The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi is calling on all political parties to reject ACT’s plan to slash pay for workers under 20 and a three-year freeze on the minimum wage.
“Paying young people $14.37 an hour is unconscionable. It’s nowhere near enough to live on, and it tells young workers their time is worth less than everyone else’s,” says Sandra Grey, NZCTU President.
ACT’s proposed training wage would let employers pay under-20s 60 percent of the adult minimum wage for their first 12 months with any employer. Working full-time, that’s $29,889.60 a year – $19,926 less than an adult on the minimum wage doing the same job.
It would replace the current starting-out wage, cutting the bottom rate for young workers by a quarter, from $19.16 to $14.37 an hour. And because it applies to any employer, it massively widens the scope and means that a young person could be dropped back to it every time they change jobs.
“David Seymour and ACT seem intent on dragging young workers back to 19th-century levels of hardship,” says Grey.
ACT is again proposing to freeze the minimum wage at its current rate for three years. Based on the Reserve Bank’s latest inflation forecasts, that would leave a full-time minimum wage worker $3,877 worse off annually by 2029 than if the rate kept pace with inflation.
The minimum wage has already fallen four percent in real terms since 2023 under ACT Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden. A full-time minimum wage worker in 2026 earns $2,076 less than they would if the minimum wage had risen in line with inflation.
“This would lock in pay cuts for the workers who can least afford them,” says Grey.
“The minimum wage is already 20 percent below the Living Wage – the next Government should be closing that gap, not widening it.”
ACT’s wider small business package is another attack on working people. It would make it easier for employers to pressure workers out of their jobs without accountability, and cut the time workers have to take a personal grievance to the Employment Relations Authority from three years to three months. “New Zealand should be building an economy where work pays enough to live and thrive on – not cutting wages, weakening rights and leaving working people worse off,” says Grey.
