Trickle down jobs ‘policy’ fails young Kiwis
new-zealand-labour-party
Tue Jun 14 2011 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Trickle down jobs ‘policy’ fails young Kiwis
Tuesday, 14 June 2011, 5:14 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party
Jacinda
ARDERN
Employment Spokesperson
Darien
FENTON
Labour Issues Spokesperson
14 June 2011 MEDIA STATEMENT
Trickle down jobs ‘policy’ fails young Kiwis
National’s ‘trickle down’ approach to creating jobs is failing thousands of young Kiwis, say Labour’s Employment spokesperson Jacinda Ardern and Labour Issues spokesperson Darien Fenton.
“The best National can come up with in terms of a jobs policy is to say ‘just you wait and see, the trickle down from low interest rates will have an impact on employment levels’,” Jacinda Ardern said.
“Well, young people are sick of waiting. They have been waiting for two-and-a-half years since National came into office, and all they have seen is the jobless queue getting longer.
“They can’t tell us how employment law and welfare reform will do anything to help those young people already looking for work except to parrot their ‘magic’ word --- incentives.
“If John Key really doesn’t believe unemployment is the Government’s responsibility, why did he bother having a jobs summit and setting up a so-called ‘rolling maul’ of initiatives.
“The truth is that he lost interest in the whole issue when it became obvious his initiatives were never going to go anywhere.”
Darien Fenton said National’s cavalier attitude toward workers and employment was personified in Parliament today by Steven Joyce, answering on behalf of John Key a question on labour reform.
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“This Government is refusing to rule out re-introducing a youth minimum wage, making changes to collective bargaining or allowing the already spiralling wage differential between New Zealand and Australian workers to grow even larger as some sort of bizarre ‘incentive’.
“National should be embarrassed by its own absolutely dismal record on jobs,” Darien Fenton said.
“It is not interested in creating jobs. It is interested in making it as cheap as possible for employers to hire staff and as easy as possible for them to fire staff when its suits their purposes.”
ENDS
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