Erosion of 4 Weeks Annual Leave is an attack on families

The National Party, together with its mates like United Future, voted against Matt Robson's Four Weeks' Paid Annual Leave Bill when the Progressive Party Bill was voted on in Parliament in 2003.

 

It wasn't a surprising stance as the National Party quarter of a century earlier had voted against the Third Labour Government's decision to introduce a third week of paid annual leave.

 

It is unclear what the National Party truly believes the number of paid holidays employees should be entitled to (five days, or ten days as it was in the 1960s, or none at all?), because National isn't an honest party that tells citizens what its actual agenda is before people vote. It doesn't outline the intellectual and moral basis for its agenda, and then seek an open mandate to deliver. 

 

Instead it aggressively opposes all progressive gains by Labour governments but, because it has no mandate to bluntly reverse the gains when it does get into power, once it is in Government its goes about its regressive programme in sneaky, piecemeal ways.

 

National will undermine working people's four week holidays piece by piece.

 

One of the arguments used against extending an extra week when the Progressive Party Bill was first introduced to Parliament in late 2002 was outlined by National's sister organisation, Business New Zealand:

 

It said at the time that: "Proposals to increase holiday entitlements to four weeks a year would harm New Zealand's growth prospects. MP Matt Robson's Holidays (Four Weeks' Annual Leave) Amendment Bill is likely to get its first reading in Parliament this week, and Labour Ministers are apparently being lobbied hard to support it...Mandating another week's holiday for everyone sounds appealing of course, but it would reduce the nation's productivity. None of that would help growth or prosperity in the longer term."

 

The argument of the Regressives was, of course, very dishonest - it deliberately mixed up three different concepts into one - productivity, growth and prosperity - as if they were all exactly the same thing. http://www.businessnz.org.nz/doc/433/Extraweeksholidaywouldharmproductivitygrowth

 

The United States enjoyed strong productivity, economic and employment growth over the period 2001-2007, for example, but when it comes to the question of prosperity the honest thing to address is to answer for whom?

 

•  Most U.S. working people's inflation-adjusted or real wages have been stagnant in the 2000s, especially since 2003.

 

• In American under right-wing administration since the start of the New Century, the productivity/wage gap grew strongly. The gap between productivity growth and workers' wages, especially those of middle- and low-wage workers, is at a historically high level. What that means is that wage growth has been very unequal. 

 

The practical effects of the right wing agenda, whether in the U.S., New Zealand or any other country, is not greater prosperity for a majority of citizens, but just a minority. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp195/

 

But there is another aspect of the Right's programme.

 

The effect of eroding working families taking four weeks annual holidays a year, in a society where two incomes are a financial necessity for the majority, is also an act which puts additional pressure on families themselves and the cohesion of families.

 

That's right, the freemarket ideology which relishes inequality and opposes annual paid leave on principle, is a backhanded attack on family values and the interests of a majority of families.