By Patrick Gower
Currently minimum wage is $13 an hour.
National would like to lower it – for some workers to as little as $10.90.
It says putting the minimum wage up, as other parties would, would mean employers would simply shed jobs.
But 3 News has obtained Treasury documents that dispute that.
Workers at McDonald’s wanted to place a simple order this election; ‘Do something about our McWages’. If they could have anything, staff say it would be for minimum wage to go up to $15.
Given the chance, McDonald’s employee Mary Liddicoat took her order right to the top.
She asked Prime Minister John Key, “Will the minimum wage go up to $15 an hour soon?”.
“It will go up, but it won’t go up straight away,” he responded.
That’s a polite ‘no’. Key has no intention of super-sizing their pay anytime soon. He says it will cost 6000 jobs.
Mary wasn’t buying that.
“I can’t see how you would lose that many jobs by taking it up that much,” she said.
The Government’s own officials agree with her.
The Department of Labour says the rise will cost 6000 jobs. But Treasury has a counter view; “This has not been true in the past. The balance of probabilities is that a higher minimum wage does not cost jobs.”
Not all employers are worried about a hike either. Andy Martin runs a pub, employing 26 people in Oamaru.
He says put the wage up and people just spend more money – everyone wins.
“$15 is fair,” he says.
So Mary had another request for Key:
“Try and live on $450 a week.”
“Look, I think it would be very difficult for anyone to do that,” he said.
“I sure as hell couldn’t’ live on $13 an hour and I wouldn’t expect other people to have to live on that much,” Labour leader Phil Goff said.
“It is a miserable wage,” says Green party co-leader Metiria Turei. “Families can’t live on it and that’s the problem.”
“Honestly, I struggle to understand how some families can feed their children,” Mana Party leader Hone Harawira said.
There is an estimated 100,000 people on minimum wage and 300,000 close to it – so there are a lot of votes to takeaway.
But only a Labour government would push it to $15 an hour next year – National would take years to get it there.
3 News