Phil Goff Labour Party Leader
13 October 2010 Speech Speech to the National Distribution Union Wednesday 13 October 2010 at 10am

Thanks for the invitation to be here with you. Not since the days of the 1990s National government have working people been faced with such serious threats to their jobs, living standards and rights in the workplace.

The Government is undermining fairness at work by taking away your rights not to be unfairly dismissed.

It is cutting your rights to union access representation.

Price rises, including government imposed costs, have raced ahead of wages, and the across the board GST rise, which they promised they would not increase, has pushed prices up still further.

This is all happening while those at the top get tax cuts that shift a larger share of the tax burden onto you.

It isn’t fair. It isn’t good for New Zealand. And it isn’t what hard working families need.

With your support Labour will do something about it.

Today I want to talk to you about the changes the government is inflicting - and I want to say a bit about what Labour is going to do.

New Zealand is going backwards, when we should be going forwards.

Things are getting worse when they should be getting better.

National has put the recovery on hold.

Jobs have been lost and unemployment has been going up.

That wasn’t inevitable.

We should be coming out of recession now.

We are getting record prices for our commodities like dairy.

Our biggest trading partners, China and Australia, are growing strongly.

Last month Australia added 50-thousand new jobs.

They have created over a quarter of a million jobs this year while New Zealand has been shedding jobs, with unemployment here up 20,000 in the last quarter.

While wages are rising in Australia - the opposite has happened in New Zealand.

Incomes in New Zealand have fallen by $9 a week since last year, according to Statistics New Zealand just last week.

And that was before John Key increased GST.

The Department of Labour reported that over half of New Zealand workers hadn’t had a wage rise last year, while prices have been going up.

Petrol, electricity and food prices are all up. So too are ACC levies, insurance premiums and doctor’s fees and early childhood education costs will go up next February.

And the latest forecasts say prices are going to keep going up next year ahead of wages.

Where’s your recovery?

Last year a lot of people gave National the benefit of the doubt because of the difficult world economic conditions when they took office.

But we should be coming out of recession after two years.

And it’s time to hold the National Government to account.

John Key promised an ‘aggressive recovery’, but for New Zealand workers there’s been no recovery.

There’s a reason the recovery has stalled: The National Government doesn’t have a plan that will create a stronger economy with higher incomes and better jobs.

Working people have done their bit to keep the economy going, and businesses afloat during recession.

Wage and salary earners have copped lost jobs, pay cuts or zero wage increases, and fewer hours worked.

In these tough times people have looked to the government for support.

They’ve hoped for strong and creative ideas from the government to bring back jobs.

But we’ve been let down.

What was their plan?

First it was going to be a Jobs Summit.

Then it was the national cycleway.

Then they were going to dig up our National Parks.

And now the Prime Minister says that he’s optimistic about recovery because… it’s summer.

That’s all he has to offer 160,000 Kiwis out of work.

There is no more evidence that summer will do the trick than there was ever evidence that the jobs summit or the cycleway or mining protected areas would do so.

Kiwis have had enough of the gimmicks like that.

Instead of action for jobs, what we’re getting from National is the biggest attack on the rights of wage and salary earners since the last National government of the 1990’s.

They’re stripping back your rights to meals and rest breaks.

And they’re weakening the rights workers have built up like the fourth week’s holiday leave, and sick leave.

All National’s ideas have one thing in common -they make it harder for Kiwis to increase their incomes and get ahead.

That’s the wrong way to go.

Labour wants better jobs and higher incomes for New Zealanders, and we want to make sure we give everyone a chance to get ahead.

One of the first things the National Government did was introduce its ‘fire at will’ law.

National calls this a trial period but employers can already do that, and dismiss a worker if there’s a good cause.

Under National’s new law what changes is that you can be sacked without any good reason and with no rights to challenge unfair dismissal, during the first 90 days after you start a new job.

You don’t even have a chance to put your case.

You don’t have to be told what you’ve done wrong.

And no matter how well you are performing, you can be sacked.

That’s creating real unfairness, like the Christchurch office manager who was fired after 87 days.

She was taken on to sort out the company’s office system, which were chaotic and they gave her a low paid clerical assistant to help. But as soon as she got it in order, she was sacked and the lower paid worker was kept on.

She took on the job in good faith and did it well, but there was no good faith on the employer’s side.

Or the new worker in a burger bar who asked for a thirty minute lunch break instead of the ten minutes she was being given.

She had passed all the training courses with flying colours and told how good she was right up to the time she asked for her statutory entitlement to a half hour lunch break.

She was fired with no rights under National’s 90-day law as well.

And take the changes on sick leave.

They say it’s reasonable to make you produce a doctor’s sick note if you are off work for a single day.

That suggests that you can get a doctor’s appointment on the day you are sick which generally isn’t possible.

When we asked what advice the government had been given about why this was necessary or whether it was practical - they couldn’t tell us.

Let me make a pledge to you today.

As a matter of urgency, once we become government we will repeal National’s obnoxious legislation that takes away fairness at work.

Labour will protect vulnerable workers and preserve fundamental rights in the workplace.

We cannot lift incomes and create a better future by driving wages and conditions down.

Labour wants high skill, high wage and high productivity workplaces, where everyone gets a chance to get ahead.

Australia doesn’t try to compete with New Zealand by paying people less.

They pay people more!

That’s why so many talented New Zealanders have been going over there.

And we shouldn’t be trying to compete by cutting or holding wages down.

If we’re going to pay people better and create the new jobs we need, then we’re going to do things differently.

Labour is going to move on to a new economic direction.

It’s the Labour Party conference this weekend.

And I’m going to be talking there some more about our plans.

I’m going to talk about how we make the economy stronger, how we make it work for you, and how we make it fairer, too.

I can tell you today that we are going to have a fairer tax policy.

Under National’s tax changes the top 10% of income earners get 42% of the money. The bottom 26% have to make do with 2% of the money available for tax cuts. The rich get richer and the poor poorer.

People on the bottom need a hand up but people on so-called middle incomes need a fair go as well.

That will require people dodging taxes or paying low rates of tax on very high incomes having to pay their fair share of taxes.

Last year Labour MP Darien Fenton tried to get parliament to agree to a higher minimum wage.

It would have moved, over time, to $15 an hour.

The National Government voted it down.

They say that a higher minimum wage causes unemployment.

But they are wrong - When Labour was in government we increased the minimum wage - nine times. And unemployment didn’t increase.

It fell to record low levels.

We had the lowest rate of unemployment in the developed world.

One of the problems with the current recession affecting groups like retailers and the building industry, is that when workers don’t have money in their pockets, that affects small businesses which provide goods and services.

And so I can tell you today that if Labour wins government, I will promote that minimum wage bill.

Wages will rise.

Not just for those at the bottom.

Increasing the minimum wage also helps move up wages for those above it, too.

But we’re not just going to increase the minimum wage - we’re going to extend coverage of it too.

Labour will extend protection for workers who are employed as contractors to make sure they are paid the minimum wage as well.

It was reported on TV’s Fair Go that adults and children were being employed as independent contractors at rates of pay a fraction of even the minimum wage.

National voted down protection for those workers.

Labour wants a fairer economy, not only because a fairer economy is good for working people - it’s good for the whole economy.

Fairness is one important part of the mix, but it has to be matched by more jobs and strong policies to lift our incomes.

So we are going to invest in the fundamentals that create jobs.

We need an economy based on promoting savings, and creating more funds for investment, promoting skills and promoting investment in research and development. Promoting a clean, green, clever economy means we can take advantage of the areas in the world economy which are growing fastest.

New Zealand needs a long-term view of skills. Take the building industry - currently in its worst recession in decades.

Too few apprentices are being taken on and we’re losing skilled workers to Australia. But at the same time the industry estimates we are building five to six thousand fewer houses than we need, which in the future will create a housing shortage - at the same time as we will have a skill shortage across the construction industry.

Rents and house prices will soar as a result. Rents in Auckland, according to Barfoot and Thompson, have already gone up $22 a week from this time last year. That would have more than eaten up many people’s tax cuts.

Imagine the difference we could have made to the current recession with a short-term housing stimulus tied to training.

The Government should also consider tying training requirements in with contracts for earthquake recovery work in Canterbury as well.

Within a year the country will be going to elections. Working people will have a real choice – the current National Party which governs for the privileged few and not the many.

Or Labour, which is committed to giving working people a fair go – decent working conditions, a strategy for growth and jobs, and a commitment to wages rising faster than prices.

To achieve that we need both wings of the Labour movement working together. We want and need your support. Together we can create a fairer and better New Zealand.

ENDS

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