IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO, but what happens if the Minister of Labour, Simon Bridges, decides to cut in? Employers have never been very keen on the Negotiators’ Tango, but, at the moment, thanks to the current provisions of the Employment Relations Act, when the wage-bargaining band starts playing they have no option but to take their union partner and dance.
Well, not anymore. When Mr Bridges’ proposed changes to the Employment Relations Act come into force, the Employer and the Union will still be obliged to begin tango-ing together, but as soon as the boss wearies of all the ducking and diving he’ll be free to disengage from his industrial partner and leave the dance-floor. The band will play on, but the union will be dancing alone.
There are one or two other surprises on Mr Bridges’ dance card, but the employer’s new-found power to simply stop negotiating with the union is the real killer app. With this seemingly minor amendment to the Act, the Government has removed about the only really valuable improvement to the bargaining environment that Labour’s 2000 legislation introduced. Once the new provision’s in place the employers will be free to let their collective agreements expire.
Theoretically, that would leave the union members on site free to strike at any time. While a collective agreement is in force, striking is illegal. There is, however, no legal restriction on workers without a collective agreement striking to get one. But, with the official unemployment rate hovering around 7 percent, and only one private sector worker in ten enrolled in a union, mounting effective strike action is next to impossible.
Union density in the private sector will decline even further than its present 9 percent – but that is not the real target of Mr Bridges’ legislative changes. It’s the public sector unions that National has in its sights: public servants, nurses and – most of all – teachers.
This is what Richard Wagstaff, National Secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA) had to say about the Government’s proposed changes:
“Debate and disagreement during collective agreement negotiations is healthy and results in both sides compromising and finding a workable solution. The government is handing more power to employers to simply stop talking and walk away from the table.
“All it will do is promote the likelihood of industrial action as workers try and fight for their collective agreement and rights. The end result will be more disputes and a more litigious employment relations environment.”
Brave words! But threats of industrial action from public servants already shell-shocked by four years of ruthless job-cutting is just whistling in the graveyard – and the National Government knows it.
The nurses’ and teachers’ unions have considerably more leverage than their brow-beaten brothers and sisters in the PSA, but even they will hesitate to take on a government empowered to simply walk away and wait them out.
Of course, if the Opposition parties were willing to send as strong a signal to the labour market as they have just sent to the electricity market, things might be different. Unfortunately, a perusal of Labour’s and the Greens’ industrial relations policies suggests that such a dramatic boost to workers’ power is not very likely.
When it comes to employment law, the Greens are long and strong on supportive rhetoric but depressingly short on concrete. The Labour Party, by contrast, cannot be faulted for a lack of concrete detail – it’s just that all of it is dedicated to the construction of elaborate bureaucratic structures which will do wonders for the PSA’s membership numbers, but bugger-all for workers in industries lacking a significant union presence.
The really weird thing about Labour’s policy is that most of it was written for them by the Council of Trade Unions. That such a fundamentally union-unfriendly package of reforms could emerge from the peak organisation of the union movement itself is profoundly troubling. It shows how huge a toll twenty-two years of neoliberal employment relations has taken on New Zealand’s union leaders.
Rather than end this posting on such a depressing note, however, I will offer the sort of response a “Far Left” Labour-Green Opposition, dedicated to building the “Soviet Socialist Republic of New Zealand”, might have made to Mr Bridges’ proposed changes.
The Employment Relations spokespersons from the Labour Party and the Greens today jointly announced that a Labour-Green Government would institute the largest exercise in citizen consultation ever undertaken in New Zealand.
Employees from the largest factory to the smallest shop will be asked to talk about the way their workplace is organised and managed, how it could be improved, and what rights they consider they would need to ensure a fair wage, safe and congenial working conditions, and a meaningful role in building a productive and sustainable future for their country.
The theme of this massive consultative exercise will be “Bringing Democracy to the Workplace.” At the end of the process, the Labour-Green Government will be presented with a blueprint for change – drawn up by working people themselves – for a totally new, twenty-first century, labour movement.
Labour and the Greens are confident that the ideas which emerge from this unprecedented exercise in participatory democracy will see working people reclaim the economic, social and political rights that thirty years of neoliberal policy-making has stripped from them, and that the new workplace structures, of which they have been the architects, will once again advance New Zealand to the vanguard of global progressive change.
The ease with which National can by an apparently minor change undo one of the few achievements of nine years of Labour government is surely the last wooden stake through the heart of the Blairite arguments of Pagani and Mahary. Next time, Labour law reform must not only improve the lot of workers, it must also seek to create alternative centres of wealth and political power that can combat the mono voce of the right.
Clearing the path to make it easier for the Governments new go to hatchet man perhaps.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1304/S00325/state-services-commission-appoints-al-morrison.htm
“As Deputy Commissioner Corporate Centre Mr Morrison will report directly to the State Services Commissioner, and will also work closely with the Secretary to the Treasury and the Chief Executive of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
These three agencies make up the Corporate Centre, which has been established to collectively lead the State sector and drive improved performance to deliver increased effectiveness through better public services.”
…shudder…when is our right to vote going to be amended and revoked?
Since I started watching NZ politics in Norman Kirks time as PM I have seen some pretty nasty and evil pieces of legsilation go through the NZ parliament and become law. This is certainly right up there with the very worst. I don’t expect anything else from a far right NACT government but I am just gutted by the efforts of Labour to provide a credible opposition or even a policy that might make my 2-job, minimum wage, kids and a mortgage existance a little easier. Too much to expect from a party that has lost the moral right to use the word “labour” in the name and has dropped all pretense to being anything other than lite-blue, not say anything in case we offend someone (who won’t vote for you anyway.) Nightly I pray for a party, any party, that will stand up and say: “This isn’t right. People work too hard to be treated this way. Here is a policy that WILL REALLY help those “hard-working” NZers( You know, those people that Shearer is so fond of talking about and seems to give not a shite about in actually, REAL terms.) Screw this, overseas is starting to look very very attractive cos the “opposition” in NZ are making it WAY to easy for NACT to screw us over. Oh for ANY opposition that genuine gives a rats about those who work really hard to make ends meet, to provide for their children. Nah. That would mean stepping up and showing an alternative vision to the extremist policies of National and the lapdog Act, Maori Party and whatever Dung calls is “party”. No chance is there Mr Shearer. That would mean REAL politics, street ploitics, WORKING CLASS politics.
Chris, this bill doesn’t remove the restriction on hiring scabs, does it? If not then I can’t see why you cannot mount an effective strike if you have a well-organised site. If the employer could simply find willing scabs from the ranks of the unemployed to break strikes you might have a point but I don’t see why in the absence if this ability you have an argument there? Am I missing something?
170,000 unemployed seems to have escaped your notice. I’m sure there are enough desperate people in there will to take a slave-wage job….
There are, but that is not my point.
At the moment workers taking strike action are protected by the ERA from being replaced by scabs. It is not like the USA where strikebreakers can be used with impunity by the bosses and workers can be permanently replaced.
Try reading what I wrote again.
And then you could try reading the act after that.
Why am I being voted down on this blog for defending the power of the strike? and not simply accepting all is lost? I thought this was a left wing blog.
I’d actually appreciate an answer to my question from Chris as well, if you’re reading this Chris.
Just so there’s no confusion, I’m not actually supporting the Nats changes, although I have no idea how you could draw that conclusion from what I wrote.
The tampering with freedom by the Natz during the past few weeks has barely raised a flicker from the bourgeoisie.
As long as a government doesn’t intrude on their home with strict anti-liberty regimes such as eco-bulbs and more economical shower-heads the comfortable self-centred middle class will allow these abuses of our human rights to occur because of their belief that it doesn’t really effect them.
They are a strange demographic, and also the numbers that allow this present government to push young Simon forward in his fascist fashion.
If only we could burn our Bridges.
To paraphrase Pink Floyd – just another brick in the construction of serfdom NZ.
Unfortunately there is no consent for this construction project – blue print stamped Washington Consensus. Un-consented building work – are there not laws against that? What do we expect though?? The government that deregulated the building industry that led to the leaky building disaster is back again with a new skipper for more un-consented renovations – leaky country syndrome anyone? Not that tens of thousands of financial refugees fleeing NZ for Australia each and every year is a leak – more a haemorrhage I’’d say
90 day fire-at-will provisions,,
A new minimum wage/ youth wage/ starting out wage/ unemployment displacement wage – or whatever you want to frame it as. It is what it is – $11 an hour – an independently unliveable wage.
A real time 10 percent structural unemployment + the under employed, all putting further downward pressure on wages and put on standby as labour cannon fodder reserves to quickly take the place of any serf who confronts authority,
Why is there never any downward pressure put on corporate salaries??
And now employers can cease negotiations when it suits them… when will collective bargaining just be outlawed? A group of three employees colluding can be considered a criminal entity and the State spying apparatus can then swoop in to plant cameras in their bedrooms and the police can seize their assets as the proceeds of their organised crime.
Where is the backlash NZ?
Where is the righteous anger screaming catchy slogans?
Are we really that fragmented? Are our spirits that broken? Are we that defeated??
Or does the Lion still sleep?
Please let the Lion be sleeping and not dead – please neoliberalism, keep poking it with sticks, nice sharp sticks. Awaken the king of beasts that he may see with sober eyes the decimation of his pride-lands at the hands of the laughing hyenas and their Washington Consensus!
There is no backlash (yet, anyway), partly because these changes are so minute, so incremental, and therefore hard to notice, and also partly because so many ordinary kiwis are exhausted, working their low wage jobs and maintaining the never ending act of just keeping head above water. It’s textbook structural oppression.
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