In the first week of every year since 2019, we have asked working people to talk about their experiences of work over the past 12 months, and what their thoughts are on issues likely to impact their work in the future.
We do this because we think it is critical that the voice of working people is heard and taken into account by decision makers. All too often the voices that are collated and published are only from the boardroom or from employers. Without the voice of working people provided by this survey, and unions more broadly, we are limited to knowing how confident business owners feel or what a handful of high-profile directors think. Consequently, when only part of the economic story is heard, fair and inclusive decisions – good decisions – are less likely to be made.
This year, the biggest changes to work issues are the result of the new Government. In their first 100 days, they have already made substantial changes to employment law that are likely to have far reaching implications for working New Zealanders.
That’s why this year we asked 50,000 people about their thoughts on the new Government and its leaders and what impact this change would have on New Zealander’s work lives. Just under 2000 people responded within seven days of opening the survey.
The results were overwhelmingly pessimistic:
- 53% of comments specifically expressed the sentiment that government is bad for working people
- 20% of comments identified economic and/or societal divisiveness and division directly or by synonym or by sentiment (eg sentiments such as “only cares about high income workers not low income”, “is working for donors not the rest of us”, “will increase inequality”)
- 10% specifically described the government as racist or pandering to racists/racial division
- The sentiment “the government is taking NZ backwards” appeared in 140 comments
- The sentiment “it is too soon to judge” was represented in 28 comments
- Looking beyond the comments, people are measurably concerned about the impact that the current political settings and direction will have on their ability to keep their jobs and maintain their standards of living in the next year.
For each question related to the new government’s perceived impact on future work life issues a significant majority indicated they expect it to make their work lives more difficult across every measured metric. Nearly 80% expect it to be more difficult to secure a pay rise in the next 12 months.
Year on year, the picture painted by the workforce survey has been of people struggling to maintain their living standards and their rights at work. Breaking the statistics down into union and non-union cohorts shows that union members have done better at securing their terms and conditions, including being more likely to report a pay rise in the past year by 20%.
It is clear that working people believe things need to change. Not just in terms of the current government but across the political/economic consensus. Many commenters identified that while they felt small improvements in the last year, they still felt like they were slipping behind, while others noted how little real change their was on offer during the last election.
The status quo has not been meeting the needs of working New Zealanders for many years, and the hasty and unevidenced repealing of Fair Pay Agreements combined with the reintroduction of the 90-day no rights period has signalled to working people that this is a government hell bent on eliminating the few economic gains working people might have made. No wonder so many people are so concerned we are heading to and even more economically and socially divided society.
