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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 14, 2021 21:06:21 GMT 12
When I was in the RNZAF I was on less than $3 per hour before tax, food and barrack rent. $20.00 per hour when paid for 24 hours a day would be almost like politician's take home pay.... Six-hundred NZ Defence Force staff paid less than minimum wage16 Aug, 2021 05:01 AM More than 600 members of the New Zealand Defence Force were paid less than the minimum wage this year. The minimum wage went up to $20 an hour in April. But 203 members of the regular forces and 415 members of the territorial forces did not see their incomes rise to meet the new minimum wage. At least some were on just $19.07 an hour. National Party defence spokesman Chris Penk said the Defence Force's parsimony was "poor form". "It's disrespectful given what we ask of our troops," Penk said The Defence Force said it has not breached the law because of the carve outs it gets from employment laws. The Minimum Wage Act only applies to civilian employees, and not members of the armed forces or cadets. However, a Defence Force spokesperson said that it "acts in the spirit of the legislation and makes adjustments to remuneration accordingly". That means that the Force ups its pay taking the minimum wage into account, even though it is not legally obliged to. The Defence Force said the situation is "temporary". It is currently updating its payroll system which will make the adjustments to people's pay - it will also backdate pay to April 1 for all staff affected. Penk, who uncovered the error using written Parliamentary questions, said it painted a picture of a Government that has "dropped the ball on defence", saying ministers "appear to have forgotten" about people serving in uniform. He pointed to recent scandals involving the poor quality of housing and contaminated soils on the defence estate. Defence Minister Peeni Henare referred requests for comment to the Defence Force. www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/six-hundred-nz-defence-force-staff-paid-less-than-minimum-wage/JOYE6FSFLZFZQFVUS4344XEORQ/ |
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 14, 2021 21:18:48 GMT 12
The reality, paying our service personnel less than, or even equivalent to, the minimum wage equivalent of a McDonalds burger flipper whilst expecting them to in fact be highly skilled technicians, who put their lives at risk for their country in multiple ways regularly, and who get to carry the shit jobs that the government hands them (like running MIQ or disaster relief work or peacekeeping in foreign war zones!), and all the while after having taken away all the privileges and discounts that the military once had to offset the low wages like cheap base housing, etc, and also expecting them to be fine upright examples of this country representing us around the world when their political masters have tread on them continually with cuts, downsizings, poor key equipment choices, and base closures over the years till the Kiwi public think of them as a joke - this is a national disgrace!
Like the nurses, firemen, ambulance workers and others who serve the public, the annual budget should be increased sufficiently to pay them adequate wages. Take the money for all the unnecessary crap it gets wasted on daily.
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Post by ams888 on Aug 14, 2021 22:10:03 GMT 12
That is pretty despicable really. Military personnel should be on at least 20% higher than minimum wage all of the time (as should many front line staff, teachers, police, nurses, firefighters, etc). The defense force should be held to the expectation that they pay people more than the civilian population. As you say Dave, the budgets for these front line people should reflect that reality and be annually increased.
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chis73
Flight Lieutenant
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Post by chis73 on Aug 15, 2021 10:53:54 GMT 12
I can't understand why this issue isn't an instant sacking offence for the (sadly) woefully inept Mr Henare (in my humble opinion). If this was private industry and you flouted the law this badly, you would be taken to court, found guilty, then fined or sent to jail. As the Minister, surely that means you are ultimately responsible for this.
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Post by obiwan27 on Aug 16, 2021 11:26:04 GMT 12
No surprise to hear of this, given the govt is being 'lead' by Aunty Helen's apprentice.
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Post by flyinkiwi on Aug 16, 2021 12:57:56 GMT 12
If I run the article through a BS filter it paints a slightly different picture to the scenario Chris Penk is peddling. A poorly resourced NZDF is upgrading it's payroll system (a complex and lengthy process for an organization of its size) and a planned but not yet implemented backpay correction to right a pay imbalance created by the project has created the foreseen but temporary situation where some personnel are paid very slightly less than minimum wage.
Now those of us here on the forum who do care about our country's defense are such a small minority I doubt this beat up would gain any political traction amongst the average Kiwi anyway so Penk is essentially wasting his breath. There are a lot worse things Labour are responsible for they could have gone after, this just smacks of political points scoring for the sake of it.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 16, 2021 13:14:04 GMT 12
Well if what you say is true, that does shed a different light on this.
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chasper
Flight Lieutenant
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Post by chasper on Aug 16, 2021 19:05:28 GMT 12
I have just spent 20 minutes on the phone to a truck driver based at Linton, the call was about his dad's upcoming birthday but I asked him about this salary issue and he was adamant that those under the minimum wage had been consistently told that as NZDF staff there was no requirement to meet minimum wage and there were some seriously pissed off people in our military as a result. Personally I would doubt that any payroll system has trouble adjusting to alterations in minimum payment requirements, it is a very simple process so I suspect (as is so often the case) that there is a huge amount of political spin here. As if it isn't hard enough to get young people to join our services these days, this really pisses me off I have to say, they all deserve better.
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Post by machina on Aug 16, 2021 20:03:32 GMT 12
If I run the article through a BS filter it paints a slightly different picture to the scenario Chris Penk is peddling. A poorly resourced NZDF is upgrading it's payroll system (a complex and lengthy process for an organization of its size) and a planned but not yet implemented backpay correction to right a pay imbalance created by the project has created the foreseen but temporary situation where some personnel are paid very slightly less than minimum wage. Now those of us here on the forum who do care about our country's defense are such a small minority I doubt this beat up would gain any political traction amongst the average Kiwi anyway so Penk is essentially wasting his breath. There are a lot worse things Labour are responsible for they could have gone after, this just smacks of political points scoring for the sake of it. A level headed approach, but maybe run it through the BS filter again because blaming a ‘system update’ feels like a typical BS politician’s answer to me. |
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 16, 2021 22:56:20 GMT 12
Don't forget this current Minister of Defence has declared his aim is to save money and cut costs, including chopping loads from the $20 billion of assets and spending previously committed to upgrading the military under the last Defence Minister. Henare is a hatchet guy. He has no interest in Defence, unlike Ron Mark. He's simply there to cut costs and cut jobs as far as I can see. Ironic that this one government department has set itself the aim of cutting costs when all the others seem to be blatantly wasting millions of dollars hand of fist with frivolous, useless and pathetic projects that go nowhere and fade to obscurity. Meanwhile they are borrowing $110 million per day to keep the madness rolling, and they cannot tack a tiny bit more onto that in order to pay our service personnel adequately, nor fund the NZDF properly.
It's appalling since while they are expected to provide security to New Zealand round the clock through military means, the NZDF for the past 18 months has had and added burden of actually saving New Zealand from the worldwide pandemic by securing and controlling our borders with care and professionalism, on top of their already massively overburdened job. We owe these people so much as a nation. That responsibility alone should be rewarded properly. The freedom that we as Kiwis have had compared with most other countries in the world has been down to or defence personnel and out medical staff - and the government has shit on both sectors.
I vote we cut costs by sacking all the politicians and letting NZDF take over the country.
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Post by Peter Lewis on Aug 17, 2021 21:06:46 GMT 12
If I run the article through a BS filter it paints a slightly different picture to the scenario Chris Penk is peddling. A poorly resourced NZDF is upgrading it's payroll system (a complex and lengthy process for an organization of its size) and a planned but not yet implemented backpay correction to right a pay imbalance created by the project has created the foreseen but temporary situation where some personnel are paid very slightly less than minimum wage. If any non-Govt organisation tried to offer that as an excuse if they were hauled up in front of the courts for underpaying their staff they would be, quite rightly, laughed at and heavily penalised. |
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Post by machina on Aug 18, 2021 9:25:55 GMT 12
If I run the article through a BS filter it paints a slightly different picture to the scenario Chris Penk is peddling. A poorly resourced NZDF is upgrading it's payroll system (a complex and lengthy process for an organization of its size) and a planned but not yet implemented backpay correction to right a pay imbalance created by the project has created the foreseen but temporary situation where some personnel are paid very slightly less than minimum wage. If any non-Govt organisation tried to offer that as an excuse if they were hauled up in front of the courts for underpaying their staff they would be, quite rightly, laughed at and heavily penalised. And you can imagine how much the likes of the Greens etc would be jumping up and down about it if it was a nasty non-govt. private company. |
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Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 18, 2021 11:04:59 GMT 12
And the labour unionists.
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