The cost to settle these claims will run into the billions. Easily.
1979 was the last time we a strike this big. A general strike. 300-thousand people. It was Muldoon days. It was over a dispute with driver unions and transport. It went to arbitration and the unions won.
This time, senior doctors refused binding arbitration.
Secondary teachers have a few more strikes before Christmas.
And the primary teachers have more dates set down for pay talks next month.
You’d have to say, based purely on vibes and a little bit on polling, that the workers win the week.
They 've won the PR battle.
We're already sick of hearing how much senior doctors get paid. Parents will be sick of their kids missing school.
Anymore delayed hip operations and there’ll be hell to pay.
If the unions expect strikes to kick off again next year, they might find themselves falling out of favour with workers in the private sector.
The median wage is $70k. Private sector workers haven’t been getting the same increases as the public ones.
The offer these teachers are rejecting would have almost 80% of them on $100k or more. Base salary.
Arguing for more and dragging our industrial action for to long and you risk looking, well, political. Or greedy. Given the state of the books and the enormous deficit blowout this current lot inherited.
So the unions have won the battle. Can they win the war?
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
I saw the protesters walking on queen street. One thing I noticed were the abundance of maori flags and palestinian flags. I also saw labour party flags, greenpeace flags and socialists for aotearoa flags. Not one nz flag. I personally think that the unions are using teachers and nurses as their useful idiots. What other conclusion could you draw after seeing that?
Like many others I dislike the unions in principle. However our dislike should not stop from seeing the reality - why do senior doctors need to be unionised at all? How come that people
In such high demand that can get salaries twice higher abroad resort to strike to be heard? Could it be because the MoH is so impossible to reason with that they need an intermediary? Could
It be because they actually care about continuing to have high quality health service in NZ? How come we recognise the market pressures on remuneration for other professions but not for doctors? How come that management salaries in public service can be annually adjusted for inflation, but doctors’ can’t be? We need to ask ourselves- what quality of healthcare we want? Do we really want to live in a country where doctors are here because they have nowhere else to go? I don’t!
It's time Stanford employs technology to improve the high costs, very poor quality, and abysmal productivity of NZ's teachers.
The great thing about technology and artificial intelligence is it won't scream incoherantly through the left wing TV news, claiming it's strike is because of palestine, without mention of the many childrens lives their sub par teaching performances ruin.
These strikes are eye rolling in the extreme. I literally do not care about teachers salaries. I would see them all fired before I acquiesced to their demands (and their Palestine flags). Shut up and do your job.
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