Discussion
Rather than passing policy with the goal of lifting wages above livable benefits, the 1990s Nats cut benefits. Then they continued the work of the Rogernomes, corporatising public services, and selling off as many chunks of corporatised public infrastructure as they could.
Leading to more job losses, and more families struggling on unlivable benefits. While employers used the ECA, and the threat of now impoverishing benefit levels, to screw down wages towards those impoverishing levels.
(4/4)
Ruth Richardson, and social welfare minister Jenny Shipley, still try to justify these cuts to this day, by complaining that benefit rates were too close to wages. A problem they could and should have fixed by lifting wages, not cutting benefits to obviously impoverishing levels.
Especially given that unemployment was ballooning. Thanks to huge numbers of jobs being wiped out by the 1987 stockmarket crash, and the corporatised public service bodies created by the Rogernomics govt.
(2/?)
But not only were the Nats doing nothing to increase the number of jobs available or the rate of pay for workers, they were doing the very opposite.
First they passed the Employment Contracts Act. Criminalised most forms of worker organising, and dismantling the system by which workers - through their unions - negotiated pay and conditions for entire industries.
Despite weak reforms by successive Labour govts, most of this is still in place. A major reason for the wages gap with Oz.
(3/?)
Rather than passing policy with the goal of lifting wages above livable benefits, the 1990s Nats cut benefits. Then they continued the work of the Rogernomes, corporatising public services, and selling off as many chunks of corporatised public infrastructure as they could.
Leading to more job losses, and more families struggling on unlivable benefits. While employers used the ECA, and the threat of now impoverishing benefit levels, to screw down wages towards those impoverishing levels.
(4/4)
"The changes this bill heralds, are revolutionary; do destroy the traditional relationship between workers, unions and employers; are the beginning of a spiral of poverty for many in this country."
#AngelaFoulkes, CTU, speaking about the bill that became the Employment Contracts Act in 1991. Quoted in Juggernaut 2, ep 2;
"NZ unions once had a privileged legal status by international comparison. Now they've got fewer rights than any country in the OECD."
Juggernaut 2, ep 2
https://thespinoff.co.nz/podcasts/juggernaut
Not sure if this quote is from Helen Kelly or her biographer Rebecca Macfie. Nor if it's from the ECA era, or still current.
But keep in mind the OECD includes the US. At some point since 1991, workers had less protection of our rights to organise unions in NZ, than in the US.
(1/2)
Most of the workers' rights removed by the ECA were never restored. Union membership and activity remains relatively low. Despite the best efforts of some very committed union organisers and supporters.
Two generations of kiwi workers have come into the workforce since the ECA. Many of whom have no experience of union membership, and no awareness of what unions are, or why they might benefit from joining or organising one.
(2/2)
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