Are Labour and Greens paying their cleaners $18.40 an hour?

Isaac Davidson at NZ Herald reports:

The Green Party says low-earning contractors at Parliament, not core public sector workers, should be first in line for a living wage.

In a speech at the Council of Trade Unions conference this morning, Greens’ co-leader Metiria Turei said her party would have a different priority to Labour in distributing a minimum wage of $18.40 an hour – known as a “living wage”. …

At present, Parliament’s cleaners earned $14.10 an hour.

Later this month, Opposition MPs will spend a night working alongside the cleaners in Parliament to draw attention to what they feet is unequal employment conditions and wages.

Will Labour and Greens walk the walk and pay their own cleaners $18.40 an hour? Will TV3 whose Campbell Live programme has been campaigning on this also. I mean surely they are not so hypocritical as to demand everyone else must pay $18.40 an hour yet not do so themselves?

Labour and Greens can go to the cleaning company that cleans their offices through the Parliamentary Service and give them some extra money from their budgets, to be given to the cleaners who work in their offices. It would mean they have slightly less money to spend on press secretaries and the like – but surely they are doing so?

It’s easy to do a photo op stunt for one night. It’s harder to do something meaningful and actually pay the higher wages yourself that you demand others do.