Youth rates

Children who work need the same level of protection as adult workers doing similar tasks, says the Catholic social justice agency Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand.  Caritas research and advocacy officer Lisa Beech says that for many working children it was not happening.

The agency has published a report – Delivering the Goods – detailing the findings of a survey on children delivering circulars and newspapers to household letterboxes. It included in-depth interviews with 30 children aged 10 to 16 doing delivery work, as a follow-up to a wider 2003 survey of child workers.

"While many children have good working experiences and value much of their working lives, the survey showed many areas of concern," Ms Beech said, "Particularly when comparing children's experience with adult postal workers delivering to the same letterboxes."

Caritas wanted to see a code of best practice for the employment of children in delivery work.

"We believe the single most important step to improve children's working experiences would be to require that their employment status is that of employees rather than contractors," Ms Beech said.  "There was a very marked difference between children employed directly as employees and those who had the status of self-employed contractors."  She said child employees were considerably better off.  "They received holiday and sick pay, age-appropriate relief workers, clothing and bike allowances, the most effective information and oversight of health and safety conditions, and the most direct contact with employers. In contracting situations, these employment rights were mostly absent," Ms Beech said.

Other concerns highlighted by the report include:

• Little attention paid to health and safety concerns such as visibility and loads, particularly compared to adult postal workers.
• Contracts sighted generally showed an unbalanced power relationship between employers and workers.
• Although some companies had an informal age of entry to the workforce of between 10 and 12 years, this was not communicated formally on material supplied to workers. Children were sometimes asked to find their own substitute workers for illness or absence and in many cases children paid siblings as young as six to do the work for them.
• Pay rates were very low, with an effective hourly rate among children in the survey of between $1.67 and $6.25.

Caritas said a code of best practice needed to be developed by employers, unions and appropriate government agencies – working together with the children employed in the industry and their parents.

"New Zealand government reports have frequently stated that working children are adequately protected by our existing legislation," said Ms Beech.  "Caritas believes this position is based on very little information about children's actual working experiences, as there appears to be little oversight by the Department of Labour, or involvement by unions or other community organisations."

Ms Beech said any industry based on child labour, no matter how willing the participants, had a very high level of moral responsibility to ensure that they were well treated.

After winning an end to youth rates at the country's Postie Plus shops the union has now negotiated a national collective agreement for all Postie group members.

Southern Regional Secretary and advocate Paul Watson said the national agreement is a platform for future bargaining in the Postie Plus, Baby City and Arbuckles stores.

"The company is engaging constructively but we still have more to achieve. Youth rates have gone and the new pay and progression bands lift pay by $1.00 - $2.00 per hour for members at the lower end of the scale. But those members on higher rates were offered only 3.5% on their paid rates and the union will be campaigning next year for a better wage increase for this group and others."

Louise Marsters, site delegate at New Lynn Postie Plus and negotiating team member agrees.

"Negotiations went really well but we will achieve more with more members. Getting a national agreement was really important and we can now build on this."

New Zealand's mayors want the Government to raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour sooner than it plans so as to help young people into skilled trades.

The Mayors Taskforce for Jobs, representing 91 per cent of mayors, says lifting the legal minimum from $9.50 an hour to $12 would encourage "greater investment in skill training leading to increases in productivity".

In a submission to the new Minister of Labour, Ruth Dyson, they say minimum wage increases of 36 per cent for adults, 81 per cent for 16- and 17-year-olds and 126 per cent for 18- and 19-year olds since 1999 "have not resulted in constraints on job creation or fewer opportunities for young people".

But three of the 10 groups that have made submissions on this month's annual minimum wage review - Business New Zealand, Federated Farmers and the supermarket industry - are urging Ms Dyson not to increase the minimum wage at all.

A fourth group, the Retailers Association, supports "a modest increase" in the adult rate in line with other recent wage increases, but opposes any further increase in the youth rate for 16- and 17-year-olds, currently $7.60 an hour.

The Government agreed with New Zealand First and the Greens after the election to raise the adult rate to $12 by the end of 2008 "if economic conditions permit".

The Retailers Association says such a big increase would cost its members $760 million a year by 2009, assuming that shopkeepers would have to pass on the full $2.50 an hour increase to all their workers to maintain relativities with those now on $9.50.

"The majority of our members are affected by the minimum wage, either because they employ junior staff at weekends and after school, or they employ extra staff during the busy Christmas and Easter periods," the association says.

"Such an increase in wage rates will have a severely detrimental impact on operating costs for this sector, which ultimately has flow-on effects to the wider society - consumers in terms of increased prices, employees in limitations of opportunities particularly for part-time and student workers, and unnecessary economic impacts with additional inflationary pressure."

It said the average wages paid to entry-level shop assistants in February were $10.56 an hour for those aged 18 and over and $8.56 for 16- and 17-year-olds.

In contrast, the national average wage for the whole economy in September was $21.13 an hour.

The National Association of Retail Grocers and Supermarkets says its stores give many youngsters their first jobs. But such openings could be lost if the minimum wage were to be increased.

The association says higher minimum wages may cause supermarket owners to take 20-year-olds in preference to 18- and 19-year-olds because of their greater maturity and better work ethic.