OPINION
I can never quite get my head around how the business elite in Aotearoa can speak so casually about needing higher unemployment or that workers need to accept lower wages, even as inflation rises.
We’ve got a habit of speaking about the economy like it’s a machine and people just cogs in it. But when the Reserve Bank Governor says workers need to suppress their wage demands, that’s real families getting poorer. When the National Party pledges to remove the full employment mandate so interest rates go higher, that’s real people losing their jobs and families having to tighten the belt to make mortgage payments.
I’ve been through two big recessions, and a few smaller ones, in my life and I can tell you, it isn’t the well-heeled who suffer. It’s the people who are treated like cogs, to be thrown on the scrapheap when they’re not useful. It’s the working class, often in rural communities, often Māori and Pasifika, who have to live through the hard realities of the “wage constraint” and “greater labour market flexibility”.
Even once the economy bounces back, the impact on those workers and their families lasts. The factories in small towns often don’t reopen, the job opportunities don’t come back. It’s either up sticks to the big city or scrape by. Many workers never recover from a bout of unemployment - they never get back to earning what they were and their chances to progress are gone. I see that in my hometown, Kawerau - the whānau and friends who have struggled to get back on their feet after losing their jobs.