The Effect of a Minimum Youth Wage in New Zealand

Abstract

Twice in the last decade, youth rates of pay have been a very contentious issue. In 1983, two Government Members of Parliament voted with the Opposition to defeat a National Government proposal. The effect of that proposal was that no employer could be required to pay a worker under 18 years of age the same ordinary time rate as they paid an adult worker. Under the proposal, mandatory youth rates of pay would have been imposed on union negotiated awards and collective agreements that contained no such youth pay rates. These Members of Parliament, Marilyn Waring and Michael Minogue, told Parliament that the implications of the proposal for low paid workers, particularly women, were unacceptable in both social and human terms (Hansard, 1983). In 1983 this view won the day and youth rates remained subject to negotiation in collective bargaining rather than being imposed by legislative provision. A decade later, in May 1993, the peak council of unions in New Zealand, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, has argued for the introduction of a legislated minimum wage for youth and for the adult minimum wage to apply to workers once they reach 19 years of age (New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, 1993). And more recently, in July, a Labour opposition Member of Parliament has introduced a Private Members Bi11 to Parliament seeking to introduce a legislated minimum wage for youth workers.