31 January 2006

Fast food workers from the SuperSizeMyPay.com campaign voted 100% against the Restaurant Brands’ final offer at a stopwork meeting in Auckland today.

Today’s meeting brought together union delegates from KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks stores in Auckland who voted unanimously against the company’s offer, and restated their support for the SuperSizeMyPay.Com demands of a $12 minimum wage, an end to youth rates and secure hours.

January 25, 2006

Community representatives came together today to support fast food workers and their SuperSizeMyPay.com campaign as a step towards winning a reasonable standard of living and making poverty wages history for all New Zealanders.

All members of the community panel supported the campaign’s demands of a $12 minimum wage, an end to youth rates and secure hours. The representatives agreed that low pay and a substandard minimum wage were at the heart of poverty.

Tuesday, 24 January 2006, 5:47 pm

SuperSizeMyPay.Com applauds MP Sue Bradford’s decision to donate half of her back pay tomorrow at the “Make Poverty Wages History” press conference, Wednesday January 25th, 12 noon at the Mercure Hotel, 8 Customs St.

The Green Party MP’s pledge follows a call by Unite Union Auckland President Matt McCarten for all ex-MPs to donate their recent pay rise back pay to New Zealand’s low paid workers as community groups get together urging the public to join the fight to make poverty wages history.

» Green Party Press Release

January 23, 2006, 2.30pm

A diverse panel of community representatives is calling on all New Zealanders to make poverty wages history in 2006 at a press conference this Wednesday January 25th, 12 noon at the Mercure Hotel, 8 Customs St.

The panel includes grassroots organisations, including health, student, ethnic and poverty groups, NGOs, unions and political representatives and will be joined by fast food workers from the SuperSizeMyPay.com campaign to address New Zealand’s low wage crisis.

By Katie Shepherd & Jordan Buckley Daily Texan Guest Columnist, Source: Daily Texas Online

Exactly 50 years ago this weekend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. answered a startling phone call from Minneapolis Tribune journalist Carl T. Rowan. Rowan had come across a wire report that the Montgomery bus boycott - then entering its sixth week - had been resolved by city officials and local black ministers.

The announcement would, of course, prove to be a fabrication of local authorities and the boycott would endure another 11 months, resulting in the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Alabama's bus segregation laws.

Today - in the face of a recent revelation that McDonald's appears to buy its tomatoes through at least one convicted slaver - the fast food giant has resorted to a similarly shameful tactic: taking token measures to avoid confronting the severe human rights abuses that may be hidden within its supply chain.

See Also: Coalition of Immokalee Workers

21 December 2005

A lightning strike was called today at KFC Lincoln Rd by mother of five KFC shift manager, Susan Tuanui in response to the Government raising the adult minimum wage by only 75c and not removing youth pay discrimination.

Tuanui said that a pay rise of 75c per hour would only give her an extra $20 in the hand if she worked 40 hours a week. But she would still need to work over 40 hours a week to break the $400 mark.

Tuanui supports five children and says that a 75c per hour pay rise will make little difference to how hard she has to work to afford to feed her family. In her managerial role she currently gets paid $10.36 an hour when she's not running a shift and $12.86 when she is.

Photos of lightening strike

Saturday, 17 December 2005

Despite the pouring rain, striking Pizza Hut workers served up pieces of a giant pizza for a fair slice of the multinational brands profits and to raise awareness of the disproportionate number of migrant workers living on minimum wage in New Zealand.

The strike is the third Unite strike at a multinational brand and follows the world’s first Starbucks strike and a youth-led strike at KFC against age based pay discrimination. It forms part of the SuperSizeMyPay.Com campaign for a NZ$12 minimum wage, no youth rates and secure hours.

Photos available here

Friday, December 16 2005

Migrant workers will be serving up slices from a giant pizza tomorrow as part of the next SuperSizeMyPay.Com strike action at the Royal Oak Pizza Hut restaurant, 12 noon at 711 Mt Albert Rd, Auckland, Saturday 17th of December.

SuperSizeMyPay.Com campaign co-ordinator Simon Oosterman said the fast-food workers were striking to raise public awareness of the disproportionate number of migrant workers on low pay and minimum wage in New Zealand, particularly in Auckland where two thirds of migrants live and study and where the costs of living are highest.

“70% of the striking Pizza Hut store’s workers are migrants or international students. They are often told they do not have enough ‘Kiwi’ experience to seek better paid work elsewhere and have no choice but to work in low-paid and low-skill jobs. Up to one hundred percent of workers in many Pizza Hut stores are either new migrants or international students from India, China and the Pacific Islands amongst others.”

Kia Ora Koutou,

Thank you for supporting the SuperSizeMyPay.Com campaign for a fair $12 minimum wage, no youth rates and secure hours.

The SuperSizeMyPay.com campaign has only been running for three weeks and already the local and international response has been astounding.

We will be keeping you up-to-date with regular e-newsletters about our campaign and what you can do to help low paid and minimum wage workers in Aotearoa/New Zealand. (Our restaurant worker newsletter is available at http://www.supersizemypay.com/workers.)