Thursday, October 11, 2007

Yet another reason why New Zealand needs its unions back

Well as statistical associations go it doesn't get much clearer. Workers who live in countries with strong unions work shorter hours and vice versa - period. In case anyone is wondering, New Zealand is one of the dots down the bottom right of the graph. Our "hours worked" figure is 1767 (6th highest out of the 20 countries), and our collective bargaining coverage is 27.5 % (3rd lowest in the OECD).
Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Yearly_working_time.jpg

https://www.oecd.org/document/12/0,3343,en_2649_201185_31781132_1_1_1_1,00.html

So it's established then: National's De-unionisation of New Zealand in the 1990s has created an economy that's characterised by low wages, low productivity levels and long working hours. If only the Labour party had the courage of conviction to turn this around.
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2 comments:

  1. LNovember 23, 2007 at 3:52 AM

    This cross sectionl NOT times series. Snuff?

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  2. Roger NomeOctober 1, 2010 at 7:10 PM

    Yep - valid point. i forgot to dig out the time-series data on NZ, but he labour market report shows a gradual increase in working hours that was concomitant with the liberalisation of the labour market from 1987 to the mid 1990 (when the structure of the labour market had changed to near present reality).

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