Rosey Ngakopu is challenging assumptions about low-wage work.
“I want to remove stigmas of how people think security is a dead-end job – it’s not.”
She arrives each weekday morning at 7.30am and does an “external patrol” of her building near Wellington's railway station, making banter with workers and commuters – many of whom she knows well after 17 months at the site.
The job, she says, expresses “several duties of care” – one extended to her employer and the site she patrols, another collectively to her co-workers, and a third to the public who walk by her building.
And, as the Fair Pay Agreements bill moves a step closer to becoming law this week, Ngakopu sees a path to decent wages and better conditions for herself and others. (Ngakopu earns “above a living wage” at present). On that path is legitimacy – and dignity – for workers like herself ... no dead ends.
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“If we get that bill across the line, that’ll mean fairness and equality,” she said. “For us, that means skills and training, health and safety, increases of wages, better working conditions.”
A spokesperson for E tū – the union to which Ngakopu belongs – calls the bill “a potentially seismic shift” for low-wage workers, saying it could see more of them win...
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