Rich List will go down like a cup of cold sick

A 20 per cent increase in wealth of those on the NBR's Rich List will go down like a cup of cold sick with workers and beneficiaries battling rising costs, the National Distribution Union said today.

"Poverty exits in New Zealand only because we continue to tolerate it," NDU General Secretary Robert Reid said.

"This week has seen a heightened focus on cost of living pressures for low income New Zealanders and a week-long investigation www.google.co.nz/search of children going to school without enough food."

"But what has been this government's response to income inequality?

"A GST rise for the poor and big tax cuts for the wealthy, a miserly 25 cent minimum wage increase and a Finance Minister who talks up New Zealand's wage gap http://www.ndu.org.nz/govt_admits_defeat_nz_wage_gap_australia with Australia, rather than putting in place a plan to narrow it."

Robert Reid said that the Rich List wealth increase reflected a NZ Herald CEO Salary report in April www.nzherald.co.nz finding average salaries among those CEOs surveyed had shot up 14% from $1.4 million to $1.6 million in just a year.

He said that while the rich navel gaze today over who has jumped over each other to increase their place on the list, unions and community groups would get on with working to make life better for those on low incomes.

"The NDU is in the second week of member meetings around New Zealand where union members are hearing reports that while wage rates have risen 1.8 per cent for workers generally, union members have usually negotiated increases well above that."

"But even good wage settlements are being outstripped by inflation - a majority of our members are not being compensated for the 5.3% cost of living rise."

"To close the gap between the rich and the poor we need to see many more workers having access to collective bargaining to boost their wages, and to have a social security system that looks after people in need, not punishes them, as the government is foreshadowing," he said.

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