Picket this Wednesday: Real Jobs not McJobs

The government has made a deal with fast food giant McDonalds that will see young people receiving the unemployment benefit sent to jobs at McDonalds restaurants, and have their training subsidised by the taxpayer. Every beneficiary McDonald’s hires will get the company up to $16,000- the equivalent of about 8 months wages for a McDonalds worker.

Giving people low paying casualised jobs is not the solution to unemployment. This is not a scheme to help the unemployed, it is corporate welfare for a large corporation. As if paying minimum wage wasn't enough for them, McDonalds gets the state subsidising its wage bill, and WINZ acting as its HR department - McDonalds has an annual staff turn over rate of over 100% because of its low wages and horrendous working conditions.


Come to the picket, let the government know we want REAL JOBS, NOT McJOBS and SOCIAL WELFARE NOT CORPORATE WELFARE
1pm, Wednesday (the 15th) outside WINZ High St, Christchurch Central

Organised by the Workers Rights Campaign.
Contact Byron byroncclark@gmail.com

Workers Rights Campaign to picket Christchurch Jobs Summit

The Workers Rights Campaign will picket the Government’s “Jobs Summit” at the Town Hall on Friday 17^th between noon and 1:00 p.m.

Campaign spokesperson Paul Piesse said the picket is because:

• "We know it (the Jobs Summit) to be essentially a pathetic public relations exercise for the Government and its fat-cat Business friends;”

• “We know that its decisions on employment – especially issues of job creation, redundancies and reductions in paid hours of work and thus income - will not and cannot assure working people of properly paid, secure employment;”

• "We refuse to pay the price for the failure of the capitalist system in yet another of its periodic ‘busts’. We’re tired of bailing out the rich, who use us and discard us for their own benefit.”

The Workers Rights Campaign, Mr Piesse said, “Notes the contemptible hypocrisy of Business and Government, weeping crocodile tears about job losses while they happily contract out and shift our jobs offshore to cheap labour countries.”

The Campaign demands full employment. Mr Piesse said that the Campaign has the view that “it is the absolute moral duty of any decent government to ensure that all citizens have honest work available with liveable wages”.

“One way to ensure that”, Mr Piesse said, was “to legislate for a basic 35 hour week without loss of pay”. He noted that “there isn’t much point to our civilisation unless generation by generation and decade by decade, technological development allows for a reduction in the portion of people’s lives they were obliged to devote to earning a living. The economy should be about people, not Capital.”

WRC in the news

From NewsTalk ZB

Even before it becomes law, the new 90-day trial period has sparked noisy protests.

A march is underway in central Auckland against the measure, which allows businesses with fewer than 20 staff to fire people in their first 90 days of employment. Unions are calling it the "fire at will law."

In Christchurch, a group calling itself The Workers Rights Campaign has picketed National MP Nicola Wagner's office.

They plan to take their objections directly to the premises of employers making use of the law to sack people unfairly.

Christchurch picket on Flickr

Picket this Friday

The Workers Rights Campaign is organising a picket this Friday (the 27th) at 1pm outside National MP Nicky Wagner's office 189 Montreal St (see below for map). All welcome, the more people the better.

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