Skateboarders Lend A Hand At Grey Lynn Festival

The Grey Lynn festival will be treated to more than just stalls and music tomorrow when local skateboarders join forces with the Unite workers union to raise public awareness of low wages.

The Earls of Grey is a skate competition taking place at 4pm in the skate bowl at the Grey Lynn Park, and the top prize on offer is $12, a symbol of the SuperSizeMyPay.com campaign that the competition is supporting.

The event follows the success of the world’s first Starbucks strike on Wednesday to highlight the need for a decent minimum wage, secure hours, and no youth rates for low-paid workers. Several local skate-related companies are sponsors of the event, providing prizes for the competition including t-shirts and skateboards.

Organiser Levi Hawken is proud to be coordinating an event that encourages community awareness over an important issue.

“Hopefully it will promote the cause to different people, to those who don’t know about the campaign, and it might help them realise that they could be getting a better deal.”

Daniel Hounsell from Ground Floor, a small skate shop and one of the sponsors of the event, said he was keen to get involved as his business also has to fight the harmful effects of multinational companies.

“We’re just a small company and when you’re little it’s always harder to compete against the big companies – we just don’t have the budget,” he said.

The SuperSizeMyPay.com campaign will also be taking its message to the Santa Parade on Sunday, where Unite workers will be distributing leaflets and supporting those working in the fast-food restaurants along Queen St.

http://www.SuperSizeMyPay.com

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