Friday, February 03, 2006

What's up with the Dominion Post?

Yesterday they criticised American foreign policy in the middle east. Today they have an editorial calling for a $12 an hour minimum wage now, and an end to youth rates:

The current minimum wage of $9.50 an hour for those over 18 delivers $380 a week. For 16 and 17-year-olds, the rate is $7.60 an hour. That is not enough to live on. According to the most recent Statistics New Zealand household economic survey, the average household spent $888 a week. The CTU says that leaves a one-income minimum wage household $508 a week less than the average household to survive on.
Does anyone have an explanation for the Dominion Post talking sense?

3 comments:

  1. Why not increase it to $150 and make us all rich?

    You think our manufacturers are struggling now wait until the minimum wage is increased. The recipients then won't have any wage at all - they'll be redundant.

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  2. Anonymous9:43 pm

    As a number of activists have been begining to mutter, $12 an hour is not really all that much.
    My pick is that Ross Wilson and the Dominion post are worried about the potential of the UNITE campaign to really ignite the currently docile labour movement and are seeking to kill it with kindness before it gets out of hand.
    If a sunstantial strike movement grows out of the wage campaign the Dominion Post will change their tune and stop "talking sense", Ross Wilson probably will too.

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  3. Gooner I don't care that much how our manufacturers are struggling; I hate our manufacturers. I've spent an entire bargaining session opposite a manufacturer imagining new and increasingly cartoonish ways for him to die (by the end of the day I was borrowing from itchy and scratchy - including the exploding present episode).

    Tenor Horn - there's probably some merit to that argument. But I'm just not convinced that's the conscience explanation they'd give, and I'm curious if there is a

    Although the world hasn't gone completely crazy - the Dominon Post was back pissing me off yesterday.

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