New Zealand care workers win big pay rise

After a five year campaign, over 50,000 mainly women workers in the aged residential care, home support, and disability services this week won a multiyear pay rise. This increase is a recognition that workers were receiving poverty wages and were subjected to systemic exploitation. Unions now hope that this increase will be implemented fully and that it will represent only a start that will flow on to other sectors where workers are systemically underpaid. Highlighting these issues, workers in the fast food sector went on co-ordinated industrial actions to call for higher wages and better conditions across that industry. 

After a five year campaign, over 50,000 mainly women workers in the aged residential care, home support, and disability services this week won a multiyear pay rise. This increase is a recognition that workers were receiving poverty wages and were subjected to systemic exploitation. Unions now hope that this increase will be implemented fully and that it will represent only a start that will flow on to other sectors where workers are systemically underpaid. Highlighting these issues, workers in the fast food sector went on co-ordinated industrial actions to call for higher wages and better conditions across that industry.