visionstream.

The contractors will have to buy their own van and tools and take on greater financial risk in their jobs. Some workers have estimated it will cost them a minimum of $20,000 to get started. I’m now hearing that’s an understatement. And that’s not all, but I’ll be talking more about that in the coming week.

Cutting labour costs might suit Telecom’s business model right now (not sure I get that to be honest) but it’s not a good idea when public scrutiny is trained on the broadband rollout. Um, it’s the future!!

It’s very worrying that Steven Joyce doesn’t seem to understand what a skilled workforce is. In response to a question from me in the House on Thursday about whether the government was committed to a skilled workforce in the IT industry, he started talking about digital literacy. Well Steven it’s great that you want more people to have computers and to learn how to use them, but what about the workforce that will be installing the broadband and who fixes your phone faults? Do you care about them too?

Maybe his silence on this issue is because he thinks it’s a good idea for Telecom to be pushing a contracting model to severely de-skill and drive down labour costs at a time when Telecom is heavily lobbying for access to the $1.5 billion?

But beware Steven. It might look good on paper, but you might be being sold a pup. This is critical infrastructure we’re talking about. It’s your government’s big ticket item. It needs to be rolled out properly by a workforce that knows what it’s doing.

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Filed under: Skills, comms & IT, economic, workforce
69 Comments

Westminster Delegation – Day 3 Part 1

Posted by Carol Beaumont on June 25th, 2009

Again a full day including a meeting with a member of the House of Lords who should be on the stage!

A second meeting with officials in the Consumer Affairs area prior to the commencement of official proceedings was very helpful.  A White Paper covering a whole range of issues will be released in the next week.  There is a high level of understanding that in tough economic times consumer protection becomes even more important.  Possible changes include establishment of a Consumer Advocate role and the possibility of taking class actions on consumer issues. There are a range of avenues for consumers to seek assistance, possbily too fragmented. Consumer rights are often enforced at the Local Government level – not the way I think we would want to go.  Despite this there seems to be more concrete support for consumer rights.

A visit to the Olympic coordinating office was interesting and the useful learning for me was around how deliberately the legacy aspects of the Olympics are being pursued. A specific example is the deliberate use of such a large, substantially publicly funded project in upskilling local workers particularly from the 5 surrounding Boroughs which are among the most deprived in London.   We should do such things with publicly funded projects in NZ – how about the Rugby World Cup!  Sadly of course the skills areas is one of the most ignored by our Government with no new initiatives in this area in the recent Budget depite the benefits for individuals, communities and our economy.

There is unsuprisingly some emphasis on reform and modernisation of the political process here. One particular area is how to encourage  greater engagement of people in the political process . One idea that was mentioned yesterday which I am interested to hear more about is citizens initiated debates.  Also our briefing papers show some clear work in the area of young people and politics. So today I will seek to find out more for tomorrows report.

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Filed under: international
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