|
Youth advisory group > Postcard Campaign
Youth minimum wage campaign
When Parliament was considering if it should abolish the youth minimum wage of $8.20 per hour for 16 and 17 year olds and have the same rate for everybody, we wanted to make sure youth voices were included in this decision.
So we launched our national Youth Minimum Wage campaign in Youth Week (15-21 May) 2006.
Thousands of freepost postcards were mailed to secondary schools,
tertiary institutions and youth organisations and distributed via the
youth magazine Tearaway, asking 12 to 24 year-olds what they think
about youth minimum wages.
The purpose of this postcard campaign was to open up a communication
channel for young people to have their say. They wanted to make sure
that young people, who’s voices might never be heard, got a chance to
have their say on a topic which is important to young people.
Activate decided that using a postcard was the best method, as this meant:
- it was easy to distribute them nationally
- young people could post them back for free
- it was easy to fill out as you only had to tick the boxes.
Results
The results of Activate’s youth minimum wage postcard campaign have been collated. Of the 5,584 responses:
- 65.8% said New Zealand should have the same minimum wage rate for everybody, regardless of age
- 62.8% said there should be a minimum wage for under-16 year-olds
- 77.6% said it’s not okay for people under 18 to be paid less than someone over 18 for similar work.
Activate presented these results at their oral submission on Minimum
Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill. You can click here to find out information on this bill.
Top of page
|