About 300 Ikea workers are set to strike for the first time on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Workers First Union deputy secretary Rudd Hughes said the staff wanted to be given pay increases that kept up with inflation and time-and-a-half at the weekend.<\/p>\n
He said Ikea had been given credit when it arrived in New Zealand for paying staff living wage.<\/p>\n
“Now they’ve kind of stepped back from that saying well we never guaranteed it. It was always just a happy coincidence\u2026 so the current pay offer they’ve got on the table is less than CPI so we see that as a pay cut.”<\/p>\n
He said Ikea’s Australian staff were paid overtime rates.<\/p>\n
“What we’re asking for even at weekend rates is less than what they get in Australia which is double time.”<\/p>\n
He said Ikea argued they had a legal mandate to pay overtime in Australia.<\/p>\n
“What they are saying is that ‘New Zealanders are second-class citizens and we’re going to treat them worse than we treat our Australian workers’. We’re not happy with that.”<\/p>\n
Ikea has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n
“Ikea came to this country trumpeting their ‘progressive’ attitude concerning industrial relations, but talk is cheap and so is their offer to workers,” Hughes said.<\/p>\n
“Retail workers deserve to be recognised for the work they do, and weekend work should attract a top rate because of the time people have to spend away from their families and friends to earn their wages.<\/p>\n
“Ikea need to step up and show they value New Zealand workers in the same way they value Aussie workers.”<\/p>\n
He said retail in general was a tough environment for workers.<\/p>\n
“Retail is incredibly poorly paid in this country. You can live on a retail wage in Australia, you cannot live on it here. Part of that is aroudn the fact that people get overtime, get penal rates on the weekends.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 300 Ikea workers are set to strike for the first time on Saturday. Workers First Union deputy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-640071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}