Latest news with #LabourParty-led
NDTV
18-07-2025
- Politics
- NDTV
UK To Reduce Voting Age To 16, These Countries Have Already Done It
The United Kingdom has announced its plans to lower the voting age to 16, and the Labour Party-led government wants to do it before the next General Election. The proposal, which is likely to have a massive impact on the country's democratic system, comes months after the UK witnessed its lowest turnout in the 2024 national polls since 2001. The step is aimed at ensuring maximum participation in all elections once the proposed changes are written into law. The move will grant around 1.5 million 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote when the country goes to the polls for the next general election in 2029, BBC reported. But not all parties supported the idea. While Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that young people should have the opportunity to say what they want their money spent on, Conservative MP Paul Holmes said the government's proposal was "hopelessly confused". Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said he didn't support lowering the voting age to 16 "even though we get lots of votes". Apart from the voting age, the government also plans to expand the purview of UK-issued bank cards, which will be treated as legitimate voter ID in Great Britain, but they must have the elector's name, according to reports. Not just that, once the changes come into effect, people will be able to apply for a postal vote at least 14 days before a poll. Earlier, the deadline was 11 days. This is to ensure people get their ballot in time. The proposed law will bring uniformity as far as the age of voting rights across Britain is concerned. In Scotland and Wales, youngsters could already vote to elect their representatives to the devolved Parliament, but not so for the British polls. Countries where the voting age is 16: In Europe, only Austria, Malta, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands have granted voting rights to people who are at least 16 years old. Among other nations, Brazil, Argentina and Cuba, too, have voting age reduced to 16, according to The Guardian. Parts of Germany, Israel, and Estonia allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in some, if not all, elections. While 16-year-olds are allowed to vote in Nicaragua, the legal voting age in Indonesia, East Timor, Ethiopia, North Korea, and Sudan is 17.
Mint
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Mint
From students to IT engineers, how stricter UK visa rules spell trouble for Indians' immigration plans
In view of the rising net migration in the UK, the Labour Party-led British government released a white paper that outlined its plan to crack down on immigration. This is not good news for Indians aspiring to settle in the UK. A white paper titled 'Restoring Control over the Immigration System' encapsulates the plan of the Keir Starmer-led Labour government to crack down on rising migration. The plan entails a higher threshold for getting work visas, widening the net of English language proficiency to dependents and importantly, stretching the time period for becoming eligible to apply for citizenship. The government statement says that the white paper sets out plans to create an immigration system that promotes growth but is controlled and managed. The white paper mentions that the threshold for skilled worker visas should be raised to the graduate level from the current A-level measure. This will adversely impact the care workers who are hired from overseas. There are expectations that the changes will cut up to 50,000 lower skilled and care workers who are likely to come to the UK in the next year. Migrants will have to wait 10 years to apply to settle in the UK, rather than five years under the current system. This means migrants who come on a work visa to the UK will be eligible to apply for ILR (indefinite leave to remain) after 10 years instead of the current five. Another rule which has been put in place is the English language requirement across every immigration route into the UK. This is the first time that adult dependents will have to demonstrate some proficiency in English to integrate with the population. Critics have said that this would lead to a split in families when partners or parents fail to qualify for basic English skills. Currently, students are eligible to stay unsponsored on a graduate visa for two years. The white paper recommends reducing this period to 18 months. The graduate visa was reintroduced in 2021 to allow graduates to stay in the UK for 24 months (36 for PhD holders) so that they can look for a job during this period. The white paper mentions that only 30 per cent of surveyed graduate visa holders were employed in professional occupations, whereas others were either unemployed or employed in administrative or secretarial occupations.
Scoop
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
NZ Government Blocks 'Pay Equity' Claims For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Workers
Press Release – Socialist Equality Group The amendment was announced on May 6 by Workplace Relations Minister Brooke Van Velden, from the far-right ACT Party. It was rushed through parliament the next day under anti-democratic urgency provisions to limit public discussion and scrutiny. New Zealand's right-wing coalition government last week passed the Equal Pay Amendment Act, which is designed to make it much harder—perhaps impossible—for workers in female-dominated professions to claim that they are underpaid because of gender-based inequity. The amendment was announced on May 6 by Workplace Relations Minister Brooke Van Velden, from the far-right ACT Party. It was rushed through parliament the next day under anti-democratic 'urgency' provisions to limit public discussion and scrutiny. The legislation is part of the government's austerity regime, which involves brutal cuts to healthcare, education and welfare, a virtual pay freeze across the public sector, and thousands of layoffs. Its aim is to increase the exploitation of the working class, divert more public money to the super-rich, and to fund a vast increase in military spending to prepare for war. Van Velden told reporters the government was 'not taking money from anybody'—a transparent lie. In the same media conference, she said the new pay equity framework would lead to 'very real and significant cost reductions.' Prime Minister Christopher Luxon confirmed that money set aside in the budget—to be announced on May 22—to settle pay equity claims can now be reduced. He expected the government to save 'billions of dollars.' The government has cancelled 33 pay equity claims that were being negotiated under the old system, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers, mainly in the public sector. The unions involved will be forced to reapply under the new thresholds. The largest outstanding claim covers 94,000 teachers in the primary, secondary and early childhood sectors. It was lodged under the previous Labour Party-led government at the end of 2020 and negotiations have dragged on for years. The new law changes the definition of work 'predominantly performed by female employees.' It states that 70 percent of the workforce must be women (up from 60 percent under the previous law) and that this must have been the case for at least 10 years. In high schools, 63 percent of teachers are women, meaning that they may be barred from re-submitting a pay equity claim. The government has also removed the ability for previously settled claims—including for nurses, social workers, librarians and aged and disability carers—to be regularly reviewed and adjusted. For new claims, there are much stricter criteria for assessing whether 'sex-based undervaluation' of workers exists in a given profession. Claimants' work must be compared with 'work that is the same or substantially similar' to that performed by men or by a majority-male workforce. Van Velden criticised pay equity claims which compared librarians with mechanical engineers, and social workers with air traffic controllers. She said this was 'muddying the waters' between sex-based discrimination and pay gaps that were caused by other things such as 'market forces.' The law change has triggered widespread anger, with thousands of people joining protests across the country last week outside the offices of government MPs. A petition by the unions calling for the amendment to be reversed gained more than 65,000 signatures by Sunday night. The opposition Labour Party, the Greens and the union bureaucracy, however, are working to prevent an organised movement by the working class against austerity. They are telling workers to wait for the next election in 18 months. Labour's workplace relations spokesperson Jan Tinetti told the BHN podcast that people should 'get behind' Labour, the unions and their allies. 'Together we can fight this and we can make a difference, and we can be so much stronger in 2026 to win that election and put this right again,' she said. Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark (1999-2008) shared a post on X stating: 'When the parents, partners and children of women in the workforce vote in 2026 we will remember this moment.' Jacinda Ardern's 2017-2023 Labour Party-led government heavily promoted pay equity deals, mainly as a means to subordinate workers to the union apparatus and suppress a broader movement against low wages and austerity. Thirteen pay equity deals were reached, the most significant covering about 30,000 nurses in public hospitals. The nurses received pay rises of between 18 and 20 percent in 2023. While not insignificant, this followed decades of near-frozen wages under successive Labour and National-led governments, enforced by the union apparatus. That settlement, touted by Labour and the unions as a 'historic' achievement, is already being undermined through a new round of wage cuts. Nurses have been offered a pay rise of just 1.5 percent over a two-year period, which is well below the increase in the cost of living. Nurses held two part-day strikes in December 2024, but since then the New Zealand Nurses Organisation has organised no action and remained silent on the negotiations. Notwithstanding the pay equity settlements, the Ardern government presided over a worsening social crisis, including increased homelessness and child poverty. The Labour Party lost the 2023 election in a landslide as living costs soared and it campaigned on cutting jobs in the public sector, to make workers pay for the developing economic crisis. Labour also agrees with the government's decision to raise spending on the military from 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product. This will divert an extra $12 billion to the armed forces over the next four years, which will be paid for by further eviscerating public services. By comparison, the cost of the pay equity settlements reached thus far is just $1.78 billion a year. Fleur Fitzsimons, national secretary of the Public Service Association, wrote in the Post: 'The PSA will not be taking this outrageous attack on the rights of women workers lying down. We will be fighting this in the streets and in the courts.' The PSA, however, has not announced any strike action. It has done nothing to oppose the thousands of job cuts across multiple government agencies over the past year-and-a-half. The union vocally supports the vast military spending increase, which is at the direct expense of workers. The statements by the union bureaucracy blaming low wages for teachers, healthcare workers, caregivers and others entirely on gender discrimination serves to disorient and divide the working class. There is a gender pay gap: Women's median hourly earnings are 8.2 percent less than men's. But the fundamental division in society is the gulf between the working class and the financial and business elite, whose wealth is based on the exploitation of workers of every nationality, gender and ethnicity. Feminist identity politics, which blames low pay on 'sexism' and 'patriarchy,' obscures the reality that male-dominated sections of the workforce have experienced major attacks on wages and conditions in recent decades. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in meat processing, agriculture, construction, transport, forestry and other sectors of the economy have become casualised and insecure, with low wages and often dangerous working conditions. The richest 5 percent of the population owns 45.5 percent of the country's wealth, while the poorest half of the population owns just 2 percent. According to figures released in 2023, New Zealand's richest 311 families collectively owned $85 billion in assets. All the capitalist parties, including Labour and its allies, are dedicated to the enrichment of this parasitic layer. A real fight against austerity must be directed against the actual source of inequality, which is not men, but the capitalist system. To carry out such a struggle, workers have to build new organisations: rank-and-file committees, independent of the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy. They must reject the divisive nationalism and identity politics promoted by the unions, Labour and various pseudo-left organisations. Workers need to adopt a socialist strategy, aimed at expropriating the wealth hoarded by the billionaires and dismantling the armed forces of the state, in order to raise living standards for all workers and to fund a vast expansion of public healthcare, education and other services. 12 May 2025
Scoop
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
NZ Government Blocks 'Pay Equity' Claims For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Workers
New Zealand's right-wing coalition government last week passed the Equal Pay Amendment Act, which is designed to make it much harder—perhaps impossible—for workers in female-dominated professions to claim that they are underpaid because of gender-based inequity. The amendment was announced on May 6 by Workplace Relations Minister Brooke Van Velden, from the far-right ACT Party. It was rushed through parliament the next day under anti-democratic 'urgency' provisions to limit public discussion and scrutiny. The legislation is part of the government's austerity regime, which involves brutal cuts to healthcare, education and welfare, a virtual pay freeze across the public sector, and thousands of layoffs. Its aim is to increase the exploitation of the working class, divert more public money to the super-rich, and to fund a vast increase in military spending to prepare for war. Van Velden told reporters the government was 'not taking money from anybody'—a transparent lie. In the same media conference, she said the new pay equity framework would lead to 'very real and significant cost reductions.' Prime Minister Christopher Luxon confirmed that money set aside in the budget—to be announced on May 22—to settle pay equity claims can now be reduced. He expected the government to save 'billions of dollars.' The government has cancelled 33 pay equity claims that were being negotiated under the old system, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers, mainly in the public sector. The unions involved will be forced to reapply under the new thresholds. The largest outstanding claim covers 94,000 teachers in the primary, secondary and early childhood sectors. It was lodged under the previous Labour Party-led government at the end of 2020 and negotiations have dragged on for years. The new law changes the definition of work 'predominantly performed by female employees.' It states that 70 percent of the workforce must be women (up from 60 percent under the previous law) and that this must have been the case for at least 10 years. In high schools, 63 percent of teachers are women, meaning that they may be barred from re-submitting a pay equity claim. The government has also removed the ability for previously settled claims—including for nurses, social workers, librarians and aged and disability carers—to be regularly reviewed and adjusted. For new claims, there are much stricter criteria for assessing whether 'sex-based undervaluation' of workers exists in a given profession. Claimants' work must be compared with 'work that is the same or substantially similar' to that performed by men or by a majority-male workforce. Van Velden criticised pay equity claims which compared librarians with mechanical engineers, and social workers with air traffic controllers. She said this was 'muddying the waters' between sex-based discrimination and pay gaps that were caused by other things such as 'market forces.' The law change has triggered widespread anger, with thousands of people joining protests across the country last week outside the offices of government MPs. A petition by the unions calling for the amendment to be reversed gained more than 65,000 signatures by Sunday night. The opposition Labour Party, the Greens and the union bureaucracy, however, are working to prevent an organised movement by the working class against austerity. They are telling workers to wait for the next election in 18 months. Labour's workplace relations spokesperson Jan Tinetti told the BHN podcast that people should 'get behind' Labour, the unions and their allies. 'Together we can fight this and we can make a difference, and we can be so much stronger in 2026 to win that election and put this right again,' she said. Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark (1999-2008) shared a post on X stating: 'When the parents, partners and children of women in the workforce vote in 2026 we will remember this moment.' Jacinda Ardern's 2017-2023 Labour Party-led government heavily promoted pay equity deals, mainly as a means to subordinate workers to the union apparatus and suppress a broader movement against low wages and austerity. Thirteen pay equity deals were reached, the most significant covering about 30,000 nurses in public hospitals. The nurses received pay rises of between 18 and 20 percent in 2023. While not insignificant, this followed decades of near-frozen wages under successive Labour and National-led governments, enforced by the union apparatus. That settlement, touted by Labour and the unions as a 'historic' achievement, is already being undermined through a new round of wage cuts. Nurses have been offered a pay rise of just 1.5 percent over a two-year period, which is well below the increase in the cost of living. Nurses held two part-day strikes in December 2024, but since then the New Zealand Nurses Organisation has organised no action and remained silent on the negotiations. Notwithstanding the pay equity settlements, the Ardern government presided over a worsening social crisis, including increased homelessness and child poverty. The Labour Party lost the 2023 election in a landslide as living costs soared and it campaigned on cutting jobs in the public sector, to make workers pay for the developing economic crisis. Labour also agrees with the government's decision to raise spending on the military from 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product. This will divert an extra $12 billion to the armed forces over the next four years, which will be paid for by further eviscerating public services. By comparison, the cost of the pay equity settlements reached thus far is just $1.78 billion a year. Fleur Fitzsimons, national secretary of the Public Service Association, wrote in the Post: 'The PSA will not be taking this outrageous attack on the rights of women workers lying down. We will be fighting this in the streets and in the courts.' The PSA, however, has not announced any strike action. It has done nothing to oppose the thousands of job cuts across multiple government agencies over the past year-and-a-half. The union vocally supports the vast military spending increase, which is at the direct expense of workers. The statements by the union bureaucracy blaming low wages for teachers, healthcare workers, caregivers and others entirely on gender discrimination serves to disorient and divide the working class. There is a gender pay gap: Women's median hourly earnings are 8.2 percent less than men's. But the fundamental division in society is the gulf between the working class and the financial and business elite, whose wealth is based on the exploitation of workers of every nationality, gender and ethnicity. Feminist identity politics, which blames low pay on 'sexism' and 'patriarchy,' obscures the reality that male-dominated sections of the workforce have experienced major attacks on wages and conditions in recent decades. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in meat processing, agriculture, construction, transport, forestry and other sectors of the economy have become casualised and insecure, with low wages and often dangerous working conditions. The richest 5 percent of the population owns 45.5 percent of the country's wealth, while the poorest half of the population owns just 2 percent. According to figures released in 2023, New Zealand's richest 311 families collectively owned $85 billion in assets. All the capitalist parties, including Labour and its allies, are dedicated to the enrichment of this parasitic layer. A real fight against austerity must be directed against the actual source of inequality, which is not men, but the capitalist system. To carry out such a struggle, workers have to build new organisations: rank-and-file committees, independent of the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy. They must reject the divisive nationalism and identity politics promoted by the unions, Labour and various pseudo-left organisations. Workers need to adopt a socialist strategy, aimed at expropriating the wealth hoarded by the billionaires and dismantling the armed forces of the state, in order to raise living standards for all workers and to fund a vast expansion of public healthcare, education and other services. 12 May 2025
Scoop
04-05-2025
- Health
- Scoop
On The Doctors Strike
Press Release – Socialist Equality Group The austerity measures imposed by his governmentand the previous Labour Party-led governmenthave produced the crisis of unmet need. About 5,500 doctors held a 24-hour nationwide strike in New Zealand on May 1 in protest against a pay offer of just 1.5 percent, spread over two years. This would be a major pay cut in real terms, with annual inflation at 2.6 percent for the year to March. It was the first ever full-day strike by senior doctors in the country's public hospitals, called by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS). It follows strikes last year by thousands of junior doctors and by tens of thousands of nurses, and repeated strikes this year by medical laboratory workers. The doctors' strike coincided with strikes by 370 perioperative nurses at Auckland City Hospital, in protest over understaffing, and by nearly 1,000 home support workers employed by Access Community Health, who have received no pay increase for nearly two years. The unions involved—the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) and the Public Service Association (PSA)—limited these strikes to just two hours. These actions reflect widespread opposition to the right-wing National Party-led coalition government's intensifying assault on the public health system. The day before the doctors' strike, Health NZ confirmed that it has axed 540 jobs from its IT department, reducing its staffing by about a third. This will place further pressure on public hospitals' antiquated computer systems. Hospitals are being instructed to find hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and are leaving vacant positions unfilled. According to the ASMS, the vacancy rate for senior medical officers across the country is 12 percent, but in some areas it is more than 40 percent. Health Minister Simeon Brown said he was 'disappointed' with the strike. He cynically told the media that 'an estimated 4,300 procedures such as hip operations, knee operations, cataract removals and critical specialist assessments would be delayed as a result of this strike.' In fact, the austerity measures imposed by his government—and the previous Labour Party-led government—have produced the crisis of unmet need. According to Newsroom, 'The waitlist for elective procedures sat at 76,677 at the end of September, with 30,173 waiting for more than four months and 2,159 waiting for more than a year.' One News reported that 200,000 people are currently waiting to receive a specialist assessment, with long wait times often leading to serious harm. Doctor Allan Moffitt told the outlet: 'I have a patient who had cancer and I could tell that it was a serious type of cancer. Her referral took over six months to be seen.' Emergency departments are frequently filled above capacity, resulting in significant delays for urgent cases. Newsroom reports that data for 2024 shows ambulances 'waited 35 minutes, on average, to hand patients over to hospitals.' One doctor wrote in the r/newzealand Reddit forum that, for them, the strike was 'about retaining colleagues so that work isn't utter misery. We are haemorrhaging specialists at our hospital, and with each resignation, there's more strain on those who stay.' Striking Wellington physician Andrew Davies told Radio NZ the staffing crisis was the major issue: 'We've got vacant jobs that we're not allowed to advertise. It's lies that they're not getting rid of front-line staff.' In response to the crisis, the government is outsourcing thousands of procedures to private hospitals, further undermining the public system and paving the way for privatisation. More budget cuts are being prepared. Finance Minister Nicola Willis revealed on April 29 that in response to the deteriorating economic outlook—the US trade war targeting China could trigger a global recession—the government will slash new spending in this year's budget from the previously announced $NZ2.4 billion to just $1.3 billion. This will be the smallest spending increase in a decade. Treasury officials previously stated that $2.5 billion in new spending was the minimum required just to meet the growing cost of delivering services. The opposition Labour Party's criticism of the government's cuts is thoroughly hypocritical. The previous Labour-led government oversaw a worsening crisis in the health system, including expanding waiting times for surgery and an effective wage freeze, which prompted strikes by nurses, midwives, doctors and other workers. Labour's decision in 2022 to remove all restrictions on the spread of COVID-19 led to thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of hospitalisations, placing extraordinary pressure on hospitals. Labour supports the government's plan to double military spending from 1 to 2 percent of gross domestic product, which will be funded at the expense of health, education and other essential programs. The government has pledged an extra $12 billion for defence over four years to further integrate New Zealand into US-led imperialist war plans. Workers also confront a trade union bureaucracy that is enforcing government cuts and preventing an effective, unified struggle against austerity. The various health unions have ensured that different sections of workers remain isolated from each other, with strikes limited to a day or less. It has been more than five months since more than 30,000 nurses struck after rejecting a 1.5 percent pay offer, with the dispute still unresolved. The NZNO is seeking to wear down its members and persuade them to accept a sellout. The PSA is demanding that even more money be spent on the military, while the union collaborates in imposing redundancies across multiple government departments. The ASMS returned to negotiations with Health NZ the day after the doctors' strike. The government agency has requested facilitated bargaining by the Employment Relations Authority. The union's Sarah Dalton signalled that the union leadership is backing away from its claim for a 12 percent pay increase. She told the New Zealand Herald: 'It may not be that we achieve 12 percent, but if we can't achieve better than what is on offer at the moment, we will not be able to settle this.' The Socialist Equality Group warns that a sellout is being prepared. Doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers can only fight back against the government's cuts and privatisation plans if they take matters out of the hands of the union bureaucracy. Rank-and-file committees, controlled by workers themselves, should be established in every hospital to coordinate their struggle. The crisis in the health system also raises the need for a socialist political perspective. Workers must reject the fraud that well-funded, properly staffed and freely available public healthcare is 'unaffordable' and that they have to be 'realistic' and accept pay cuts. The billions of dollars hoarded by the super-rich should be used to vastly expand the public health system and put an end to poverty and inequality. Workers must also demand an end to military spending, with the money redirected into health and other vital social programs. By Tom Peters, Socialist Equality Group 3 May 2025 Original url:
