Helen Kelly still doesn’t get it.
Council of Trade Unions (CTU) president Helen Kelly said no-one would resent The Hobbit films being made here, but the cost was “outrageous”.
“That a foreign corporation can come into this country and demand that workers’ rights in this industry be removed — and that’s effectively what’s going to happen today under urgency,” she told TVNZ’s Breakfast programme.
What are those “outrageous costs”?
They got what they wanted with legislation due to be rushed through Parliament today that will clear up confusion about the legal status of contractors and employees, and also a $20 million tax break, which was far short of what they argued for.
So the film industruy gets
- a law change to say “if you sign on as a contractor, then you are a contractor”
- and a $20m payment.
Re: 1 – why is the film industry so lucky? Labour’s law was idiotic, and has led to many employers finding that they “actually” hired permanent employees when they did nothing of the sort.
Re: 2. There’s two scenarios here.
A) John Key’s:
$20,000,000 costs
$500,000,000 injection into the economy including millions in tax, and millions worth of tourism advertising that will pay off for years to come.
Profit? Millions.
B) Helen Kelly’s
$0 Costs
$0 Income
The destruction of large number of jobs, widespread redundancies and the destruction of our film industry as it currently is. No boost to our tourism industry, and a negative spillover into other potential investments.
Profit? No, a loss of millions of dollars and massive damage to our economy as our added bonus.
As Keeping Stock said this morning, Helen should just stop digging.
Something should go here, maybe later. 