I may be wrong but . . . .

I’m becoming increasingly disappointed and sometimes a bit angry that the National Government is steadily reverting to the type of attitude that was more common in less enlightened times – of going out of its way to encourage division within New Zealand society in the name of economic growth and productivity.

Political commentators see it as the National party feeling confident enough of its electoral strength that it can start to please its harder constituency – the ones who see any humanity in the economy as being soft, anti-growth and anti-business. They’re probably right.

Instance 1: I wrote a few months ago about what I still believe is the fundamental ethos on which National’s national standards education policy is based – that the best way to get results out of teachers (and their pupils) is to point the finger, make them feel bad or inadequate, and trust that this will make them ‘pull up their socks’. It’s an approach to community activity that is basically mean-spirited, critical, law of the jungle, and ‘us/me versus them’.

The results, sadly, are what you would expect – it merely divides people, dampens cooperative growth, and delivers worse outcomes on average.

Instance 2: Blame and belittle welfare beneficiaries. Here we go again with National getting tougher on one of their two traditional targets, those on welfare and particularly sole parents. ‘Rebalancing welfare’, my local MP said in his press release last week. Making work more available by forcing mums (and disability beneficiaries) to get part-time work after their children have reached school age. Yeah, right!

Beneficiary bashing is an easy activity for those with a negative personality streak, and sadly National are showing their true colours again. Treat people as if they are lazy and out to cheat you, and eventually most of them will fulfill your expectations. But give them the benefit of the doubt and most of them will feel valued and try to become contributing citizens.

Instance 3: (National’s other traditional target.) Legislate against workers and unions so that employers can treat them more like second-class participants in workplaces. The extension of the 90-day trial period, the added restrictions on employees’ access to unions, and stupid, unworkable rules about sick leave are simply unnecessary and will create an unhappier workforce. Assume they’re all out to cheat and bring down employers, and fewer workers will feel any desire to work with their bosses and take a part in thriving together.

For those who can remember back over 20 – 40 years ago, the improvements (on average) to workplace satisfaction and harmony over the past decade have been pretty remarkable. The balance between the needs and aspirations of workers and employers seemed about right. Strikes and other industrial unrest are now quite infrequent, and many workplaces operate on mutual respect and appreciation of each others’ roles.

But now, in the name of ‘making it easier to employ people and create jobs’, but actually about getting tough and letting employers take less care of their workers, the scene is set for unnecessary strife and unhappier employees, and ultimately less productivity.

It’s a real shame. The sort of society we need to make a better and more resilient country values highly the cooperative spirit of citizens as they grow together in a vibrant economy, not the dog eat dog competition that seeks winners and losers for the personal satisfaction of those with power.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Business, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.