Animated comic, 'The Side Eye: Essential'

This animated comic, created by artist Toby Morris as part of his non-fiction comic series ‘Side Eye’, explores the experiences of a checkout operator named Tasia. It highlights the financial struggle of working a 40-hour week on minimum wage, and explains the concept of the Living Wage. The comic was gifted to Te Papa by Toby Morris and The Spinoff in 2020, in consultation with Tasia.

Toby Morris first met Tasia in 2018, when she had been working as a checkout operator for fifteen years. Tasia was at that time working at least forty hours a week on minimum wage. She was able to scrape by week to week, but was not able to save and was finding it difficult to repay debts incurred in her name by a former partner.

In April 2018 the minimum wage rose 75c an hour to $16.50. However, in the same year the NZ Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit determined that the 'Living Wage' – the amount workers needed to earn in order to live with dignity and participate as active citizens in their community – was $20.55 per hour.

The Living Wage Movement is a contemporary iteration of a decades-long debate about the relative responsibilities of the government and employers in ensuring an adequate wage rate for living. The Living Wage Movement argues that the expectation that low wages will be topped up by government benefits and other support schemes means taxpayers are paying billions of dollars a year to subsidise wages for profitable enterprises. Others argue that raising the minimum wage to the level of a living wage would have disemployment effects, and would be an ineffective means of helping low income families because it is not targeted to those who need it most.  Morris’ comic raises some of these arguments, and asks questions about what raising the minimum wage to the level of a living wage would mean for employees like Tasia.

References

• Hyman, Prue. 2002. 'Fair/Living/Family/Minimum/Social Wages: Historical and Recent Debates.' Labour, Employment and Work in New Zealand: 107-115.
• Living Wage Aotearoa New Zealand. 'The Living Wage Rate.' Information Sheet. https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/nzlivingwage/pages/263/attachments/original/1487586296/The_Living_Wage_Rate_final130217.pdf?1487586296 (pdf).
• The Treasury. 2013. ‘Treasury Report: Analysis of the Proposed $18.40 Living Wage.’ Report No. T2013/2346. https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2013-10/lw-2726820.pdf (pdf).