Government to spend $61m to lift bus driver wages

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Geektastic

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#2991678 3-Nov-2022 22:29

MikeAqua:

wellygary:

And it is all controlled by what the Government/local councils will pay in the contracts they negotiated..

Maybe we should a new law of thermodynamics

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Geektastic

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#2991679 3-Nov-2022 22:38

Given that 50% of the workers in NZ pay no net income tax after transfers and 3% of taxpayers pay about 25% of the total income tax (IRD figures) I think my biggest question is not “which workers deserve a pay rise” it is more “who do they think will pay for it?”

The problem is far more structural than it is operational. NZ is not and with current attitudes probably never will be a rich nation. I have seen it written that we have a desire for US taxation and Scandinavian state provision (which again is not that simple as several Scandinavian countries make far better use of natural resources like oil than we do)

I am sure there are solutions but just taking money off taxpayers on the one hand and giving it to bus drivers on the other is a bit simplistic. If people want bus drivers to be paid well, then the days of cheap bus rides are history - a minimum $5 fare for a single stop will be more likely.

As usual, I suspect every bus user wants to have their bus driver on $100,000 a year but when the rubber hits the road (as it were) and they have to put their hands in their pockets and pay the cost of that wish, it becomes an “aspiration”, to borrow from politics.

The approach also misses out the scarcity of skills issue. Many people could be trained to drive buses. Few people could be trained to be surgeons. Ergo the rarer skills get the higher pay. If you push up from the bottom with wages through government enforcement the end result will be a ripple right up to the top to maintain the gaps between highly skilled and less skilled.

And of course we all know the other result - wage push inflation.

Technofreak

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#2992306 5-Nov-2022 21:16

MikeAqua:

My grandfather was a public bus driver in Auckland many decades ago. He earned enough to buy an average home, support a family of four and buy a lifestyle block North of Auckland for retirement.

You wouldn't do that now on $30/hour.

It would be really interesting to know what the boss of the Auckland City Council (what ever he was called in those days, Town Clerk?) got paid and what the council CEO gets paid today and compare the bus drivers wages over the same period. I think it might be quite revealling..

Also it would be a worthwhile exercise to compare the number of council office managers over the same period and the wages of the the "Managers".

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