Four Out of Five Kiwi Workers Aren’t Employed by Transnational Corporations
Chief Reporter
Business New Zealand said today (“Foreign Investment Essential For New Zealand”) that: “Today one in five New Zealanders
works in a firm that is part-funded by FDI (Foreign Direct Investment)”.
Not so. The actual figure is lower than that and is lower than what it was in 2000.
And Business New Zealand is trying to gild the lily. What its press release does not say is that four out of five Kiwi
workers do not work for transnational corporations (TNCs).
It does not say that the TNCs need us more than we need them (to make the exorbitant profits that they ship out of the
country and don’t reinvest back into it).
It does not say that despite TNCs being such a dominant force in the NZ economy, they provide jobs for bugger all New
Zealanders
Here is the relevant extract from CAFCA’s newly updated Key Facts.
Foreign investors are not great for employment – they only employ 17% of the workforce (down from 21% in 2000), despite
owning a large proportion of the economy. Foreign ownership does not guarantee more jobs. In fact, it quite often adds
to unemployment. TNCs have made tens of thousands jobless.
The full Key Facts complete with sources (meticulously researched and compiled by CAFCA’s Bill Rosenberg), can be read
athttp://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/key-facts.html
They can also be viewed there as a striking set of graphs, as both a PDF and Powerpoint.