Skills key to inequality fight
Ma¯ori struggling to make up pay gaps of up $10,000 in some age groups are at risk of being further marginalised by the Covid-19 economic downturn, a report says.
Indigenous New Zealanders had become a minority ‘‘struggling as the backbone of the blue-collar workforce’’ in past economic slumps, the report by Business and Economic Research Ltd (Berl) said.
‘‘History illustrates that crises don’t impact unequal people equally,’’ it said.
The report – created in partnership with Nga¯i Tahu’s Tokona te Raki and Waikato-Tainui – highlighted previous downturns for Ma¯ori such as urbanisation in the
1960s, the economic reforms of the
80s, the 2008 global financial crisis, and the Christchurch earthquakes.
Covid-19 was a chance to reset and to have Ma¯ori rangatahi (young) lead the country to prosperity and build immunity to further inequality, it found.
Employers should be incentivised to invest in training workers at all skill levels.
‘‘It’s about constantly filling your kete [bag] with new skills . . . to help you adapt as the economy changes,’’ Tokona te Raki executive director Eruera Tarena said.
The ‘‘constant bombardment of doomsday predictions’’ – climate change, water pollution, artificial intelligence (AI) – creating a growing unease about the future for Ma¯ori had been exacerbated by
Covid-19, Tarena said.
‘‘We want to emerge stronger than before, and we want to never be this vulnerable again.’’
Ma¯ori, previously channelled into jobs such as manufacturing and labouring, were ‘‘good with our hands, but also good with our heads and our hearts’’.
But they were underrepresented in technology, science, engineering and mathematics, health and education, he said.
The most pronounced pay gap was for those aged 35 to 54 years, with Ma¯ori earning $10,000 a year less than the average.
Closing that gap would result in Ma¯ori earning an additional
$2.6 billion a year, a 2017 Berl and Tokona te Raki study found.
The Ma¯ori workforce grew by
50 per cent between 2013 and
2018, as opposed to 20 per cent among the general population.
Success as happiness
Harmony King-Te Raki, 21, said she felt unsupported in mainstream schooling. ‘‘I thought, everybody knows me as that Ma¯ori girl, so I may as well be that stereotype.’’
But she completed NCEA 3, with the help of kura kaupapa and a mum determined she would do well in life. She is now helping to inspire others to prosper, as an intern with Tokona te Raki.
‘‘Success to me just looks like happiness. If you’re doing whatever makes you happy, then I think that’s successful,’’ she said.
Advancements in AI and robotics could mean fewer jobs for wha¯nau, but ‘‘robotics can only go so far because a robot doesn’t have feelings’’.
Maui Brennan, 22, a research analyst intern with Tokona te Raki, said with wha¯nau in the tourism industry, Covid-19 had been a ‘‘bit of a shock’’.
Ma¯ori values aligned well with careers using face-to-face skills, such as consulting or social work, he believed. He hoped a future education system would incorporate kaupapa Ma¯ori in learning tools, which could be as simple as providing mentoring.
‘‘I thought, everybody knows me as that Ma¯ori girl, so I may as well be that stereotype.’’
Harmony King-Te Raki