kerr switches sides?
Heard Roger Kerr on Nat Rad this morning and nearly drove clear off the road.
He seemed to be saying that he thought workers should be paid what they were worth. While I'm sure our ideas of what workers are worth differs he specifically said if employers want workers to do something extra then they will have to pay them extra. What happened to all the moaning about time and a half and a day in lieu on public holidays??
Who has stolen Roger Kerr and replaced him with a taller Ross Wilson? I can only assume someone gave him happy pills for Xmas and he is still taking them.
3 comments:
This is the neo-lib/con dilemna: Throughout the nineties, and the eighties, wages for basic workers rose nowhere near as fast as corparate wages.
Corporate wages appear to still be rising, in fact.
Is someone earning $300,000 dollars as the CEO of one corparation and sitting on the board of five others earning $60,000 for each really doing so much work that someone working 50 hours a week doing cleaning for a whole year only deserves a small fraction of what they earn? In terms of mental and physical output, no. Given how poor corparate returns are, (but how they still always get their bonuses) perhaps they should take a good hard look at themselves. When you look at the US and they are talking about corparate wages in the billions, you know who is really ripping off the American public.
Wages will not rise with a national party government, because they are determined to have us compete against the poorest workers in the world, who are working in sqaulid conditions.
Roger Kerr is trying to solve this problem through moral co-ercion, when we all know that that is communism.
Span - Roger I am sure has remained totally consistent, in that he would oppose the state deciding for all employers how much extra, if any, they should pay on certain holidays. He would say it is a matter up to each employer and employee to work out.
Stephen - labels such as neo-lib/con dilemna really are not a substitute for reasoned argument.
Wages have nothing to do with how much people "deserve". They have tried inventing systems where some central group of people decide how much everyone should get paid and they failed miserably.
Wages reflect how much an employer is willing to pay. If there is a shortage like radiographers they end up getting paid a lot more. Theresa Gattung does far more to *deserve* her salary than sports and movie stars do, but the simple fact is no one has a better method than letting employers decide for themselves how much to pay.
Average wages did in fact rise considerably ahead of inflation under National - this is a documented fact.
As for having wages compete against the poorest workers in the world - does this mean you think workers in poor countries should not be work at all and be banned from competing?
David - My understanding was that wages for those earning under 60,000 dollars dropped once inflation was taken in to account. The increase in wages mostly went to corparate types.
An interesting measurement that I would like to study formally would be overall wages throughout the nineties, taking gross wages and dividing by all people, including the unemployed, and also seeing what happens to this as you take out the top levels by "deciles"
"Wages have nothing to do with how much people "deserve". " - Well I guess no system is perfect. I assume Don Brash will be trumpeting this fact in debates with Helen Clark, to all the workers out there? I understand the Capitalistic theory, it just doesn't wash, with Kerr's attempt to try and get Employers to pay more. Employers in NZ have shown on several occasions they don't like to invest in their future, in particular their employees (think the building industry complaining of their being a lack of trained builders around)
What can we do about it? I am wary of unneeded redistribution programs, or a central wage setting, but market forces aren't even the best system around. Market need for Radiologists might give them high wages, but they take a long time to train, so there won't be a greater allocation of resources, just a greater reward for providing them. This doesn't help people in need of Radiologists. Government does need to intervene sometimes, if only because it is able to keep a sentient eye on the country, rather than rely on some false concept that says people are inherently rational, and blessed with perfect knowledge of the future and all things scientific.
"but the simple fact is no one has a better method than letting employers decide for themselves how much to pay."
I find it hard to disagree with this, except that following the principle will have negative impacts on society, as I see it. I think people working on low wages should have easy access to health, education and other social services.
"s for having wages compete against the poorest workers in the world - does this mean you think workers in poor countries should not be work at all and be banned from competing?"
I support Free trade and open markets, with the caveat that this should be done on a fair and reciprocal nature. Fair means minimum standards of employment for all workers. We should not subsidise third world slavers.
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