this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
1889 points (99.8% liked)
Microblog Memes
7032 readers
1571 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We have a lot of nice labour protections (esp compared to the US, yikes) but ofc this means business goes around them (and current parties are discussing rolling them back to 'support small businesses' from having to do that).
It's really hard to fire a worker under contract unless they straight up abandon their job or violate their contract. If youre bad at your job, but not dangerous, its so hard to fire you (and taking you off shifts, ie: constructive dismissal, is also prohibited) that you'll basically be sticking around anyway.
But that means that employers just hire part-timers to work juuuuust under the requirements, or have them on the 90-day probationary period and oop sorry, I don't think it's a great fit. The results is that job stability is pretty good if you can actually fucking get one, but most younger Kiwis are stuck in casual work or move overseas.
Having not looked into the current parliament (I'm from Australia), let me guess, the conservatives?
More of less, though the division of 'liberal vs conservative', where almost all political and lifestyle ideals boil down into two camps (and leftists made invisible) is a very American one. I know that Aus is more 'conservative' than NZ is too, though surely not as much as the US.
Its more accurate to say its the neo-liberals. After Reagan and his Reaganomics, our cabinet followed through with our version, Rogernomics: selling off public services and resources to private for-profit holders.
To this day, Rogernomics and free-market liberalism (with focus on bonuses for hunting, fishing, and landlords) is the message of the National and ACT parties that are frequently in coalition.
You could call National 'conservative' I suppose, but they're centre-right liberals and have more in common with US Democrats. Our hard-right party is NZ First (the nationalism is in the name), and the seats for NACT were so weak that they have a coalition with them this cycle.
Together, 'NACT1' is doing a lot of shit, but ofc the Prime Minister, National's party leader, pushes the bills through 'under urgency' and then blames the leaders of the other parties for even proposing it, like his hands are clean.
And the other leaders - especially Winston - are proposing insane bills. Like, preventing illegal Mexican immigrants? In New Zealand? it's an obvious ploy for Kiwis that eat American propaganda on Facebook, but it will work. Our public news has also started using terms like 'wokeism' and 'DEI'. [siiiigh]
Thanks for the summary! I'm not using conservative in the US sense (which yeah, doesn't really have left-wing parties with any power), but more as a catch all for parties in the anglosphere such as: Australia: Liberal/National, UK: The Tories and I suppose for NZ: the Nationals and ACT.
They're practically aligned on most policies whenever I hear about each.
Just thought: there's no way a left-leaning party would think of rolling back something as obvious as making wage theft a crime.
And I'm not surprised I guessed right haha
Yeah, agreed. There's a general guide on whether votes are motivated by intrinsic fear (security) or extrinsic empathy (community). Fear-based voters are anxious for the future, of losing their job/money/lifestyle/status. They're drawn to leaders that look strong and confident, that promise stability and security, and tell them they have answers. They'd rather have bad answers than no answers at all.
This is why 'conservatives' often believe similar things around the world, and are more common during times of hardship. Its why you cant explain logic to sway them (their fears are what need addressing). This is also why people used to get more conservative as they aged: they gained more assets to be afraid of losing. We're seeing that change with millennials.
And besides, Americans make up the largest chunk of the English-speaking internet. So ofc their empire's anxieties have global impact.
As US is proving though, laws only matter when enforced. Using their stats (because that's what I have), wage theft is responsible for more economic loss than all other forms of theft combined, including larceny, petty theft, and embezzlement. But it's rarely chased up - its too hard to prove, or the departments are kept perpetually understaffed, or the employees can't afford court.
Wage theft is illegal in NZ too, but it's not unheard of for smaller companies to stretch it. But yeah, my partner had a review recently, and when he mentioned having to work into his lunch breaks to meet daily targets on busy days, they took that very seriously and adjusted the workload elsewhere to compensate. It's good.
You've adopted the American nightmare known as gig culture. So sorry, but it seems all we export now is dystopian bullshit. And bombs, obv.