Toward the end of her prepared remarks at Wednesday’s daily briefing on Covid-19, Jacinda Ardern turned her attention to a group of essential workers.
Cleaners deserve our thanks, she said. A meat processor had credited its cleaning staff with allowing it to continue operating during lockdown. Several courts had told her cleaners are their “first line of defence”.
Newshub interviews Rose Kavapalu at Ōtāhuhu police station Photo: Newshub
She mentioned ‘Rose’, a cleaner at Ōtāhuhu police station, who “currently works 13-hour days”.
“Thank you for keeping us safe,” she said.
Newshub tracked down Rose - full name Rose Kavapalu - later that day, and asked what she made of Ardern’s appreciation.
Kavapalu was grateful, but said that she had no choice but to work to support her four children, sick husband and two elderly parents at home.
She wanted to ask Ardern for something on behalf of herself and all other cleaners.
"One more favour to ask - the living wage. We have been crying out for so many years.”
As we’ve spiralled into a world of lockdowns over the last few months, many of the most powerful and prominent members of society have proven almost completely useless.
Actor Gal Gadot kicks off her horrible Imagine medley Photo: Supplied
Some homebound celebrities and titans of commerce have used their quarantine time creating terrible music videos, self-isolating on superyachts in the Caribbean, and allegedly mistreating staff.
Meanwhile people like Kavapalu, who have sometimes been demeaned as “unskilled”, have been named essential and charged with keeping society running.
That title has been accompanied by respect, nationwide applause, and thankful words from politicians, but many journalists have noted that hasn’t been matched with improved pay and work conditions.
Even Paul Henry noted the discrepancy ahead of the launch of his show Reimagining Paradise With Paul Henry.
“I was thinking just the other day, all of us I think have undervalued shelf stackers who worked through the night. Now the people queuing two metres apart outside are surgeons and pilots – and we’re all totally dependent on the shelf stacker,” he told The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive.
The Coatesville mansion once owned by Nick Mowbray Photo: Barfoot & Thompson
Henry’s first guest was Sir Michael Hill, whose fortune is estimated at $320 million. His second episode's first guest was Nick Mowbray, who lived in the extravagant north Auckland mansion previously occupied by Kim Dotcom.
Other journalists have better maintained their focus.
The Spinoff carried out an interview with a supermarket checkout manager as New Zealand went into lockdown, who said she wasn’t getting a pay rise and didn’t have enough protective equipment in-store.
After mounting criticism and pressure from unions, both Foodstuffs and Progressive granted their workers a 10% raise for the duration of the crisis.
But First Union representative Tali Williams appeared on TVNZ’s Breakfast after that decision to point out that despite the pay increase, many supermarket workers still don’t earn a living wage.
Another mostly low-paid essential group - courier drivers - have protested the conditions they’ve faced during the lockdown.
RNZ’s Leigh-Marama McLachlan put together a report on unsanitary workplace environments and a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for drivers on March 27.
In addition to the hazardous conditions, drivers say they’re now looking at a 30% downturn during Alert Level 3 because lockdown rules mean they can’t make lucrative multi-item deliveries between businesses.
Health workers take part in ICU training for Covid-19 at Hutt Hospital. Photo: RNZ / Dom Thomas
More recently, journalists have highlighted the concerns of rest home carers, nurses, and other frontline health workers about their lack of access to PPE.
"Real recognition comes not just from thank yous, but from getting them what they need to do their jobs safely," Newshub at 6's Jenna Lynch said on Wednesday.
The Otago Daily Times looked at the value we place on often low-paid essential workers in an editorial on March 28.
Cleaners, checkout operators, carers, deliverers, and rubbish collectors have always kept society running, and the Covid-19 crisis has underscored that fact, it read.
“We should expect fair pay calls to intensify when the country emerges from lockdown. Those who seek better conditions will do so knowing they were asked to sacrifice their sense of wellbeing — at the least — to keep working.”
That sentiment was echoed by Werewolf’s Gordon Campbell, who argued New Zealand’s economy and tax system should be overhauled to better reflect the worth of the people who helped us to get through the pandemic.
Perhaps the most widely shared appeal on behalf of essential workers came from overseas.
BBC2 host Emily Maitlis opened Newsnight on April 9 with a monologue taking aim at the idea that Covid-19 is a “great leveller”.
Maitlis argued a "new social settlement" would be needed as Britain emerges from its lockdown.
She has received support for that idea from an unlikely quarter. On April 4, The Financial Times editorial board listed a series of radical economic reforms needed to craft a fairer society in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“Reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades... will need to be put on the table,” it wrote.
“Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.”
That call for a more equitable system to emerge is growing louder in New Zealand too, including among journalists.
After thanking Rose on Wednesday, Jacinda Ardern hinted at her own hope for change.
“These are our essential workers and I hope that we continue to recognise them as that long after this pandemic has passed,” she said.
In an essay for The Spinoff on April 17, Ātea editor Leonie Hayden expressed a similar hope. She wondered whether we will emerge from lockdown changed or “snap back into old habits like millions of little rubber bands, forgetting the shape we were during these long months”.
That question also applies to reporters: will they continue to illuminate the conditions facing essential workers once we’re back to something approaching normal? Will they keep telling the stories of people like Rose Kavapalu?
If they do, maybe it can convince politicians and businesses to offer workers like her something more tangible than words of thanks.
