McDonald's: Wage-thieves

Wage-theft - workers not being paid what they are owed - is endemic in the US fast food industry, and is now the subject of a major criminal investigation in New York. Sadly, it turns out New Zealand fast food restraunts aren't immune, with McDonalds accused of stealing $2.5 million from its workers:

Unite are submitting an employment authority case against McDonald’s today for unpaid breaks that the union estimates has resulted in unpaid wages of $2.5 million.

"We have wage and time records from two stores (one a McCopco store and one a franchisee) for the last four months that confirm a consistent pattern of not paying for lost lunch breaks – as they are required to do under the collective agreement," said Unite National Director Mike Treen.

[...]

"We have done a calculation for the two stores and we estimate the unpaid breaks for all staff to be $2700 for each store for the four months. Multiply that by 6 to cover the two-year collective agreement, and again by 160 to cover every store in the country – and the total owed is $2.5 million.

That cheap burger you're eating? It's cheap because McDonald's steals from its workers. Throw it away and buy from somewhere that pays people properly instead.

Climate change: China agrees to a cap

Big news on the climate change front: China has agreed to cap its greenhouse gas emissions from 2016:

The battle against global warming has received a transformational boost after China, the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide, proposed to set a cap on its greenhouse gas emissions for the first time.

Under the proposal China, which is responsible for a quarter of the world's carbon emissions, would put a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions from 2016, in a bid to curb what most scientists agree is the main cause of climate change.

It marks a dramatic change in China's approach to climate change that experts say will make countries around the world more likely to agree to stringent cuts to their carbon emissions in a co-ordinated effort to tackle global warming.

China has no cap up until now due to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities - that those historically responsible for the problem need to act first to clean it up. Despite agreeing to this principle in the UNFCCC, the US has used China's uncapped emissions to justify inaction and frustrate global climate change talks for a decade. Now the ball is firmly in their court. I wonder what excuse they'll use now?

(My guess: start whinging about India. Because the US's position was never about fairness and was always about undermining international agreements)

Unlawful, unjustified and unreasonable

On October 15 2007, the New Zealand Police conducted a series of "anti-terrorist raids" around the country. In the Bay of Plenty town of Ruatoki they terrorised the community, with armed police conducting searches and searching every vehicle going in and out. Effectively, they acted like an army of occupation invading a hostile area. Now, six years on, the Independent police Conduct Authority has found that their actions were "unlawful, unjustified and unreasonable":

Independent Police Conduct Authority Chair Judge Sir David Carruthers said today that the decision by the then Commissioner of Police to undertake the operation in Ruatoki Valley and elsewhere on 15 October 2007 was reasonable and justified.

“However, the road blocks established by Police at Ruatoki and Taneatua were unlawful, unjustified and unreasonable. While Police were warranted in taking steps to address possible risk to public safety there was no justification for believing there was a general threat to the people of Ruatoki.

“Police had no legal basis for stopping and searching vehicles or photographing drivers or passengers,” he said.

In addition police unlawfully detained and searched other residents at properties where they were executing search warrants.

All of this raises the question of whether police will personally apologise to and compensate those whose rights they systematically violated, and whether the officers responsible will be disciplined or sacked. Sadly, the police seem to be in their usual mode of denying they did anything wrong, so that seems unlikely. Their refusal to do so can only continue to undermine the reputation of the police as an institution, and the willingness of the public to cooperate with them - just as it continues to do so over Arthur Allen Thomas.

I'm also left with a question: the IPCA has found that police illegally photographed people at roadblocks (something the police are in denial over). Has that illegally gathered information been destroyed, or has it been databased somewhere, allowing the police to continue to benefit from the fruits of their crime?

(The full report is here [PDF])

Something to go to in Wellington

Want to know more about illegal GCSB spying and the new powers it is trying to grab? Journalist Nicky Hager, former MP Keith Locke and lawyer Michael Bott will be discussing these problems at a public meeting in Wellington next week:

When: 18:00, Monday 27 May
Where: Mezzanine Room, Wellington Central Library

A living wage for Hamilton

The Hamilton City Council has voted to adopt a living wage for all its staff:

Hamilton City Council has become the first in the country to vote in favour of paying its staff what campaigners have called the living wage.

Councillors on Tuesday voted eight to five in favour of paying $18.40 an hour to staff currently earning less.

As a result, 80 workers will get a pay rise in the next two years at an estimated eventual cost of $168,000 a year.

Good. Councils, like other employers, should pay their staff enough to live a dignified life. Unfortunately there's a big gap around contractors, who aren't employed by the council and so don't benefit from this - so the next step is to adopt that as a requirement for all contracted services. Which will incidentally remove the "race to the bottom", hire-the-same-staff-and-pay-them-less model which currently drives contracting out, so it will kill two birds with one stone.

Charter schools = quack schools

Who wants to run a charter school? Quacks and loons, according to the PPTA:

A list of organisations that have expressed interest in running charter schools has been outed, revealing a high proportion of religious groups, including a Manawatu church arguing it has the right to teach creationism using taxpayer money because state schools teach evolution.

The Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) has defended its decision to print the list in this month's edition of its members' magazine, which names 21 organisations that registered interest - almost half of them religious groups - with president Angela Roberts arguing that the process had been shrouded in secrecy.

Attempts to identify which organisations had registered interest were previously stonewalled.

The full list is here [PDF, p. 7]. In addition to the quacks and loons, there's also four Maori trusts and a cramming service (so we know how they'll get results). A handful of the applicants look credible, but then there's the obvious question of why they don't just set up a private school (or arrange with parents to lobby for a designated character school or Kura Kaupapa Maori instead).

As for the quacks and loons: it is absolutely inappropriate that taxpayers money is used to provide religious education. These groups are simply looking for a massive taxpayer subsidy for proselytising. And that's not something anyone should support.

Unsurprising

So, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has concluded that the GCSB did not actually break any laws. Colour me unsurprised. The Inspector-General is a total captive of the agencies he is supposed to be overseeing, reliant on them for support and information. Meanwhile, he's barred from inquiring into anything which is "operationally sensitive", which can be redefined by the agency at will to mushroom him. The net result: a paper "watchdog", who is no check and balance at all.

So its not really surprising that the Inspector-General echoes the GCSB's line that everything is fine and that the law is "unclear". "Nothing to see here, move along, and by the way we'll be having some extra spy powers thanks".

Meanwhile, we're expected to simultaneously believe that

all of the cases were based on serious issues including potential weapons of mass destruction development, people smuggling, foreign espionage in New Zealand and drug smuggling.

but also that

no arrest, prosecution or any other legal processes have occurred as a result of the information supplied to NZSIS by the GCSB.

Which if taken at face value means that someone is not doing their fucking job. Drug smuggling, people smuggling, WMD development and foreign espionage are all crimes punishable by severe penalties (basically 14 years to life imprisonment, unless the drugs smuggled are class C or lower). And they did all that spying and yet didn't manage to prosecute anyone? that suggests either incompetent prosecutors, or that the net is being cast too wide and that people's privacy is being invaded for no good reason. Either way, heads should roll.

Tax cheats don't like criticism

So, it turns out that the tax cheats don't like being called on their crimes:

The bosses of some of Britain's largest multinational corporations have urged David Cameron to stop moralising and rein in his rhetoric on tax avoidance ahead of a G8 summit next month.

Chief executives of companies such as Burberry, Tesco, Vodafone, BAE Systems, Prudential and GSK were keen to take a final opportunity to lobby the prime minister in advance of the meeting of political leaders in Northern Ireland.

Cameron has pledged to use Britain's G8 presidency to tackle aggressive tax avoidance by multinationals, but is also keen to heed the counsel of his business advisory group, which he met with on Monday.

Firstly, this shows that the strategy of naming and shaming tax cheats is working - it has made people aware of the problem, and it has encouraged them to do something about it. Just as no-one likes buying from a company which kills a thousand of its workers due to shoddy construction, no-one likes buying from a tax-cheat. Companies who trade on their reputation will need to be squeaky clean on the tax front, and make sure they are not using aggressive evasion tactics.

But secondly, it speaks volumes about the sociopathic character of major corporate executives that they think the response to this is to stop politicians talking about it rather than clean up their own act. These companies have no intention of paying their fair share of taxes - hell, in some cases their profitability depends on them not doing so. Which means we need government to force them. The question is whether government works for us, or the tax-cheats.

Not acceptable

It seems that while Tim Groser has been gallavanting around the world unsuccessfully campaigning to get himself a better job, he's been ignoring things at home - including such basics as answering OIA requests:

New Zealand First says Trade Minister Tim Groser’s refusal to acknowledge or answer Official Information Act (OIA) requests, brings the Minister’s performance of him and his office into question.

Associate spokesperson for Trade Andrew Williams says the Minister has so far failed to respond to five different OIA requests dating back to November 2012.

“While Mr Groser was off traveling the world at the tax-payer’s expense, trying to sure-up support for his failed WTO bid, his office has been failing to act on numerous OIA requests.

This is simply unacceptable. The OIA is not optional - it is the law. Ministers are legally required to respond to requests as soon as practicable, with 20 working days as the upper limit. And they should not be putting their personal career advancement before their legal obligations to the people of New Zealand.

Sadly, there's no penalty for breaking this law, and given the constant underfunding of the Ombudsman's office, complaining about late requests is pointless (for a start, it won't make them arrive on time). The only way this disease can be cured is by naming and shaming Ministers who ignore the law, so that voters can hold them accountable for their performance at the ballot box.

No asset sales in Christchurch

Some good news: Christchurch won't be selling its assets to fund the rebuild. They've looked at their finances, and drawn the sensible conclusion that its both unnecessary and stupid. They'd rather have the income to keep rates down long-term than a one-off cash infusion (and financial problems further down the track).

But they still have one problem: Gerry Brownlee:

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker says there's a $600 million gap between what his city is prepared to spend on new projects, such as a convention centre, and what the Government wants.

Speaking on Firstline this morning, Mr Parker said the council has asked the community what it wants and how much it's prepared to spend, but the Government is pushing for more.

"Over a year ago, council ran a budget through a consultation with its community, and it said – take for example, the convention centre – that we would rebuild the convention centre, make it a little bit bigger, and build it on the old site," says Mr Parker.

"The Government plan came through and said no, we want it to be 50 percent bigger than you're planning to do, and we want it to be on a central city site, a different place about 500m closer into the heart of the city.

What gets built in Christchurch should be up to the people of Christchurch, not dictated by a Minister in Wellington. Sadly National still doesn't seem to understand this fundamental concept of democracy. The question is whether they will invoke CERA powers to force Christchurch to sell its assets to pay for infrastructure they don't want.

New Fisk

Where else but Northern Ireland would a killer on a school board even be mooted as a possibility?

Worse than I thought

One of the more odious features of Fiji's military dictatorship is its use of "ouster clauses", purportedly denying the jurisdiction of the courts to review its illegal policies. Such clauses have a long and dubious history in military dictatorships. But now National is using them here. Their New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) - a discriminatory bill specifically intended to overturn the family carer's victory in Atkinson & Others v Ministry of Health, rammed through the House under all-stages urgency on Friday - includes an ouster clause purportedly denying the courts jurisdiction to review decisions made under it on human rights grounds:

On and after the commencement of this Part, no complaint based in whole or in part on a specified allegation [one that a decision under the Act discriminates on the grounds of marital status, disability, age or family status] may be made to the Human Rights Commission, and no proceedings based in whole or in part on a specified allegation may be commenced or continued in any court or tribunal.

As for cases that got in before then, apart from Atkinson, they are denied any effective remedy. The result is effectively to excise the Act from the jurisdiction of the courts, giving the government a free hand to discriminate on those grounds in its policies over home care, regardless of the Human Rights Act.

This is a direct attack on the rule of law, a direct attack on our constitution, and a direct attack on the rights of all of us. After all, if the government feels that it can excise family carers and the disabled from the Human Rights Act, what's to stop them from doing it to the rest of us? What's to stop them from excising our right to free speech, free assembly, or our right to vote? Nothing. The problem is what to do about it.

The immediate solution is to throw this government out on their arses at the next election. This is simply the latest in a long line of constitutional abuses, and they have clearly shown that they cannot be trusted with power. In the long term, we need to make sure that this can never happen again. And that means entrenching the Bill of Rights Act as supreme law and allowing laws which purport to contravene it to be overturned. Half-measures such as declarations of inconsistency and mandatory reporting will no longer cut it anymore. Parliament has shown that it will not act to guard our fundamental human rights. They have betrayed our trust. It is therefore time to take that role off them and give it to a body which can be trusted: the courts.

[Hat-tip: Andrew Geddis]

National's "innovation" agenda

The government has been trumpeting its support for science, claiming that it is investing $200 million of new funding over the next four years. Half of this is going on business R&D grants, but of the other half they're highlighting $73.5 million for their "National Science Challenges" and an extra $20 million for the Marsden Fund. But as usual for this government, its all spin and bullshit.

First, lets look at overall science funding, as laid out in the Estimate of Appropriations for Vote: Science and Innovation [PDF]. Core departmental funding? Cut from $33 to $29.6 million. Research funding (which includes both the Marsden Fund and various other specific categories of research, as well as core CRI funding)? Cut from $741.5 to $686.5 million. Overall they've sucked over $55 million out of science and innovation. They've introduced some new categories of funding - the "National Science Challenges" - and boosted the Marsden Fund. But those have come at the expense of much deeper cuts elsewhere.

And as for those "National Science Challenges": $73.5 million over 4 years equals $18.375 million a year. And there are ten of them, so each of these "priority areas" gets a mere $1.84 million in funding a year. That doesn't buy a hell of a lot of scientists, or a hell of a lot of science. But announcing it does buy headlines, which is all National is after.

This government is not supporting science - it is cutting it (oh, except for "energy and minerals research" - the miners and oil drillers keep their hidden subsidy). And in the process, they are cutting the future of this country. And you do not need to be a scientist to figure that out.

Another abuse of urgency

Parliament is currently in urgency to pass budget-related legislation. Usually, this is justified - for example, when raising taxes, or sending major policies to select committee. However, the government has included two bills in the urgency motion (for all-stages passage, no less), which do not seem to be justified.

The first - the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill - is a patch-up job on the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill they rammed through just a few weeks ago. It seems that National was in such a hurry they left significant flaws in the legislation. However, that in itself does not justify no select-committee scrutiny, especially when the amendments won't come into force for up to two years. There's plenty of time to send this to committee and make sure they're doing it properly this time. But to add insult to injury, the bill expands the Anadarko Amendment to apply to waters above the continental shelf but outside our EEZ - a legislative grab which may not be supported in international law (and which has BORA implications). Given the lack of scrutiny for the original amendments, you'd think this deserved some.

The second - the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) - is worse. This is the government's response to the family carers in Atkinson & Others v Ministry of Health, and it is aimed at overturning that court victory so the government can pay family carers less than anyone else. The Attorney-General has given it a negative section 7 report on the grounds that it unlawfully discriminates on the basis of family status (not online yet), but it is being rammed through under all-stages urgency. Worse, the bill's Regulatory Impact Statement [PDF] - the primary mechanism for informing MPs of the consequences of their legislative actions - has been heavily redacted. So MPs are being expected to decide on a bill with serious human rights implications, in the absence of the legal advice which would tell them whether they are making the right choice.

Again, this is unacceptable. Human rights should not be violated under urgency, and to do so makes a mockery of the BORA's reporting process and again calls into question Parliament's right to legislate in this area. They are trusted to do so on the basis that they will only violate the BORA after thinking long and hard about it; every time they refuse to do that, they simply strengthen the case to take that right off them by making the BORA supreme law and giving the Supreme Court the power to overturn MP's lazy excesses. As for the RIS, it makes a mockery of the claim that Parliament's consent to this law is in any way "informed" - and by doing so it undermines the legitimacy not just of the law, but of Parliament as an institution. If Parliament is simply mushroomed by the government, then its votes carry no weight, and the laws it passes aren't. Its that simple. National's continued contempt for Parliamentary process is in danger of undermining our entire democracy. We should not let them get away with it.

Austerity kills

Back in 2009, The Spirit Level showed why that cherished right-wing value, inequality, was bad for everyone (including the very rich the right-wing project is supposed to benefit). Now another book has done the same for that cherished right-wing policy, austerity.

The Body Economic by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu looks at the effects of government austerity on public health. The conclusion? Austerity kills. Arbitrary cuts to health, social services and housing budgets, driven by economists not professionals, have terrible effects. Take Greece:

The consequences have been dramatic. Cuts in HIV-prevention budgets have coincided with a 200% increase in the virus in Greece, driven by a sharp rise in intravenous drug use against the background of a youth unemployment rate now running at more than 50% and a spike in homelessness of around a quarter. The World Health Organisation, Stuckler says, recommends a supply of 200 clean needles a year for each intravenous drug user; groups that work with users in Athens estimate the current number available is about three.

Disease and drug-use aren't the only consequence: Greece has seen a 60% rise in suicides. The US and UK, which have also suffered cuts to health and social services, have had similar (though less extreme) rises (data for New Zealand lags by two years, so we won't see what National has done to us in this department until they're gone).

And it is NeoLiberal austerity to blame. Countries which suffer economic crises but do not make cuts to health and social services budgets do not suffer these effects (and seem to have quicker recoveries as well). The conclusion:

Poorer public health, in other words, is not an inevitable consequence of economic downturns, it amounts to a political choice – by the government of the country concerned or, in the case of the southern part of the eurozone, by the EU, European Central Bank and IMF troika.

Public health - people's lives - should not be sacrificed for the profits of the greedy few. Societies should protect their people, and place the burden of crises on those most able to pay for it: the rich. By doing so, not only will they save lives - they'll also actually do better economically. But somehow, i think its a message that the rich and their servants just don't want to hear.

Who'd have thunk it?

It turns out that the oil companies have been engaged in widespread, LIBOR-style price-fixing:

The London offices of BP and Shell have been raided by European regulators investigating allegations they have "colluded" to rig oil prices for more than a decade.

The European commission said its officers carried out "unannounced inspections" at several oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway to investigate claims they may have "colluded in reporting distorted prices to a price reporting agency [PRA] to manipulate the published prices for a number of oil and biofuel products".

The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a "huge impact" on the price of petrol at the pumps "potentially harming final consumers".

When LIBOR broke, there were fears that this sort of price-fixing was rife throughout the financial and commodities sector. It turns out that it is. Far from being "free", or markets are just gangs of organised criminals engaged in price-fixing and market-distortion for profit. And ordinary consumers like you and I are their victims. We pay more for food, we pay more for petrol, we pay more for electricity, we pay more for our homes because of their criminal profiteering. The question now is whether governments will actually do anything effective about this, or whether they'll blame a few bad apples, deliver a few token slaps on the wrist with a wet bus-ticket, and let it continue. Sadly, given the way that money dictates politics at the moment, I expect the latter.

National: Turning ex-pats into exiles

Once upon a time, when National Party Ministers were young, being a student was easy. You'd go to university, get an education, and get a decent job as a result. And because the state believed in the social benefits of education, it cost next to nothing.

Enter Roger Douglas and Phil Goff. Education became a "private benefit", which people had to borrow to pay for (Lockwood Smith simply applied the DHB scam to it so fees were charged by perpetually underfunded universities rather than government). But thanks to degree inflation and an austerity-induced recession, that benefit was rather less than what people were expected to pay for it (and its not as if they could "choose" not to pay: middle-class expectation and qualification inflation meant it was a life of debt or a life flipping burgers). For some, the gamble of education failed: either university was too much for them, or the promised decent job failed to materialise at the end of it, or simply life happened, and so they ended up burdened by unrepayable debt. Inevitably, due to the long tradition of the kiwi OE and the sudden incentive to exploit the exchange rate to repay education debt, some of those people were overseas.

Labour's interest-free policy made things easier for those still in New Zealand - at least their debts wouldn't grow. But those overseas were left out. And since then National has increased foreign repayment obligations, making them even more unrepayable and creating a stronger incentive to ignore the loan and get on with your life. And now, they've gone a step further, proposing to arrest student loan debtors at the border.

National thinks this will encourage those debtors to come home, or better yet, encourage them never to leave in the first place. I think it will do the opposite. While people may go overseas on a lark, they don't stay there for trivial reasons. These overseas borrowers will have lives, jobs, and families where they are - anchors overseas which keep them from coming home. And what National's policy will do is make sure they can never come home ever again. They can't come home for christmas, because they'll be arrested. If a New Zealand family member gets sick, they'll have to choose between their family and their freedom. They won't be able to come home for funerals. All of that is inhumane, vindictive and punitive, but it gets worse: they won't be able to do business here, because they'll be arrested. And they won't even be able to move back home, because if they come back for a job interview, the government will throw them in jail.

National likes to talk up the value of our ex-pats. But this stupid, inhumane, vindictive policy will turn them into permanent exiles. Way to go, National.

Meh

That's the only way to describe this year's Budget. Another privatization - Meridian Energy this time - and a lot of reshuffling of spending, to achieve what? 5%-plus unemployment, stretching on as far as the eye can see. National's supposed "recovery" will be a jobless one, which will grow the underclass while funneling more money to their mates at the top. Public services get cut, while money gets shovelled at private schools, charter schools, and irrigation schemes (a direct subsidy to farmers). Meanwhile, contributions to the Cullen Fund are suspended for another two years, until 2020, so that National's rich old mates can continue to enjoy artificially low taxes at the expense of the next generation.

There are three bright spots. First, National bowed to sanity and continued funding for the Warm Up New Zealand home insulation scheme. It has enormous benefits compared to its costs, but it came from the Greens, so they hated it; I'm glad they've seen sense. Secondly, GCSB gets their budget for spying cut by $10.5 million. Do that for a few more years and we'll be safe from them. Finally, National's "surplus" has been achieved by reducing the operating allowance for extra spending next year - which means next year's election-year budget is going to be even more miserly than this one, hopefully reducing their chance of electoral success.

It is her job

Judith Collins' latest excuse for her refusal to bring a bill to implement the recommendations of the Electoral Commission on MMP? Its not her job:

Justice Minister Judith Collins has rejected criticism that she made no effort to reach an agreement on MMP reforms, claiming it was not her role "to organise the Kumbaya sessions of party leaders" to sit down to decide what they wanted.

[...]


"I have a very robust and full agenda. It is not my role to be the keeper of the parties in Parliament.

"There has been no attempt by any of them to sit down and work out what they want."

Bullshit. Parliament operates under MMP, in which governments typically do not have a majority and must gain the support of other parties for their agenda. In such a situation, if a Minister wants to pass a bill, it is absolutely their job to gain that support. Collins refused not because it wasn't her job, but because she did not want the bill to pass. And for her to pretend otherwise is simply dishonest.

Amazon: Still tax cheats

Last year internet bookseller Amazon.com came under fire for cheating on its UK taxes. Like many multinationals, Amazon routes its UK sales through a foreign tax-haven - in this case Luxembourg - in order to shift its revenue and profits to a lower-tax jurisdiction. This robs the UK government of hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue, and is a direct cause of the vicious austerity that country is suffering under.

Amazon's tax cheating is predicated on a claim that their Luxembourg subsidiary does not actually do business in the UK. But it turns out they've been lying about that:

Among the key indicators of whether a business is taxable in the UK is the location of those negotiating deals. A UK publishing executive confirmed that his contract was negotiated on behalf of Amazon EU Sarl, the Luxembourg company, by staff from the British head office in Slough.

"The contract may be with Luxembourg but it is the people from Slough who thrash out the crucial details of the contract such as the discount we agree to give them. There are also people in Slough who are charged with overseeing that the contract is properly executed," the executive said.

Meanwhile, job adverts posted this month on the careers page of Amazon.co.uk invite application for scores of roles in the UK. Among them is a vacancy for a senior financial analyst. "Based at our UK Head Office in Slough, Amazon seeks a Senior Financial Analyst to support Amazon UK's Merchant Services business," the advert said.

There are more details here. The short version: it looks like Amazon's Luxembourg subsidiary trades in the UK from a fixed place of business, making it a "permanent establishment" whose activities should be taxed. The question now is why HMRC have allowed them to get away with claiming they do not.