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Mike's Minute: Fair Pay Agreements not only radical, but dangerous

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 10 May 2021, 11:06AM

Mike's Minute: Fair Pay Agreements not only radical, but dangerous

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Mon, 10 May 2021, 11:06AM

There is no shortage of irony that it's Jim Bolger, a conservative, that has committed one of the greater social crimes on this country.

From the comfort of retirement and a Prime Minister's pension, he oversaw the review into labour laws that finally got rolled out Friday.

Even some of the more woke members of the media managed to call it radical.

Bolger, if you remember before the last election, defended it, but the fact 1 in 10 in any given workforce can trigger what is laughably called a fair pay deal is an outrage. 1 in 10 is not a majority, or even close.

The fact you can dismiss the will of 90 percent of your workforce's view for the rambling views of one is a scandal. But that’s what we are headed for.

So contentious was the idea that is why the Labour Party didn’t roll it out last term. It's why the Prime Minister was at pains in several speeches to business to say the fair pay deal would be exceedingly limited that term. Little did business know what these socialists had in mind for the second term.

But wait, there is more.

Cross company deals, in other words industry wide arrangements, where the ability and individual circumstances of employers to pay or agree are cast aside, and that power is handed to the unions.

This is the 70s all over again. We are rolling back the years.

The tragedy is this is a country that periodically tries to address our woeful productivity rating. If you think having vast swathes of employees permanently on strike, or threatening industrial action, is a way to better productivity you’ve got rocks in your head, or you're a communist.

To be fair to Labour, this is who they are and what better time to go for broke than in a second term. And it's not like they didn't say they wouldn't do it.

That, of course, is why we have elections. It's the contest of ideas.

History will show the 2020 vote was dangerously skewed by fear of Covid and a lot of people that were nothing more than glad to be alive. These people having been scared to death by the Ardern-Bloomfield propaganda machine, will be waking up these next two years and allowing themselves to take in slightly more than one topic.

They will realise their country is being stolen in front of their eyes.

These reforms are radical, but even more importantly they are dangerous.

Only upside is it’s a gift to the Opposition. Undoing this is a vote getter, and if I were them, I'd be licking my lips.  

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