National's plan for a low wage economy

CTU says that announcements from John Key this morning confirm that National's plan for our economy is the low wage, race to the bottom tactic relying on cheap labour as a competitive advantage.

CTU President Helen Kelly said "National is determined to weaken collective bargaining, which is established internationally as the most effective way to raise wage levels. Allowing employers to opt out of multi-employer agreements makes the most effective agreements for raising wage levels harder to achieve. National also wants to take away any duty on employers' part to conclude a collective agreement, further tipping the table in favour of employers and low wages. The removal of the requirement for non-members to be covered by the collective in the first 30 days of employment undermines the collectives in place and places another barrier to collective coverage and union membership."

"National is undermining New Zealand's collective bargaining. It will lead, as it did in the 1990s, to a low wage economy, and as in the 1990's won't help create new jobs."

"There is no incentive in these proposals for employers to pay good wages, and increase their productivity. This is a recipe for a low wage, low value economy."

"The Starting out Wage is nothing more than a shorter term youth rate. Recent DOL research showed that raising the 16-17 year old minimum wage in 2008 resulted in no increase in unemployment because it encouraged more young people into education."

"Cutting wages will not reduce our high youth unemployment. Only better policies to stimulate employment generally, and focussed assistance for young people will do that. At the same time National is proposing reducing the quality of training that is required for young people by allowing them to be paid the training rate for only 40 instead of 60 credit points."

"Partial pay reductions for partial strikes is unfair and takes away the option for employees to undertake action like 'work-to-rule' and overtime bans. These are valid forms of collective action during negotiations and is this proposal is yet another way that National wants to weaken employee bargaining ability," said Helen Kelly.

"New Zealanders have a clear choice on November 26 between National and a low wage economy or a Labour led government with a plan for a high wage economy."

ENDS

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