Govt's 9-Day Fortnight Falls Short

Dear Colleague

The old fairy tale about the Emperor having no clothes brings to mind the plaudits John Key is getting over the 9-day fortnight announced this week.

No-one is willing to stand up and say this is a complete waste of time. It is not going to do any of the things the public understood it set out to, the most important of which was training workers so their productivity would increase in the post- recession era.

It is not even known at this stage if any of the 1600 businesses eligible actually needs to cut working hours. And implementation costs will mean more state servants.

The whole thing has been a bit of a let-down at the end of the much vaunted jobs summit anyway. If this, and a cycle-way the length of the country are the best things NZ's captains of industry could come up with, we need some more capable captains.

John Key's judgement is under scrutiny here. Of course he wants to save the economy - it is his job after all. He projects himself as a "can-do" sort of guy - but here is a good idea destroyed by "decision-making by committee" - the Govt, the employers, the employees, the unions each pandering to one another to bring about this watered down useless version.

To do this at all, it needed to be done properly. All businesses need to be included. Workers should not be losing wages, the training component of the idea should have been included. It's turned out to be a 3 out of 10 effort.

Here's how The Main Report's editors http://www.themainreport.co.nz see it.

"Govt's 9-Day Fortnight Falls Short

The Govt's 9-day fortnight, the "big idea" from the jobs summit falls well short of expectations in its attempt to help the country not only through the recession, but into the post recession era.

Where is the training which workers on a 9-day fortnight were to get? Where is the help for all those businesses which employ less than 100 people? Where is the forward thinking we were expecting? It seems it is all just too hard.

True - it would have been difficult to find people to train thousands of workers for a few hours a week, It would have been hard to find a formula to help all struggling businesses, but it should have been done.

In short the scheme, which is now effectively gutted, will mean employers (of qualifying companies) will get a $12.50 an hour subsidy per worker (to cover five hours), to compensate them for losing a day of regular pay once every two weeks.

A wage subsidy has been ruled out as too expensive. The Govt says it would send the wrong signals to businesses, which might see it as an opportunity to trim wage costs by getting the state to pick up the tab. In effect the scheme sends the wrong message. It is lazy and will be ineffective."

Is this the start of "Key" tinkering?

The economic situation, if it is as bad as we are constantly being told it is, requires more.

Key and his cohorts had better get back to the drawing board fast!

ENDS

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