ZB ZB
Live now
Start time
Playing for
End time
Listen live
Listen to NAME OF STATION
Up next
Listen live on
ZB

Mike Hosking: Paying people more doesn't solve everything

Author
Mike Hosking ,
Publish Date
Tue, 7 Aug 2018, 10:06AM
The aged care sector, like so many sectors, can't get enough people to work for them. Photo \ Getty Images
The aged care sector, like so many sectors, can't get enough people to work for them. Photo \ Getty Images

Mike Hosking: Paying people more doesn't solve everything

Author
Mike Hosking ,
Publish Date
Tue, 7 Aug 2018, 10:06AM

Is it just possible that we have exposed a myth of the workplace? And that as a result of cracking that myth, we have exposed the flaws of a major government policy?

The aged care sector, like so many sectors, can't get enough people to work for them.

Airline pilots, to Kiwifruit pickers, to aged care workers, we are desperate for hands on deck.

Part of the economic equation was that pay, at least in some areas, was the issue. I can't tell you how much correspondence I had every time we touched on these sort of stories.

It's the pay.

If you pay people crap money, what do you expect? On the surface, worth at least looking at.

Pilots, I would not have thought falls into that category, pilots are very well paid and you get to see the world.

But the fruit industry probably falls into that category.

And the aged care workers certainty did, and yet along came the now famous pay equity deal.

Two billion dollars it cost us.

Some people got a 50 percent pay rise, now that should solve it.

And yet it didn’t, thus proving, I would have thought, beyond a shadow of a doubt it's not the money.

We see this with teachers, nurses, and all the other industrial action around the landscape right now.

Do you honestly think that in a year’s time the teachers aren't going to be back for more, with the same arguments about being undervalued and overworked?

The reality is work is so much more than money, you have to like what you do.

And the reality also is if you can't get the hands on deck locally, you need immigration policies that allow you to import it. For aged care that appears to be the answer.

Rightly or wrongly, we as locals don’t want to do certain things.

Now the role of the government is to provide business with the opportunities to thrive. Choking labour supply for the aged care sector isn't it.

Labour, in the building sector, still insists we can hire locals. Really? So why aren't they? Why are we still short?

Because what Labour thinks and what's actually happening in the real world are two different things.

You will note they have gone awfully silent on their election promise to cut migration by 30,000. It's slowly dawned on them how out of step they might actually be.

So you can quite justifiably ask, in creating the pay equity deal for aged care workers worth two billion dollars, was a problem solved?

The bills for aged care get passed to families all over the country because that's what happens to increases in doing business, the bill gets passed on.

So as they pay more, has the problem of labour shortages been solved? No, it has not.

So pay, more often than not, when it comes to recruitment isn't always the issue.

Take your Radio, Podcasts and Music with you