I’m the largest employer in New Zealand!

Patrick Smellie writes at Stuff:

At a time when Ardern is overseeing the most aggressive push for public sector wage rises in recent times, small and medium-sized employers, particularly, are spooked at the prospect of higher wage costs leaking across to them, at the same time as they perceive losses to their rights to hire, fire, and set terms and conditions within legislated minima without significant trade union involvement.

That is why Ardern’s aside that she was effectively the largest employer in the room on Tuesday was so unwise.

It plays to an easily scratched itch among employers that she doesn’t know how business people think and entrenched their nostalgia for a self-professed “business guy” like Sir John Key at the helm.

Before Winston make Jacinda PM, she had never worked a day in the private sector (unless the fish and chip shop counts) and had never employed a single staff member (except her EA).

To claim in front of all the business leaders who pay the taxes that fund the Government, that you understand them because you are the biggest employer in NZ is very silly.