It’s time to pay our essential heroes a dignified wage
Throughout the COVID-19 response, we have all relied on low-wage essential workers. Those who stack shelves, care for our most vulnerable in rest homes, and transport goods around the country have been putting themselves at risk to sustain the rest of us through lockdown.
Many of these essential jobs have been undervalued for too long, well before the pandemic, meaning many of these workers barely earn enough to live.
We believe these heroes deserve to earn a dignified wage.
Here’s our 3 point plan to help make this happen:
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Introduce law to enable Fair Pay Agreements for essential workers as soon as possible. These Fair Pay Agreements would set out specific minimum standards for wages and working conditions. They would create a framework for employers and unions to negotiate, and once agreed upon, would become legal requirements for all people working in that sector.
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Extend the living wage beyond core public sector workers to include contractors and government funded not-for-profit staff. This would mean workers such as hospital cleaners, would have their wages increased to a dignified, liveable wage.
- Set up a hospitality sector working group. This would bring employers, unions and Government around the planning table to get the industry on a more sustainable footing going forward.
Our essential workers are the heroes getting us through the COVID-19 crisis, yet for too long they’ve been undervalued and many barely earn enough to live on.
Sign on in support of our plan to ensure our essential workers are paid a dignified wage.
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“Ten years from now, New Zealanders will look back at the climate action their politicians took today. The Greens know we have a responsibility to that future, to do everything we can to ensure it’s flourishing.” - Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick.
The Green Party in Government has succeeded in ensuring we’re saving for a better future, by getting default KiwiSaver funds out of fossil fuels. But we know we need to go further and faster if we are going to truly tackle the climate change challenge.
We’re now proposing changing the rules for all public investment funds, so they stop bank-rolling big-money, big-time polluting fossil fuel industries.
You can get across the details on what what we’re proposing here.
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The Green Party wants to see substantive reform in four areas:
- Strengthening transparency and safeguards on donations to parties and candidates
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- Overturning the prisoner voting ban and giving all people in prison the right to vote
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