[情報] NZ - Minimum wage rises 50c
Minimum wage rises 50c in line with prices
4:00AM Tuesday Feb 10, 2009
By Simon Collins
About 120,000 workers on New Zealand's lowest wages will get a pay rise of
50c an hour on April 1.
The increase from $12 to $12.50 announced by Prime Minister John Key
yesterday is the smallest annual rise in the minimum wage since 2005.
The Unite union, which represents many minimum-wage workers in fast food and
other services, chose the same day to lodge a request for a
citizens-initiated referendum on whether the minimum should be raised to $15
an hour, and then to two-thirds of the average wage within three years.
But Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly said even a 50c
increase would have an effect on employment when recession-hit employers are
already struggling.
"Having said that, the Government's decision is pragmatic," he said. "I'm a
realist, and it's certainly not as bad as it could have been."
A spokesman for Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson said the Labour Department
gave the Government three options: keep the minimum at $12 an hour, raise it
to $12.50 in line with prices, or raise it to $12.65 in line with the average
wage.
The increase to $12.50 represents a 4.2 per cent rise. Consumer
prices rose 3.4 per cent and the average wage 5.4 per cent in the year to
December.
Cabinet ministers appeared divided over the issue a week ago, when they
deferred the issue until yesterday.
Mr Key said yesterday that they were "concerned that if the wage was to rise
too much there would be unemployment".
"Similarly, no raise at all in the minimum wage would have left the
lowest-paid, most vulnerable workers with no increase to offset the costs
that they are obviously bearing," he said. "I think we have hit the right
balance."
Alice Phillips, a cleaner at Rosebank School in Avondale who was on the $12
minimum until her union won a pay rise last August, said she was still
struggling on a wage which rose to $12.26 an hour and, from last month,
$12.64.
"What I'm getting now is just insufficient. I've even had to cut back a lot
more on groceries," she said.
Ms Phillips has gone from buying $40 of petrol to $20, buys only "the very
basics" at the supermarket and buys mince instead of steak "because you make
several meals out of it".
"The other day I went to the supermarket hoping I would only spend $50 for
groceries, but the cost actually went up. For the things I buy every
fortnight I had to pay $80."
Unite leader Matt McCarten acknowledged that he faced a challenge in trying
to raise the minimum to $15, but said the unions pushed the former Labour
Government into raising the wage from $9 in 2004 to $12 last year by
campaigning to "supersize my pay".
"We are going to do Supersize My Pay 2," he said. "We have to change the
debate. You've got to build up the community. This is not a passive thing."
But Mr O'Reilly said the referendum proposal was "utterly ideological".
"If you increase the minimum wage by that much at this time you would have a
very significant impact on employment."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10555868
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