Alliance Party industrial spokesperson Trevor Hanson says the National Government’s attacks on four weeks annual leave will rip away precious family time for New Zealanders – and with a stunning lack of empathy “the grinch party” have announced their policy at Christmas time.
He says the new policy that will allow the fourth week of holidays to be “sold” was a travesty.
“The ‘Minister of Grinchiness’ Kate Wilkinson must be very proud of an unfair policy that punishes the children of the poor.”
Mr Hanson says that allowing the fourth week of annual leave to be “cashed up” will mean hard pressed low and middle income families will be forced to give up family time while the well off will be able to afford to keep their extra holidays.
“Let alone the workers who will be told by their employers to give up their extra week and will go along with it for fear of losing their job.”
He says the National Party will be responsible for the social breakdown of an overworked, stressed society where families and human beings come last and profit comes first.
“The fact is that most workers are working harder now, for longer hours, than they were a generation ago. Two income families are now the norm. Fathers and mothers and families are spending less and less time together due to casual jobs, split shifts, and 24 hour, 7 day working arrangements. It is creating a social time bomb.”
He says that many workers are casualized and they are effectively missing out on any structured holidays as they are just receiving holiday pay as they go.
Mr Hanson says the only response that National has for the social problems that are evolving from the free market system they have created is to build more prisons.
The Alliance would move towards 5 weeks annual leave as a minimum, in line with the most progressive nations in Europe and Scandanavia, as well as reducing overwork through law.
“The actions of the National Government once again show them to be the enemy of all the progress New Zealand has made in creating a good country to live in.”
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I find it funny that the Alliance party peoposes such Populist ideas yet has no support to back this. Okay you wish to move to a 5 week holiday system? How will you fund this, What areas will you cut to fund this and what about the catastrophic possibility of these businesses leaving? Your parthy says it will also increase the minumum wage, How on earth do you expect to fund all these policies and promised changes? Your party makes a mockery of Educated Politics and quite franktly the only people that could ever support this party are those who lack a true education. If you look at NZ’s current economy it is Social Democratic, The U.S is Free market and far fairer than that of NZ. NZ punishes the workers for earning money to give to the poor when the better option is to put the poor to work and penalize nobody. It is not the wealthy peoples fault that they have money nor is it the Poors fault that they dont.
You’re right in that the Alliance does not have a huge amount of support at the moment.
However, many of our ideas are quite popular. It’s just a matter of getting the people who support our ideas to support us as a party. It may take some time. The fact that you have chosen to engage with our ideas shows that you find them interesting even if you don’t agree with them.
The 5 week holiday system.
My grandfather told me the story of how holidays were first brought in during the 1930s by the first Labour Government. The world was going to end apparently. It didn’t and in fact business did just fine. 5 weeks of holiday is a goal of ours, it isn’t the main goal, we are more concerned with unemployment, poverty and inequality. More paid holidays will increase people’s leisure time and family time. This is a priority. A generation ago we had one worker families as the norm and most jobs had regular secure hours and weekends off etc. Now this is a rarity. People work round the clock with both parents working in insecure, often casual jobs. Madness. No wonder we have family breakdown. As technology increases we should have more leisure time, not less. The most secure and prosperous societies such as Scandanavia and Northern Europe have more holidays and worker benefits than us. Let’s emulate them.
In the long term changes in technology will mean less available work will need to be shared around to avoid mass unemployment. So this is a very practical and positive policy.
Businesses leaving.
Well, we can start new businesses and public businesses. If we allow a minority of capitalists to dictate our lives to us, might as well give up on democracy and just set up a dictatorship headed by a CEO. So much for the free choice we keep on getting told about.
Minimum wage.
This would obviously have huge economic benefits. Ironically, businesses would benefit too, as the instant boost in money circulating to the poorest people would boost local businesses. The improvement in peoples lives would immediately start to have positive effects on health, education, housing and crime.
Paying for it.
Obviously if enough people vote for these policies then we would have a good basis to proceed. We support a progressive tax system. We have budgeted our policies. Wealthy people would pay more tax, not through any plan to be mean to them, simply because they can afford it. Speculators in the financial system would pay a lot more money. But in the end, it is about people making a democratic choice to live in a fair and equal society. We have low income people in the Alliance and people on middle and higher incomes. We all support a fairer society and if enough people agree with us, we can get it.
True education.
It is rather pointless trying to say any one who supports the Alliance lacks a true education. We just have a different opinion from you. It would also help when accusing people of not having a true education, that you don’t have spelling and grammar mistakes all through your email, like you do.
New Zealand’s economy
New Zealand’s economy is not social democratic. The Alliance policies are social democratic, on the left side. New Zealand’s economy is capitalist with the remnants of a welfare state. The United States is not fairer than New Zealand. It is a vastly inequal society where enormous and often grotesque wealth exists side by side with poverty. 40 million Americans can not afford to pay for health insurance and there was nothing fair about the people of New Orleans being abandoned by their own Government during Hurricane Katrina. The United States has many great people and great things about it, but it is not a fair society in our view.
Putting the poor to work
The “poor” are in fact the “workers” or at least the badly paid ones. Unemployment goes up and down and funnily enough its got very little to do with whether people want to work and everything to do with the fact the free market capitalist system produces unemployment. We certainly agree that everyone should have a job. That’s what our policies are about. But National and some employers are happy for unemployment to exist. It keeps workers scared and divided and drives down wages and conditions.
Cheers.