Annie Newman is the National Convenor of the Living Wage Movement Aotearoa NZ. CAFCA is a member. And both CAFCA and the Anti-Bases Campaign are committed to paying the CAFCA/ABC Organiser the Living Wage (currently $20.20 per hour). Ed.

With a major victory under our belt, the Living Wage Movement has now set its sights on central Government to deliver its employed and contracted staff a minimum Living Wage. The Living Wage Movement formed in 2013 and after four years has succeeded in getting Wellington City Council to agree to becoming accredited, which means no less than $20.20 per hour (at current levels) for some 3,200 workers in the Council and its Council-controlled organisations (CCOs) who are either directly employed or delivering services through regular and ongoing contracts, such as cleaning.

Further, Auckland Council, with a somewhat surprising majority in favour of a Living Wage delivered at the 2016 local body elections, is also well on the way. The recent Annual Plan resulted in a 17/3 vote in favour of paying directly employed workers across its business (including CCOs) at least a Living Wage. More than 2,000 workers will benefit from increases of up to 28% - unheard of in modern collective bargaining (the Christchurch City Council voted, in August 2017, to implement the Living Wage, but only for its actual staff, not the workers of Council-controlled organisations. It has requested a staff report into how the Living Wage could be extended to these workers. Ed.).

If unions are to move beyond the meagre increases of 0-3% that have dominated bargaining in the last 25 years, new tactics must supplement the old in the struggle against the age-old exploitation of workers. The victory in the Kristine Bartlett equal pay case, initiated by E tū, will raise wages by up to 30% for some 55,000 “care and support” workers – not to mention the flow-on effect for other female-dominant sectors, such as school support staff and women’s refuges. This action tackles head on the persistent inequality for women in female “ghettoes,” where women’s work has been traditionally undervalued and underpaid.

A Different Response To Poverty

The Living Wage Movement is a different response to the growing poverty of workers who are the victims of a repressive employment relations regime. Not only are there constraints for unions but the bargaining framework excludes negotiating with the real “employer” who funds workers’ wages. These are the contracted out, franchised, temporary, and labour hire workers whose employment is at the mercy of a competitive tendering process where the principal service provider, such as a government, university or licensing trust, abdicates responsibility while holding the purse strings. Work is not a way out of poverty any longer.

The Living Wage is the income necessary to provide workers and their families with the basic necessities of life. It is determined independently by the Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit, which updates it on the basis of average wage movements annually and reviews the rate every five years to ensure its foundation research is sound.

This has now become a benchmark for 80 businesses which are accredited Living Wage Employers and provides union advocates with a legitimate, if bold, wage claim in bargaining. While not yet meeting the four criteria for accreditation, King Salmon and Hubbards Foods have both given significant, above market, wage rises to their staff in collective bargaining as a result of the aspirational goal of creating a Living Wage workforce. 

Detractors have been few (the Treasury being one) and tend to rely on the arguments that it doesn’t target the poorest; and results in benefit abatement impacting on its real value. Anna, who recently moved close to a Living Wage at a council says:

“We are now working 40 hours a week and spending more time with our baby. We managed to move into a two-bedroom place with more space for our baby to play in. Thanks to the Living Wage we are saving some money to go to Samoa to visit our families who we’ve never seen since moving to New Zealand. We are not living a life of luxury but it just got better”.

Winning large-scale transformation ironically begins with a single conversation. But that becomes a million conversations between people and organisations that, for all their differences, share the same sense of justice and desire to do something about suffering and exploitation. The Living Wage Movement is affiliated to the US-based Industrial Areas Foundation that advocates a broad-based community organising model of building power across civil society so our voices can be heard by the decision-makers that matter. With more than 90 member groups, the Movement has proven leverage and in 2017 will organise toward general election forums to secure the commitment of future politicians so, should they be in power, workers will win on a massive scale.

We Are Asking All Candidates:

1. That the candidate/party support and promote the Living Wage being implemented for all those employed in the core public service within 12 months of the new Government being formed.
2. That the candidate/party support and promote changing Government procurement policies to ensure that all contracted workers, who are delivering a regular and ongoing service to the core public service, move to the Living Wage within the next term of Government.
3. That the candidate/party support and promote the new Government developing an ongoing relationship with Living Wage Movement Aotearoa/New Zealand through an Advisory Group in order to champion the Living Wage throughout the NZ economy and oversee implementation.

These Are Aspirational Yet Realistic

If the interests of Labour and the Greens are aligned with the interests of workers, and they would say they are, then this is achievable. We would never have dreamed in 2013 that the capital city would have a Living Wage Council in so short a time but organising has achieved that – from small conversations to large deputations, peoples’ assemblies and rallies, we had hope. The Guardian’s Rebecca Solnit said it well:

“Hope is the belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written. It’s informed, astute open-mindedness about what can happen and what role we may play in it. Hope looks forward, but it draws its energies from the past, from knowing histories, including our victories, and their complexities and imperfections. It means not being the perfect that is the enemy of the good, not snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not assuming you know what will happen when the future is unwritten, and part of what happens is up to us”.