Youth rates to be phased out

Following a last minute protest by hundreds of young workers and a significant deal between the National Distribution Union and Progressive, a last minute change to a watered-down youth rates bill was pushed through Parliament.

Green MP Sue Bradford’s bill to abolish youth rates for 16 and 17-year-olds was pulled randomly by parliamentary ballot in 2005 during Unite Union’s high-publicity fast-food strikes to end youth rates in 2005.

By the final reading of the bill in September 2007, a compromise by the Labour Party and New Zealand First had watered the bill down to create “new entrants rates” that would see 16 and 17 year olds having to work 200 hours before they received the adult minimum wage.

In a last ditch effort, Council of Trade Unions youth council Stand Up, Unite Union, the NDU and Radical Youth called a last-minute protest march of several hundred workers in central Auckland.

In between a Rage Against The Machine cover by local Band Chook Peas and hip-hop group Nesian Mystik, sixteen-year-old Rainbows End cleaner Melanie Cawte addressed the crowd/moshpit.

“If [politicians] don’t get rid of [youth rates], we’re going to get rid of them one company at a time through industrial action,” she said.

Just weeks before Melanie and her NDU co-workers threatened strike action and won $1.80 an hour pay rises for workers on youth rates.

Two days after the protest, on the morning that politicians would vote on the Minimum Wage Amendment Bill, Progressive supermarkets and the NDU publicly announced a new collective agreement that would see workers on youth rates at Countdown, Foodtown and Woolworth getting up to 60% increase by August 2008.

The supermarket agreement includes a three month limitation on youth rates or 200 hours, which ever comes first. The agreement also applies to 15-year-olds and under.

The deal pushed the Government to make a final amendment to the bill to include the three month limit, says NDU organiser and Stand Up convenor Ingrid Beckers.

“Although we haven’t ended youth rates completely, young activists and their unions have won a significant victory.”

Ingrid says that workers like Melanie are gearing up to take industrial action to end youth rates.

Unite union and McDonalds recently announced the multi-national would join union sites Postie Plus and BP in abolishing youth rates completely.