Letters to the editor: Working poor a significant portion of NZ

Some wages are insufficient to cover the cost of living. Photo / Getty Images

I agree with your correspondent, Rod Petterson (Letters, December 8) that more fit, unemployed people should make themselves available for seasonal fruit picking work.

However, in his sweeping assertion that Generation X has no work ethic because they get given all sorts of benefits, I would point that a significant sector of NZ society comprises the 'working poor", whose wages, and any supplementary benefits, are insufficient to cover huge rent rises, and increasing education costs.

Often, when the bills are paid, there is little left for food, transport, and education costs (there is no such thing as free education in New Zealand).

I have a friend in this situation, who dreads any future rent increase.

It is, then, little wonder that poverty levels in our country are now at an unprecedented level.

Jackie Evans
Pukehangi

Teacher-only days need a re-think

Most schools are hugely appreciative of their school community and the real support that the community provides a school every day of the year.

Without such support in so many different ways, schools would struggle to present a positive, inclusive school togetherness focused on student learning success.

The decision by some schools to then hold teacher-only days when school communities have been shattered by lockdowns and unemployment realities has been difficult to understand or appreciate.

To have such disregard for the very communities that are so very supportive of the work of every school and to ask parents to make alternative arrangements for yet another day during a school term after massive dislocation imposed by the virus is totally wrong.

Boards of trustees, principals and management will be currently planning for next year and beyond.

Schools can acknowledge their understanding and compassion for the traumas faced by school communities in the last year.

Teacher-only days should be abandoned during a school term and held during school vacations for the next two years.

Jim McTamney
Tauranga

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