Economist, Barbara Ward once suggested that we still have slaves, but these days we don't see them because they are on the other side of the world.

In a thought-provoking column Newsroom, Nikki Mandow wonders if perhaps the cheap tins of tomatoes in New Zealand's supermarkets are the result of slave labour.

She notes that Countdown has 32 different tinned tomato products on its (online) shelf.

Prices range from 70 cents to $2.55.

"Only 11 are locally-sourced - good ol' Watties' Hawkes Bay tomatoes, plain and flavoured. Maybe roast garlic and onion for spag bol?

Every other canned tomato - 21 different sorts - is Italian."

"Can you really bring a tin of tomatoes halfway around the world and sell it at a third of the price of a locally-sourced brand, and be sure no unsavoury human resources practices happened along the line?" Mandow asks.

In June, the Guardian published an article by Tobias Jones and Ayo Awokoya with the subtitle "How the Italian mafia makes millions by exploiting migrants."

In the Italian south, the lives of foreign agricultural labourers are so cheap that many NGOs have described their conditions as a modern form of slavery.

A few have work contracts, although union organisers often find they are fake.

Desperate for work, these labourers will accept any job in the fields even if the wages are far below, and the hours far above, union standards.

Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, was a British economist and writer interested in the problems of developing countries.

She was an early advocate of sustainable development before this term became familiar and was well known as a journalist, lecturer and broadcaster.

She died in 1981.

Source

• newsroom.co.nz
• theguardian.com
• en.wikipedia.org
• Image: theguardian.com

The Government has given the green light to piloting social impact bonds in New Zealand.

Social impact bonds are a way for non government entities to partner in delivering social outcomes - and be rewarded by Government.

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman says social impact bonds are a consistent fit with the Government's wider social investment approach, which aims to better understand the drivers and risks of social dysfunction.

In a press release Labour's Health spokeswoman, Annette King, says the Government is using some of the most vulnerable Kiwis as guinea pigs against official advice and in the absence of international evidence that its ‘experiment' will achieve the desired results.

This is how social impact bonds work:

1. The Government contracts out some social services work with set timelines and agreed performance targets attached to those services.
2. A non-government organisation will then provide the services.
3. It does so through using money put up by investors.
4. If the agreed performance targets for the services are met, the Government will then pay back the investors their principal on the bond, and a percentage return.

Social bonds have been promoted by the right-wing think-tank The New Zealand Initiative

The New Zealand Initiative has released a report analysing overseas examples of the use of social impact bonds and looking at the application of social impact bonds in New Zealand.

The report warned that because no bonds had yet reached their full term overseas, their success had yet to be established.

It also warned that a number of challenges would have to be overcome to increase the chances of success in New Zealand.

It listed the challenges as:

• The relative immaturity of the social finance and investment market compared with countries like the United Kingdom
• The complexity of initiating the bonds, potentially deterring would-be participants
• Political risks such as change of government, a change of policy, and overly bureaucratic processes.

Source

• tvnz.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• nzinitiative.org.nz
• Image: nzinitiative.org.nz

It was 25 years ago this month that communism ceased to be a threat to the west and to the free market.

When sledgehammers started to dismantle the Berlin Wall in November 1989, an experiment with the command economy begun in St Petersburg more than 70 years before was in effect over, even before the Soviet Union fell apart.

The immediate cause for the collapse of communism was that Moscow could not keep pace with Washington in the arms race of the 1980s.

Higher defence spending put pressure on an ossifying Soviet economy.

Consumer goods were scarce. Living standards suffered.

But the problems went deeper.

The Soviet Union came to grief because of a lack of trust.

The economy delivered only for a small, privileged elite who had access to imported western goods.

What started with the best of intentions in 1917 ended tarnished by corruption.

The Soviet Union was eaten away from within.

As it turned out, the end of the cold war was not unbridled good news for the citizens of the west.

For a large part of the postwar era, the Soviet Union was seen as a real threat and even in the 1980s there was little inkling that it would disappear so quickly.

A powerful country with a rival ideology and a strong military acted as a restraint on the west.

The fear that workers could "go red" meant they had to be kept happy.

The proceeds of growth were shared. Welfare benefits were generous. Investment in public infrastructure was high. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: ieaTV

"I don't think the law is working terribly well, but I've always voted in favour of liberalisation of trading laws when it comes to Easter weekend," Key said.

The Retailers Association has suggested that shops should be allowed to open after 1pm on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, as happens on 25 April each year.

The Catholic Church however is warning that using Anzac Day as a model for trading hours during Easter would hurt the poorest and most vulnerable.

Labour Party labour issues spokesman Andrew Little says retailers in Wanaka are reported to have traded throughout the Easter break in breach of shop trading laws following a tip-off that no action would be taken if they opened for business.

Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean told Radio New Zealand she was aware inspectors would not be visiting.

Most stayed open, taking advantage of about 100,000 visitors in town for the Warbirds over Wanaka International Air show.

Little said, "The idea that a Government department can give a nod and a wink to traders that it won't enforce shop trading laws and for a Government MP to then claim it as grounds for a review of the law is another act of third world shonkiness from National".

18 complaints were made about businesses flouting Easter trading laws this year, but none will be prosecuted. Last year there were 46.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), the Government department responsible for administering the legislation, said as none of the businesses had received warnings or been prosecuted previously, none would be prosecuted for their defiance.

Source

• Scoop.co.nz
• New Zealand Herald
• Image: New Zealand Herald

FIRST Union retail secretary Maxine Gay said retailers who opened on Good Friday were being "greedy", with little regard for workers' and families' need.

"Retail workers have among the fewest rights in the country - shops are already allowed to trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the other 361 days of the year. I think they can handle a break 3 1/2 days a year."

The FIRST Union says shop assistants will be pressured by employers to work at Easter if the Easter holidays are done away with.

Gay said the union has numerous examples of the pressure applied to shop assistants to work hours that other people expect as leisure time.

Workers could feel pressured into complying with a retailer's desire to remain open and some union members had faced ostracism when they opted not to work.

She said the union did not oppose retailers opening for events held on public holidays that were likely to attract tourism dollars.

Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, the Catholic social agency says there should be no change to Easter trading laws, citing the need for retail workers to spend some time with their families.

Retail Association chief executive Mark Johnston said consumers were increasingly shopping online on Good Friday and Easter Sunday when most shops were forced to shut.

The law was outdated, Johnston said, and the association would be asking for the legislation to be amended after this year's election to keep up with the changing retail landscape.

• Listen to an interview with Lisa Beech, a spokesperson for Caritas, on Sunday Morning. In this interview the idea that Sunday trading is not simply a religious issues, but a matter of a more human way of living, is discussed

• Easter trading laws - the right balance or archaic and in need of a huge overhaul? Have your say on Easter trading on Stuff. The Shop Trading Hours Repeal Act specifies that most shops must close on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and until 1pm on Anzac Day.

Source

• Radio New Zealand
• Stuff.co.nz
• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: News.msn.co.nz

Caritas Director Julianne Hickey made an oral submission to the Select Committee last week. Caritas told the Committee that the legislation will lead to greater inequalities and, in the current regulatory environment, may not lead to sufficient protection for poor and vulnerable consumers.

She said, "Catholic social teaching contains cautions both for people seeking to privatise and people seeking to nationalise industries and services which provide essential goods. It recognises both the value of the market and the limits to the market."

"We have drawn on experience by New Zealand Catholic groups with low-income power consumers who have had difficulty even under current arrangements with obtaining or maintaining power accounts. We also have recent experience of the privatisation of state assets, where private owners failed to invest in basic maintenance, forcing the government to buy them back rather than allow services to fail. We have also considered the urgency of the environmental challenges facing us, and question whether the Mixed Ownership Model provides the best incentives and encouragement for power companies and consumers to make changes in their energy production and use."

Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand also made a written submission which is based on the principles in the Church's social teaching about the common good, the protection of the poor and vulnerable members of society, the protection of the environment, and the principle of the universal destination of created goods.

It thinks that continued state ownership is a better way to:

• ensure the provision of essential services, particularly for the most poor and vulnerable;
• improve our use of energy in the face of environmental destruction and climate change;
• ensure that our commitments to the Treaty of Waitangi are met;
• overcome or at least not worsen local and global inequalities;
• continue to have an adequate oversight of the behaviour of state institutions.

The submission makes it clear that Catholic social teaching does not prescribe specific public policy solutions, and contains cautions both for people seeking to privatise and people seeking to nationalise industries and services which provide essential goods and recognises both the value and the limits of the market.

Source

• Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand - Text of Oral Submission
• Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand - Text of Written Submission
• Image: Anti Corruption New Zealand

Costa, a former chairman of UBS Europe and Lazard International, spoke out after being appointed by Bishop of London Richard Chartres to lead an initiative aimed at "reconnecting the financial with the ethical."

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Costa asked how the market has managed to slip its moral moorings.

"For some time and particularly during the exuberant irrationality of the last few decades, the market economy has shifted from its moral foundations with disastrous consequences."

While still regarding financial incentives as "both valid and effective," he said there was a need to "rebalance the equilibrium between risk, responsibility and reward."

On Sunday, leader of the opposition David Miliband entered the fray, writing in the Observer: "You do not have to be in a tent to feel angry.

"Many of those who earn the most, exercise great power, enjoy enormous privilege — in the City and elsewhere — do so with values that are out of kilter with almost everyone else."

"Only the most reckless will ignore or, still worse, dismiss the danger signals," Miliband said.

A new survey showed that Britain's top company directors received a 50 percent average pay rise while the majority of Britons are having to endure a pay freeze during a period of austerity imposed by the government to reduce high debt.

Sources

• Reuters