Increase The Minimum Wage
If National refuses to increase the minimum wage, then there is always the option of increasing it by a member's bill. We shouldn't have any trouble selling the idea to an MP.
Relevant legislation
The Minimum Wage is governed by the Minimum Wage Act 1983. The actual amounts are set by Order In Council, and are supposed to be reviewed annually. The latest such order is the Minimum Wage Order 2008.
Potential changes
There are two obvious ways to increase the minimum wage:
- Amend the Minimum Wage Order 2008 directly, adding new subsections setting a new minimum wage and a new commencement clause to bring them into force.
- Repeal the Minimum Wage Act 1983 and replace it with a virtually identical one which also included base values for 2009.
Problems
- Legislation is slow, so we would need to think ahead on the dollar values and make some asusmptions about how long the bill would take to pass.
- There is no majority for this. The bill would be symbolic only, aimed at positioning the relevant party and forcing the government to vote it down.
- An amended order could easily be overturned.
- A legislated value could be used as an excuse by the government to delay further increases.
- A bill could backfore badly; if by some miracle a bill was progressed to select committee or the committee stage, it could be amended there to produce a lower minimum wage than at present.
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How about legislation for annual indexing of the minimum wage?
The EU sets it to two-thirds of the average wage.
There might be a majority for this, as depoliticising the minimum wage would, to some extent, benefit the right.
Not a bad idea. The law already requires an annual review; it could easily be amended to require adjustment according to the CPI along the same lines as e.g. benefits. But that would be a different sort of bill from the "positioning bill" I had in mind.
Definitely one to follow up on.
It sounds like Unite is trying for a CIR on this, which might argue against this being a Private Members' Bill.
I'd have thought the opposite (and the bill should mirror the referendum proposal). But Trevor Mallard's office is apparently working on it.
How about a maximum wage too? President Obama wants a $500,000 maximum salary for personnel in companies that are being bailed out.
You could start a new topic for that, and try drafting a bill for it. But it might be worth thinking about the chances of finding an MP to take it, let alone of it passing (and somehow overcoming the government's financial veto) before doing so.
Looks like Darien Fenton is trying to do it with with an SOP to her Minimum Wage and Remuneration Bill.