For the seventh year in a row the Government’s health budget is well short of what is needed to cover increasing costs, demographic changes and new policy initiatives.
CTU President Richard Wagstaff addressed the International Labour Organisation (the United Nations agency for work and employment) on Tuesday to focus global attention on the New Zealand government’s failure to protect working people in the face of the massive payroll systems failure that has left as many as three quarters of a million working New Zealanders out of pocket.
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karangatanga maha, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou koutoa
I want to use this occasion to talk about the importance of the Labour Inspectorate function in enforcing ILO instruments.
Fresh analysis of documents released this week show that MBIE pushed to keep secret the significant underpayment of up to a third of New Zealand workers under the Holidays Act, costing affected workers up to $500 a year while the issue remained unresolved.
Today the Minister of Finance, Bill English, has delivered the National Governments 8th consecutive Budget and working people are underwhelmed and disappointed.
The Government’s health budget will need to increase by $691 million just to maintain current levels of service.
The New Zealand Herald has released data today showing that our highest paid executives had a pay rise of 12% in 2015. In contrast most working Kiwis had a pay rise of 2.2% over the same period.
Working people are calling on the Government to significantly up their game in job creation, following a big rise in people looking for work.
CTU Secretary Sam Huggard says working people need to see a better plan from government to create jobs.
This Workers Memorial Day, April 28th, we remember the 99* New Zealanders who went to work and never came home, the 99 New Zealanders who were killed at work.
“Workers Memorial Day is a sombre day. We remember those whose lives would have been saved if their workplaces had been safer. All of these deaths could have been prevented,” CTU President Richard Wagstaff said.
The Council of Trade Unions says that Deputy Leader of the National Party, Bill English needs to apologise to working people after his reprehensible comments made about working people being useless.
Following on from two large-scale redundancies announced in the past two weeks, new analysis out today from the Reserve Bank shows increased migration is contributing to the reason so many people are out of work.
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions knows that high quality, worker-centric health and safety representative training programmes are a key to safer work under the new Health and Safety at Work Act. The new Act comes into force today and heralds some significant improvements in the health and safety space – including new powers for Health and Safety Reps (HSRs).