The commodity at stake here is super-cheap wages. When the Japanese or Korean boats come here under charter to NZ firms, they pick up Indonesian, Burmese or Filipino crews on the way here because of the cheap labour costs. Last year, there were claims that Ukranians were working on foreign-owned NZ-chartered boats and being paid $4.50 for a 12-hr day. The Fishing Industry says it is moving as fast as possible to ensure they are employing 75% NZers in the fishing harvest by the year 2000. But getting the boats up to NZ's minimum employment wages and standards may result in some fishing charters becoming uneconomic.

With Treaty of Waitangi-based fishing settlements, and the promise of fishing opportunities being held out to unemployed Maori, Bob Edlin of the Independent has highlighted the "astonishing" Ngai Tahu tribal connection to the controversial Takaroa Industries fishing charter. Edlin : "Most NZers remember being told fishing quota was being given to Maori so they could become involved in the fishing industry. This engendered visions of unemployed Maori surging for work on the boats and learning new skills. The idea was to substitute this economic opportunity - a big share of the rich harvest of the seas - for the loss of tribal lands ... But Ngai Tahu corporate chiefs are just as focused as others on profit-optimising enterprise, meaning the job opportunities are going to Indonesians ..."

Source Sunday Star Times, 7/5/95, Scheme plans second chance for offenders

Chirac senses that job insecurity now touches all of French society, and he says he is prepared to spend much more money on job creation and training schemes - even at the risk of budget deficits that will endanger French eligibility for joining the European Union single currency in 1997. Under consideration : more public funds for training centres, especially those training the unemployed to use high technology machines ... and measures to introduce a shorter working week.

The French have estimated that if they universally adopted a four-day, 33-hr work week, with an average 5% reduction in salary, they would create two million new jobs and save $28 billion in unemployment insurance. - from the UN Human Development Report 1994

Amidst the French national obsession with unemployment, even wine growers are doing some extraordinary things to help out. In one French province, they have printed the short cv's of a thousand unemployed onto wine labels and pasted them on a million bottles of wine. Their hope is that a discerning palate may also lead to a discerning employer.

Source BBC World, also, The Dominion, 19/5/95, France's mood of failure, The Daily News, 9/5/95, Chirac new French president

Some of the suggestions to reduce working hours :
Job Sharing - an arrangement in which two workers share the hours, duties, salary, and benefits of one position.
Phased Retirement - where workers can cut back their work weeks in the years before retirement, without reducing their eventual superannuation.
Banked overtime - where workers can take extra time-off in lieu of overtime pay.
Permanent Part-Time - where the worker works less than full time work, but with the benefits and seniority rights comparable to a full-time worker.
Deferred Salary Leave - a savings plan where, typically, 20% of an employee's wages are held in trust for four years, after which they can take a year off, with pay.

Like many others, O'Hara is struck by a strange paradox : futurists have long been united in predicting the coming age of leisure and abundance - yet most workers in western economies were instead finding themselves working more and more - for less and less. O'Hara : "Prosperity and leisure is not an either/or choice. In the 1990's we will have to create the means to have them both - or we will end up with neither..."

Working Harder Isn't Working by Bruce O'Hara (pub. New Star Books, Vancouver)

Source The Dominion, 1/5/95, $43 weekly to feed a man

When these figures are broken down along ethnic lines (see sidebar on this page) that a quite startling picture of welfare dependency emerges, particularly amongst Maori and Pacific Islanders. The Statistics NZ data shows that Maori have been carrying more than their share of the burden of dependency arising from the economic reforms of the last decade. In 1987/88, Maori on average received 23% more on welfare benefits than they paid in direct tax. In 1993/94, this gap had grown to 50%.

Source Sunday Star Times, 16/4/1995, Major initiative to get Maori off the dole

The Universal Basic Income is a government funded payment to all citizens regardless of age, gender, marital, work or income status. It would replace all other forms of publicly funded income assistance, be tax-free, and not be affected by any other income or means-testing. Most submissions to the Taskforce suggested that the level of the Basic Income be in the region of $100 a week, or around $6-8000 per year. The amount could be determined by the age of the recipient with adults receiving more than children, and superannuitants receiving more than `working age' adults. The proponents of UBI believe that because people want more than what they would get on the basic income, and also want the social benefits of work, the introduction of UBI would not result in a mass exodus from the workforce.

Last month, a national organisation was established to promote the concept of UBI in NZ. A workshop, organised by the Manawatu Working Party on UBI in Palmerston North, was addressed by economics professor Srikanta Chatterjee of Massey University and Colin Whitmill who attended the European Congress on UBI last year. Contact : UBI Group c/- Private Bag 11-042, Palmerston North.

MAORI
on average receive 50% more in welfare benefits than they pay in tax.

PACIFIC ISLANDERS
on average receive 64% more in welfare benefits than they pay in tax.

EUROPEANS
on average pay 63% more in tax than they receive in welfare benefits.

OTHER ETHNIC GROUPS
on average pay 229% more in tax than they receive in welfare benefits.

ALL NZers
on average pay 45% more in taxes than they receive in welfare payments.

"Price stability is not only important to the economy, it's very important to social justice. People with high incomes cannot only protect themselves from inflation, they can actually make inflation work to their advantage ..."
- Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash, responding to Jane Kelsey at the ADB Conference.