Neither princely nor pauperly

OPINION: Minimum. You'll find it in the dictionary between mindset and minuscule, writes The Southland Times in an editorial.

Those are words liable to come up in the reaction to the Government's announcement that the minimum wage is to rise by 25c an hour, or $10 a week for a fulltimer, or 2 per cent.

Minimum, it says here, means the least possible. However, the dictionary doesn't define minimum wage as the lowest wage possible. It's the lowest wage "permitted by law or special agreement".

At the risk of making up a distinction ourselves, the minimum wage needs to represent more than the lowest wage gettable.

For our collective wellbeing, it needs to be the the lowest wage acceptable.

The difference has a lot to do with the standards of not only a decent society, but a successful one.

Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson portrays the new wage as one striking a balance between protecting jobs and giving a fair wage rise.

She says the new $12.50-an-hour rate shouldn't lead to job losses, whereas had the minimum been $15 it would have cost between 5400 and 8100 new jobs.

You don't all look convinced. Inevitably, there will be suspicion at those figures. Among the sceptics is pugnacious Labour MP Trevor Mallard, who detects a disregard for international evidence that, while some jobs would be lost, the rest of the better-rewarded lower-wage people would spend their extra money in ways that create jobs.

The minimum wage increase, since it's figured off GDP, arguably represents a standstill against inflationary costs.

It's really liable to be less than that, given the recent ACC levy increases.

It's true that one man's wage increase is another man's price increase.

And that many businesses are struggling with slim margins.

And it's no less true that in preference to redundancies, businesses have been screwing down labour costs to the extent that many employees above the minimum wage have been presented with all-but-implacable nil increase offers.

Public servants facing a signalled wage freeze have predictably raised their voices against the minimum wage creeping up on their jobs.

Against this background, rightly or not, the better remuneration levels in Australia continue to tempt New Zealand households facing income squeezes.

And not only from negligible or non-existent wage increases. Plenty of people have been finding their hours cut back as well.

The minimum wage needs to be the most, not the least, that can be offered to the workers on it. Call it a maximinimum.

Does the new minimum wage qualify? It depends a good deal on mindsets but, as near as these things can be assessed, it seems broadly within coo-ee.

Not that the Government can expect much in the way of kudos for it.

Let's not forget, either, that training and new entrants' minimum wages are set at four-fifths of the adult minimum wage. That group is facing an extra 20c an hour.

- © Fairfax NZ News