I think there is more politics coming up on my blog. Today I read Rod Oram's Sunday Star Times article on the recent jobs summit in Auckland. He describes how some very sharp person surnamed Grant talked about the four phases of the rapid change we have experienced we had gone through and we are about to go through the fifth one: social unrest and protest. And no one bloody took serious notice.
Which given what is going on in the streets of Europe at the moment, gives me cause for wonder. Kiwis don't put up with everything all the time. she won't always be right. Thinking about how long ago the anti-nuclear agitation and the 81 spring bok tour was, perhaps we are moving towards an awakening, a thinking about what is right and who we want to serve in an earthly fashion.
Cos I do agreee with the protestors that the workers did not create the current financial crisis so why should they be losing their jobs to bail out shareholders?
We've already had major bank nationalisations globally. Will the ideas of national state assets ownership and some more radical worker ownership of factories come to the fore again?
Where happiness is lurking
4 days ago
4 comments:
I miss being able to "converse" with you about this sort of stuff. Dh's company is rolling out paycuts globally across their approx 200,000 employees. NZ Labour Laws mean that they can't enforce this and staff have to "volunteer" to take the 5% cut. Spoiling our family's current financial plans aside - it makes me angry that the staff are required to take a hit to preserve things for the shareholders in the US. The CEO is taking a 20% cut to his US$1.5mill salary - this won't affect his US$40mill in bonuses though!!
This does assume that "workers" and "shareholders" are different people. True, the poor are unlikely to be investing on the sharemarket! But I guess in New Zealand we are all shareholders on one level given the amounts being invested on our behalf in the Cullen fund.
I wonder if we would feel differently about business/shareholders if New Zealanders stopped all trying to be landlords and instead invested in wealth-generating investments (i.e. investing in businesses which might provide jobs for people).
Interesting points, Mary. (In our case - it's safe to assume that the thousands of global workers for Hubby's corporate are not one & the same as their US shareholders). I think notions of success, achievement, profit, etc are well & truely up for debate now.
Mary and Sharon, I will be back on this! Been thinking more about the whole retirement thing, as that is where the main interface hits for New Zealanders who feel themselves to be on both sides of the worker/shareholder equation.
Maybe tonight... gotta go be a mum and then a paid worker now.
Post a Comment