Lyndy McIntyre’s speech as part of the Stout Centre lecture series
What does it mean to have a good job? To make a difference? To provide a service? To be stimulated or even fulfilled? Lots of things make a good job.
Mostly people work to live: to put food on the table, to pay the rent. To ensure the power’s on and there’s money for the bus fare or that the car that’s needed for work is warranted and has enough gas to make the journey.
Ideally people work to lead decent lives and participate in society. What does that mean — to participate in society? It means having the time and the money to be with whānau and friends and to fulfill family and community obligations, attending a tangi or a funeral or enjoying a community event. Being able to go to a parent-teacher interview, having the money for children to attend school camps. To be able to think about a future. Not just surviving: not just being on the breadline, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year.
Some jobs are not so good. If a job doesn’t enable a worker to participate in society, because they work 60 hours a week just to make ends meet, or they can’t afford to do the things that others take for granted, then that’s a bad job.
But that’s what life’s like for many of the 80,000 New Zealanders on the minimum wage. And what life’s like for many of the 360,000 workers on pay rates between the minimum wage and the living wage. Who are these workers? They’re security guards and cleaners, they work in hospitality and fast food. Some work in retail. Jobs that were applauded as essential during the early days of Covid and are still essential today but are once again invisible.
Wages haven’t always been so low. I grew up in the 1950s and 60s — a time of relative prosperity in Aotearoa: with plentiful housing, near-zero unemployment and wages families could live on. Even the lowest-paid jobs attracted allowances and penal rates for evening and weekend work. Somewhere along the way, Aotearoa went from being one of the most equal countries in the OECD to one with pronounced inequality of incomes.
Who suffers from this inequality? Well, let’s think about cleaners: the invisible army who work all night when others are relaxing. Cleaners, who turn up in the early hours of the morning, leaving behind complicated childcare arrangements and piles of unpaid bills.
Before the 1990s, cleaners were paid well above the minimum wage. This was a world of national awards and an arbitration court where, in the mid-80s, commercial cleaners won a pay increase of nearly 30%. Union membership across Aotearoa was close to 50%.
It wasn’t all rosy before the 90s. By the late 1970s, inflation was on the rise and unemployment was increasing. But most New Zealand workers were guaranteed the pay and conditions of union-negotiated national awards or state sector pay arrangements. By the 1980s the winds of change were well and truly blowing, and neo-liberalism brought market-driven economic policies, the removal of tariffs and the corporatisation of public services.
In those days I was learning about unions on the job as a newspaper compositor and Printers Union member. In 1990 I took an organising job at the Hotel and Hospital Workers Union.
In May 1991, a new National government pushed through a radical industrial relations law, the Employments Contracts Act. The ECA shifted the balance of power, opening up wage bargaining to enable employers to impose lower pay and conditions on workers.
In our union, we saw pay rates spiralling downwards. Penal rates disappeared. Contracting increased and workers could lose their job every time a contract changed hands. For many, the new ‘normal’ was permanent financial insecurity. Union membership plummeted to around 12% in the private sector. Unions lost power and with that loss of power came a dramatic loss of ability to negotiate decent pay rises.
Over the next 20 years I worked for lots of unions and in 2011 I went back to my old union, now the Service and Food Workers Union. There I saw a marginalised workforce, struggling to make ends meet on poverty wages. One of those groups of workers was these parliamentary cleaners. Years of campaigning to lift their wages had failed. It was time for a different strategy to secure the power necessary to lift the wages of low-paid workers. Our union looked to the community to build that power together. And in May 2012 the Living Wage Movement was launched — a partnership between unions, faith groups and community organisations, united around the goal of winning the living wage.
There were many reasons for the launch of the Living Wage Movement and each one is in the stories of low-paid workers — workers like Mareta Sinoti. Mareta was to have joined us this evening but she’s had to travel to Samoa where her elderly father is seriously ill in hospital.
Mareta’s husband was unable to work because of ill-health. With two teenage sons, Mareta worked two jobs to support her family. First she cleaned the High Court in Molesworth Street. At midnight, she joined other cleaners at parliament to work all night for 10 cents more than the minimum wage.
Mareta worked hard. But the hard work wasn’t paying off. She struggled to pay the bills. Her son played rugby and needed new boots but there was no money. Mareta said she worked to provide: “All the things we need to give our kids an equal chance.”
Awhina Kawau was a customer services officer, working in a council venue. There were 5am starts and 9pm finishes, but the pay was very low. Pictured are supporters gathered at their local council to hear Awhina speak out for the living wage. With three children, Awhina and her husband couldn’t afford to rent and were living with extended family. Awhina said: “I want recognition for my work. Part of that recognition is a fair rate of pay.” People want to be valued. They want to be paid enough to live in dignity and have a life. That is a ‘better job’.
E tū member, Mele Peaua, has fought for decent pay for low-paid workers for many years in the Living Wage Movement and in the fight for fair pay agreements. The Fair Pay Agreements Act, introduced by Labour in 2022 was a chance to restore some of what was lost with the passage of the Employment Contracts Act, enabling groups of low-paid workers, through their unions, to negotiate minimum pay and conditions. But it was repealed by the current government a few weeks after their election.
For workers like Mele and thousands of others, the living wage offers a life better than that on the minimum wage. During the previous two Labour-led governments, we saw higher increases in the minimum wage, but this year is giant step backwards for low-paid workers.
In April the new minimum wage of $23.15 came into effect. This was a 2% increase – 45 cents an hour. MBIE’s recommendation was a 4% increase. Average movement in wages was 4.9%.
When the living wage moves to $27.80 in two weeks’ time, it will be $4.65 an hour higher than the minimum. That’s nearly $200 more a week — quite a lot more than the $12.50 tax cut for minimum wage workers.
Unlike the minimum wage which is based on political expediency and (maybe) the advice of officials, the living wage is based on robust research. The original rate was identified in 2013, by Charles Waldegrave and Dr Peter King, acknowledged experts in their field. Each year the rate moves by the average movement of wages, with a full review every five years. The Living Wage doesn’t offer a life of luxury, but it does transform workers’ lives.
And it’s good for employers, who point to better recruitment and retention, staff loyalty and higher productivity. And, of course, that it’s the right thing to do.
The living wage is good for the economy. Paying workers a living wage reduces the cost to the Crown of supplementing poverty wages. It reverses the ‘low wage/low productivity’ model of
economic growth we currently have in New Zealand. It means people don’t have to continuously live hand to mouth, but can lead lives of decency and purpose.
Since the launch in 2012, the Living Wage Movement has won the living wage in wealthy corporates like Ricoh and Vector; in smaller businesses like Hamiliton’s Braemar private hospital and Wellington-based Karma Drinks, and in local and central government. The entire banking sector has adopted the living wage, transforming the lives of contracted cleaners, security guards, café workers and others.
Remember the parliamentary cleaners and their fight for decent wages? In 2017 they won the Living Wage, along with parliament’s security guards and hospitality workers.
Mareta Sinoti moved to the National Library, where the living wage has also been won and it’s been won at Porirua City Council where Awhina Kawau was a customer services worker.
These wins don’t always come easily. Winning the Living Wage at Wellington City Council was an eight-year battle — not a battle to win over the community or the politicians, but a power struggle with the council’s CEO and senior managers, aided and abetted by the Taxpayers’ Union and the Chamber of Commerce who fought tooth and nail to protect their power to determine who moved from poverty wages to something that recognised their contribution — to a better job.
And, as long as workers struggle on low wages, the LWM has lots of work to do.
Right here in this building there are workers employed by Victoria University Te Herenga Waka who fall below the living wage. The university has 500 directly employed workers on less than the living wage.
Around 80 contracted cleaners were promised the living wage but are still waiting. Workers like Emmanual Okoli and May Sooialo – pictured at a recent inspiring campaign action in the university’s council chambers to win the living wage at Vic.
How do we assess an hour’s work of a cleaner, working all night while the family sleeps, or the security guard, stationed alone in the dark, protecting property, money and people? Or an hour’s work in an overcrowded cafe or behind the checkout counter?
What workers want and need is a wage that enables them to live in dignity and to have the time and resources left over after a hard week’s work, to participate: the living wage.
The living wage helps us answer the question: “What sort of society do we want to live in?” I hope it’s a society where workers are valued for the contribution they make and take home a decent day’s pay. That’s an investment in a better Aotearoa and in better jobs, so workers like Mele, Mareta and Awhina can lead decent lives and participate in our society.