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Photo: Ziming Li Nearly 10,000 Woolworths supermarket workers have voted for initial strike action over low wage offers and unsafe staffing levels. FIRST Union said the vote followed nine days of bargaining with the employer who was ruling out a living wage and had no desire to address understaffing issues. However, Woolworths insisted it had brought a strong offer to the table in its discussions with the union. FIRST Union national organiser for retail food Ross Lampert said 95 percent of members voted in favour of striking, with a smaller group of members across 10 key Woolworths stores nationwide also voting for an additional action. He said the issues at stake were a living wage, safer staffing levels, and increased penalty rates for night and weekend work, which were common in other...

Photo: RNZ / Nathan Mckinnon Three of the country's top banks have cut mortgage rates again ahead of the Reserve Bank's meeting next week. Wholesale interest rates have fallen in recent weeks in anticipation of the central bank loosening monetary policy. BNZ has dropped almost all of its short term fixed housing rates. Longer term rates between 3 and 5 years saw the biggest drop of 40 basis points to 5.99 percent. Short term rates from six months to two years have fallen by between 6 and 16 basis points, while longer term deposit rates are well below 6 percent. Meanwhile, ASB has lowered its fixed home rates with longer term rates all below 6 percent and the popular two year rate by 24 basis points to 6.25 percent. Its term deposits between 9 months and 5 years have dropped by up to 30 b...

Photo: 123RF Transpower is seeking feedback on a decision it says would establish New Zealand's electricity pathway for the next 40 years. The grid operator's acting executive general manager of grid development, Cobus Nel, said ageing submarine cables that cross Cook Strait needed to be replaced by the end of the decade. He said Transpower believed New Zealand should take this opportunity to increase the cables' capacity. The submarine cables form part of the high voltage direct current (HVDC) link that moves large amounts of electricity between the Benmore substation in the South Island and Haywards substation in the North Island. Neal said Transpower's analysis showed increasing the cables' capacity from the existing 1200 megawatts to 1400 megawatts while they were being replaced woul...

Photo: 123RF New Zealanders woke to headlines about sharemarket carnage overnight. The S&P 500 closed down 3 percent, the Nasdaq by about 3.4 percent, the Nikkei by a dramatic 12.4 percent, and even the ASX 3.7 percent - a A$100 billion "wipe out" of investor value. So what's caused this? There are a few factors that have combined to create the downturn that has stretched around the globe, including underwhelming earnings reports from listed companies, and softer US economic data. Earnings Westpac chief economist Kelly Eckhold said there had been a number of big global firms that had downgraded their earnings expectations in the past few weeks. Intel was a high-profile one, recording the biggest share price drop since 1974 last Friday after it reported softer revenue and significantl...