Email Nathaniel

In 2022, the Living Wage Movement secured a commitment from Phil Mauger, now the Mayor of Christchurch, to get Christchurch City Holdings Ltd (CCHL) Group Living Wage Accredited. CCHL controls the fabric of our city: our port, our power lines, our airport, our broadband, and our maintenance teams. But even while Mauger was making that promise, a report was in the pipeline - a report commissioned by our City Council - recommending the privatisation, union-bashing, and casualisation of that same public infrastructure. This is the fight we have on our hands.

We cannot sell chunks of public infrastructure and then expect to have meaningful public input on working conditions. A story from the airport vividly illustrates this. Completely owned by central and local government on a 25%-75% basis, Christchurch International Airport Limited (CIAL) has made significant progress on the Living Wage.

The same cannot be said of Air New Zealand, almost half of which was sold by the previous Government. In the departure lounge of CIAL, our cleaners work for a Living Wage; but, when those same cleaners step into the Air NZ Koru Club lounge, their hourly wage drops to almost the minimum legal rate. It couldn't be any clearer: the difference between full and partial public ownership is the difference between Living Wages and poverty wages.

Can't Have It Both Ways

Some Councillors will try to tell us that we can have it both ways; that we can sell the engine and keep hold of the steering wheel of our assets. We cannot. Whether it is cruise ship numbers at Lyttelton Port, disaster resilience at Orion Energy, or wages at CIAL, we must retain full ownership to retain democratic input.

Many on Council hope the story will go something like this: in the 2023 Christmas season a more detailed business case for privatisation will be quietly released; Councillors will "withhold judgement" until a staff recommendation is available; and in a manufactured crisis of public debt and massive rate rises, asset sales will be incorporated into the 2024 Long Term Plan as the "balanced option".

How can we put a stop to this process? The answer, I believe, does not lie in defending the status quo. The current system provides so little opportunity for public input that most Christchurch ratepayers do not even know they own these assets. To win over the public we must outline a vision for CCHL that is genuinely democratic, with concrete benefits to the general public.

That is why the Living Wage Movement is working with a coalition of unions, community groups, and residents to crowdsource a strategic plan that gives communities a voice in decisions about our public infrastructure. An awareness campaign will ramp up in the second half of 2023, with the goal of a strategic plan launch by the end of the year. All concerned residents are welcome to be a part of this process. So please, get in touch.