On Wednesday, the government froze public service pay for three years in a vicious attack on the very workers who have kept the country alive during the pandemic for the last year. Meanwhile, today they've re-announced their new system of "Fair pay Agreements", allowing unions to negotiate basic terms and conditions for entire industries. Its a fairly incoherent agenda, but I guess they think workers should get a better deal unless they work for the government.
But it does suggest a solution to Hipkins and Robertson's austerity-driven ratfuckery: the PSA should seek to negotiate a fair pay agreement for the entire state sector, including as a minimum term and condition an annual cost-of-living adjustment of the CPI + n% (where n can be variable depending on current pay, to deliver more to people at the bottom), plus additional regional allowances for public servants in Auckland and Wellington to offset the costs of the government's housing crisis. And if Hipkins and Robertson refuse, they can use it as an excuse for the public-sector-wide strike those fuckers so richly deserve.
