by Miranda Wilson in March 30, 2011 · Filed under Money
by Miranda Wilson in March 25, 2011 · Filed under Money, Politics
My mother has this friend a really nice lady who shall remain nameless because I am about to reveal her hourly rate. She works in the mental health field, some would say that she has personal experience lol! Here’s the thing she is only getting payed $13 p/h can you believe it! Now she is a single woman with no other income i.e no boy friend/husband/live in lover to help out with the costs. She’s not a stupid woman by any means as she has done several papers through the university of otago in counseling and passed with flying colours and she even did them through distance learning. Now her boss wants her to do an additional course, at a cost to her of $10,000 dollars and at her stage of life, not that she is that old lets say she is somewhere in her 40’s is not a debt that she wants to take on especially with the government making noises about making changes to the scheme and I think we all know know what they mean by that (charge interest) and for what maybe an extra$1 an hour if she is lucky! So instead of giving these tax cuts and raising GST that I’m convinced now stands for government sponsored theft why did they not put the minim wage up to $15p/h and given a subsidy to all workplaces that would have been affected for around 6 months? It would have stimulated our economy, brought us a step closer to Australia (remember that election promise?) and narrowed the wage gap between rich and poor. It could possibly reduce the amount of people who are reliant on help from WINZ another saving for the government. So if someone from the government happens to be reading this can you please explain why this would not work?
In response to Rachel’s earlier comment here is a quote straight from the department of labour web site
There are three minimum wage rates:
- the adult minimum wage applies to all employees aged 16 and over who are not new entrants or trainees
- the new entrants minimum wage applies to employees aged 16 and 17 except for those who have completed 200 hours or three months of employment, whichever is shorter; or who are supervising or training other workers; or who are trainees
- the training minimum wage applies to employees aged 16 and over who are doing recognised industry training involving at least 60 credits a year.
There is no statutory minimum wage for employees who are under 16 years old.
There is also job op’s:
Job Ops targets unskilled 16 to 24 year olds with low or no qualifications who have limited employment opportunities. It will pump $20 million into funding around 4000 entry-level jobs.
Also Job Ops will subsidise employers $5000 for each young person hired into an entry level position for six months. This consists of an upfront payment of $3000, with a further $2000 paid once the person has completed six months in the job.
These are all things targeted to help youth into the workforce and don’t get me wrong I don’t begrudge them the help that is being offered in fact I think the government should be offering more incentive to employers to take on employees. But why put an age cap on it? Why not make it in relation to skills? If you have limited skills in a field that you want to get into would it not be better to give a more attractive package to an employer to take on that person and train them with some on the job training as apposed to a fully qualified person? This would make things more evenly spread between age groups and would also act in upskilling our workforce?
. However the minimum wage went up 70%! Prior to this when National was in power the minimum wage only went up 14% over 9 years and unemployment was a lot higher in those 9 years than the next 9 years that followed. Now you can see the trend of the unemployment rate increasing again is history doomed to repeat itself? or will people wake up and learn from the mistakes of the past I guess time will tell.