The Reserve Bank expects these new standards to be broadly applied to the New Zealand system, with some tailoring for local circumstances. The sovereign debt crisis in part owes its origin to government assistance, sometimes specifically for institutions judged “too big to fail”, or more broadly in the form of guarantees to wholesale and retail investors.
Even the unions increasingly recognize that work is becoming more abstract and knowledge-based, and that today’s global market often forces very rapid changes on firms. It seems that a widely shared view in the labour markets now is that the collective agreements need to become more flexible and allow more scope for local, firm-level negotiations.