Mordusia

[Autokrator]

Minimum wage & workers protection pass into law

March 5717 (backdated)

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Randworth –  After the scandal with the New Englian workers being exploited in various jobs the government announced sweeping reforms, with such a package just passing in Parliament jut this afternoon.  The New Englians and other minority foreigners were massively being exploited in various jobs, such as cleaning houses, offices or doing tough manual labour in mines, ports and other physically demanding jobs. They did these jobs with often below average pay, next to no sick leave or vacation days, zero-hour contracts and other violations of the law. The problem was often that there was next to no oversight by the states labour inspections. Causing the Commonwealth to step in on the federal level with the new law.
 
As announced the government proposed sweeping reforms to the Worker’s Rights Act with new protections, such as more inspections and stricter laws for employers to prevent the exploitation of specifically foreign workers as was seen to happen with the New Englian workers in Mordusia. However, the reforms proposed by the government didn’t end there, a new federal minimum wage bill was proposed by the government to equalise the pay of workers and to make sure that everyone is able to live from a normal wage.
 
Many states have their own minimum wage, with often the more rural states and more business minded states either having a lower minimum wage or none at all. Voisain is a state for instance that had a minimum wage, but one that is lower than the federal one imposed now through the new act. This caused Parti Voisainaise, the National Party and some dissenting Reform Party members to complain for various reasons and ultimately nearly voting against the reforms.
 
Especially Parti Voisainaise was angry that the federal government would overstep its role and impose something that was the responsibility of the state. The party states that Voisain’s competitiveness will be severally hurt and that it once more crushed local autonomy of the states in favour of an ever-growing unitary state. This was also the criticism of the Alliance (Reform-Labor Alliance) member Reform. Mark Eddy, leader of the vocal regionalists within the Reform Party criticised the law saying that ‘’mandating a minimum wage through federal law is something we support, it would force the states to really take action, but setting a federal minimum wage is taking it too far’’. He further stated that his group wants to ‘’leave as much to local level as possible, as close to the citizens as we can’’.  Criticism from the National Party was obvious, though they are not opposed to centralising labour laws and economics to prevent local chaos, they opposed what they called a ‘’harsh punishment for companies’’ which would according to them ‘’lead to the loss of jobs, punishing less productive workers’’ and ‘’hurting competitiveness in states that are less economic fortunate’’.
 
However despite the big opposition the Labor-led Reform-Labor Alliance government headed by Prime-Minister Kat Wells stood firm, standing by her Minister for Labour & Employment Mandy Hailsworth (Labor) and the bills, saying that ‘’this country needs these reforms, we can’t standby and let hard working Kiwi’s just burn themselves out for nothing but some scraps, nor to let foreign workers who do the jobs we don’t want to remain destitude after hard labour, that’s not the social way nor what a civilised society accepts!’’.  Thanks to her standing firm and the support of Ikpi Rights, Forward Mordusia and Wildlife the bill passed with a majority.