The minimum wage needs to be increased by more than 50 cents, believes Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff.
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Woodhouse announced on Tuesday the minimum wage rate will increase by 50c to $15.75 from April 1 and would benefit 119,500 workers.
It was also announced the starting-out and training hourly minimum wage rates will also increase from $12.20 to $12.60 per hour, remaining at 80 per cent of the adult minimum wage.
While a 50c increase is a step in the right direction, Richard says it's a small step towards a fairer New Zealand 'which working people are telling us they need”.
'People who are earning the minimum wage need a wage to live on. Too many working Kiwis are paid the minimum wage because people aren't able to negotiate collectively.”
Pointing to Statistics NZ Data, Richard says the number of people who'll be directly impacted by the rate rise is in fact more than 200,000, and because of this figure, a change in the calculation of the minimum wage is needed.
'The minimum wage needs to be two-thirds of the average wage, this would make it much fairer - two-thirds of the average wage would be $19.88 per hour.
'Working people have been advocating for this change as a way to make real and measurable progress in improving the lives of some of our poorest families.”
2 comments
here we go again
Posted on 25-01-2017 20:12 | By old trucker
Thats miles to much for a kid to start Gosh some Companies are struggling to make wages and this on top,STRESS,see is if they would start on 2 shillings a hour,(dont think so Tim) and im 37,gosh, next thing they will want to work 2 days and have 5 off,take a hard pill and thank your lucky stars you have a job, be GRATEFUL for what you get, im sure your boss would give you a rise if you deserve it, EG,.all ways be on time, do your best, keep your nose clean, it will be noticed,deadwood is easily cleaned out, I saw this in
Andrew B
Posted on 09-02-2017 14:09 | By abestic9
This isn't about kids. 15.50 is $527 a week after tax, and with the weekly rent quickly approaching $300/wk for a reasonable structure, that leaves $227/wk for utilities, food and trying to scrape together some savings. We need to stop this weekly living mentality. It's easy to say you got by on $5/hr "back in the day", because college may have costed $5000 all up. Times are different. It's been proven time and time again that business owners don't care about employee wellbeing, legislation needs to step in.
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