“Living wage a test of small business’ mettle”

Via Stuff this morning, great quotes from FIRST union leader Robert Reid:

“Why should a worker suffer for being employed by a business that maybe shouldn’t exist,”

As the debate about the living wage continues, we get yet another indication that unions are fine with unemployment – as their clients aren’t the unemployed.

Dom Stephens from Westpac (NZ’s 17th sexiest economist) is quoted further down in the article and rebuts things nicely, so I will just leave it there:

Large increases lifting the minimum wage above where the free market put it – “and I think it [proposed living wage] may be moving toward that” – very clearly affected employment, Stephens said. “It would worsen things for the most vulnerable members of society and improve the lot of those who stayed employed.”