Government appears leaderless in jobs crisis

The Mar­itime Union says imme­di­ate action is need­ed to stop the unfold­ing jobs cri­sis in New Zealand.

Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says he is con­cerned that the Gov­ern­ment appears to be “sail­ing in cir­cles” as New Zealand drifts fur­ther into reces­sion.

Mr Han­son says the Prime Min­is­ter should be tak­ing charge of employ­ment, rather than leav­ing it to an inex­pe­ri­enced Min­is­ter like Paula Ben­nett.

“Mr Key’s jobs strat­e­gy appears to be based around avoid­ing being asso­ci­at­ed with any bad news. Since we are hav­ing a lot of bad news at the moment, this means the Prime Min­is­ter has become vir­tu­al­ly invis­i­ble.”

Mr Han­son says the cause and the wors­en­ing effects of the glob­al reces­sion are due to the dereg­u­lat­ed free mar­ket poli­cies that Nation­al has pro­mot­ed, and as a result they had a “pas­sive approach” when an “active approach” was required.

Pos­si­ble solu­tions the Union was pro­mot­ing includ­ed a reduc­tion in work­ing hours with no loss in pay, extend­ing pro­tec­tions for casu­al work­ers, requir­ing that the pub­lic sec­tor pur­chased goods and ser­vices from local busi­ness­es, and pub­lic invest­ment in pro­duc­tive enter­pris­es that were expe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems due to the reces­sion.

Mr Han­son says that talk­ing about retrain­ing was fine, but on its own such a pol­i­cy was like a “three legged dog”, miss­ing the essen­tial require­ment for viable indus­tries that would employ the retrained work­ers.

“In recent weeks we have seen the dev­as­ta­tion of areas of man­u­fac­tur­ing as well as jobs evap­o­rat­ing due to tech­no­log­i­cal advances and out­sourc­ing to over­seas. The guts is being ripped out of the New Zealand econ­o­my as we watch.”

He says mass lay­offs from the pub­lic sec­tor were com­pound­ing the prob­lem and cre­at­ing unnec­es­sary dis­rup­tion and inse­cu­ri­ty sim­ply because Nation­al were “anti pub­lic sec­tor.”

Mr Han­son says the Mar­itime Union is con­cerned the polit­i­cal right-wing and pri­vate busi­ness inter­ests will soon launch a major attack on work­ers wages and con­di­tions to prop up prof­its.

“We already have a sub­stan­tial num­ber of peo­ple in New Zealand who are the ‘work­ing poor’, they were strug­gling in the so-called good times, and these peo­ple sim­ply have no per­son­al reserves to deal with the finan­cial pres­sures of unem­ploy­ment.”

“Work­ers will be expect­ed to pay for the reces­sion caused by irra­tional eco­nom­ic poli­cies that have led to inequal­i­ty and a deeply trou­bled soci­ety.”

He says suc­ces­sive Gov­ern­ments have pushed free trade ide­ol­o­gy as the solu­tion to New Zealand’s prob­lems, and now New Zealand was find­ing that rely­ing on one or two com­modi­ties with volatile inter­na­tion­al mar­kets was dan­ger­ous­ly naive.

Mr Han­son says that well paid, secure jobs could be cre­at­ed in the mar­itime and fish­ing indus­try, rather than dead-end schemes like the plan to fun­nel unem­ployed young peo­ple towards unskilled jobs such as the infa­mous “McDon­alds” scheme from WINZ.

ENDS

For more infor­ma­tion con­tact Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son on 021390585