The worker is always the last to see real reform.
The government claim to be introducing laws to “end unfair employment practises such as zero hour contracts” has been underwhelming at best.
I believe the government discovered just how widespread these types on contracts were and backed off making meaningful changes.
Unite has been sent a copy of a model employment agreement being used by the Restaurant Association of New Zealand for their thousands of affiliates. It states very simply that the workers must be available 24 hour a day 365 days a year and will work when rostered! They used to call that slavery I think. But it is an example of how the culture of simply ignoring workers rights has become embedded in many industries.
What is on offer will do little to end the abuses the government claims it is against.
The Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Michael Woodhouse released a statement claiming:
The proposed changes will prohibit unfair practices including:
- employers not committing any hours of work, but expecting employees to be available when required
- employers cancelling a shift without providing reasonable notice or compensation to the employee
- employers putting unreasonable restrictions on secondary employment of employees
- employers making unreasonable deductions from employees’ wages.
The changes will also mean that where the employer and employee agree to a set amount of hours, they will be required to state these up front in the employment agreement.
The wording of the brief statement and accompanying Q&A leave a number of questions unanswered.
The implication the government has given is that employment agreements need to state the hours of work expected from employees. This is a useful step but it won’t make much difference if employers can get away with just putting in a minimum number of hours and having the “flexible” arrangements for additional hours. What happened if in the words of the Q&A “the employer and the employee agree to a set number of hours” and the set number is only two or three hours?
For example the SkyCity Casino currently has all part time staff on an employment agreement that only guarantees eight hours a week of work. So all part time staff’s hours can yo-yo between 8 and 40 (or more) on a regular basis. This also leave huge power in the hand’s of managers to reward favourites to punish others by reducing their hours without a proper process. This is better than a zero hour contract but only marginally.
That is why we fought so long with the fast food companies in our negotiations to end zero hours contracts in that industry their to be an obligation on companies to offer available hours to existing staff before hiring new staff. This give existing staff the ability to increase their hours over time and there are regular reviews so that workers who work more hours are able to have their guarantee increased.
If the company controls the hours above a minimum then the additional promised protection in the new law which allegedly prohibits employers “from requiring employees to be available above their contracted hours unless they compensate that employee” is largely meaningless. In existing zero hour contract regimes workers had the right to refuse work above whatever they had been rostered that week but they always knew that if they turned work down they risked having their hours cut the following week.
That is the essence of the zero hour contract regime. It is not a rostering tool but a tool to control and punish workers. And that doesn’t change with an obligation on employers to offer a bare minimum as a guarantee when they employ someone.
The additional measures around cancelling shifts or sending someone home is largely clarifying legal obligations that should exist. The same is true for deductions from someones pay through no fault of their own. Stopping restrictions on secondary employment hasn’t actually been an issue for many people in the fast food or hospitality industry that I am aware of.
I had been a bit afraid that the new law would liberalise the use of casual agreements for employers but there is no mention of that in the media statements. Whilst it is not clear in the Minister’s statements it seems he is referring to casual agreements when he says zero hour contracts will continue to be allowed in some circumstances. That is an area that will need to be watched carefully in the new law.
Currently the courts have ruled that a genuinely casual agreement doesn’t allow the workers to be put on a roster. Once that happens then the employment agreement changes to that of a regularly employed workers with all the rights associated with that in terms of terminations requiring a valid reason and so on. This is often routinely ignored by many employers but it remains an important element of case law that needs to be protected. By definition a casual agreement is a zero hour agreement and therefore they will continue in this limited form. If that is what the Minister is alluding to when he says he won’t “outlaw” zero hour contracts that is not so bad.
But if we want real progress to be made then we need to incorporate in law a prohibition on hiring new staff unless the hours available have been offered to existing staff and the right of workers to increase their minimum guaranteed hours a full time job or to whatever their preferred optimum number of hours is.
At the end of the day it is also a fact that whatever legal rights exist they will continue to be ignored by greedy employers who will do whatever they can get away with to suck the maximum value out of a workers labour. That is why it remains an urgent responsibility of the labour movement as a whole to work our a strategy to organise the 98% of private sector workers who are outside unions today. Only then will workers be in a position to advance their rights through real collective struggles. A hint of that power was shown through the Unite Union campaign against zero hour contracts. Much more is possible.
All power to you Mike.
These “contracts” are despicable and NZ and the rest of the “developed” world are now well on the way back to the 19th Century. It seems workers have to start all over again. Thanks very much 4th Labour government for opening the door for Nats to walk right through and demolish 70 years of effort by the workers of NZ for a decent living wage and working conditions.
Thanks very much 5th Labour government for fiddling around the edges when you had the chance to completely redress the wrongs that had been done by your successors in the recent past.
Wherever workers organise that’s where you’ll find Joe Hill.
I quote Goal No. 10 of the 21 goals of The Club of Rome – Committee of 300 which goals are implemented by The Bilderberg: (John Key being a member)
Goal No. 10: To weaken the moral fibre of the nation and demoralize workers in the labour class by creating mass unemployment.
Dr John Coleman, Constitutional Scholar, offers his observation that the unemployed, particularly the youth, will be demoralized and discouraged resorting to drugs and destructive behaviour thus undermining and destroying the family unit.
What the union movement need do i would suggest Mike Treen is get total control of the Labour Party from branch to MP selection and be prepared to use such control ruthlessly,
Weed out the overly comfortable ”lets not rock the boat” brigade from Parliamentary Labour and through the Parliament impose negotiated awards across industry groups,
A project that might have more success than attempting to rebuild a unionized workforce…
Such measures would by its very nature produce a revitalization of a unionised workforce.
As successive generations ( yes !!! generations !!! ) have now struggled under this low wage economy and casualisation of hours.
Once people get a chance to reverse this despicable treatment …they would no longer opt for any involvement with ANYTHING that smacked of the current shabby legalised system of abuse.
Interesting fact brought by Chris Trotter regarding a point in time where the private sector unions were poised to enact a massive general strike against the Employment Contracts Act ….but were voted down by those unions in the public sector…
They could have changed all this. But chose not to.
Which begs the question WHY ?
To which the most obvious answer would be those within Labour who ‘advised’ against such a strike….those neo liberals who wielded so much unwarranted power back then – and still do today.
Then ….there would of been those managers involved in the public service who would have observed the huge potential for financial gains when those services went private.
They and their fellow managers would have strongly ‘advised ‘ their fraternity to oppose a general strike.
The root cause of all this is NOT found in tinkering around the edges of the Employment Relations Act as it is now – but revoking that and re-instituting award rates and guaranteed hours – and to do this ? – means the return of collective bargaining by unions.
And that means addressing the current imbalance of power between workers and employers.
It would be quite hilarious how quickly all the treasured arguments and sacred cows that New Zealand cannot afford higher wages would suddenly cease to exist – that indeed we CAN – and not only that – that in accordance with neo liberals cherished notion of ‘if a business cant cut it it suffers natural oblivion ‘….that these same businesses would end up with one of two choices…
Either shape up their act and stop exploiting the situation or get with the program , – get honest – and start paying a proper wage and forget about playing round with workers hours.
As failure to do so would incur hefty fines in a court of arbitration.
Do that ?…and you would soon see all the lame arguments and appalling abuses of workers vanish like the morning dew.
And a far more healthy set of businesses take its place as there would no longer be anymore ‘easy street’ for these types of corporate welfare exploiters.
I’d say Woodhouse doesn’t know what is common employer behaviour at the coal face of casual employment. I guess he doesn’t care either.
If there was decent robust legislation that protected the employee, and as Woodhouse not doubt isn’t keen on compulsory unionism, would he set up an agency to monitor the casual employment industry?
No, he doesn’t know and doesn’t care either. It is only low-paid workers after all, when has National ever cared about them?
If Woodhouse really believes that employers will respect his direction that there is no retribution against workers who dare to say they are not available once in a while, then he is completely naïve.
If you work for temp agencies, “no” is a forbidden word in their book and if you dare say no to any work offered, doesn’t matter how good a reason you have, then you usually find the work dries up. And before some right-wing pillock starts pontificating about how if you signed up for a temp agency then you have no right to turn any work down – tell that to your kids when they are sick and have to go to the doctor. “Sorry Johnny, I can’t take you to the doctor, I have to go to work because if I don’t I probably won’t get any work tomorrow”.
If you think this doesn’t happen Mr Woodhouse, then you don’t know what happens in the real world.
Just so,…so many total wankers in places of policy making that should never , ever have been allowed to get anywhere near the halls of power…in fact a backlog of 30 years of em.
Much of what the government proposes is nothing but “cosmetic” changes to the existing law. I also read again the words “reasonable” and “unreasonable”, which every person has a different interpretation for, when it comes to what the words are supposed to mean.
And what powers do part timers, casual workers have anyway. We have mostly individual employment contracts, offered on a take it or leave it basis. There is NO true bargaining power held by the employee who is faced with terms the employer wishes to impose on such basis. Most workers are not unionised, especially in the industries and the kind of work that is using such casual or part time work.
If treated unfairly, “unreasonably”, what chances does a single worker have to remedy such injustice? Go to the tribunal or courts? We know what the government has done to legal aid, now a privilege for very few, and then it does often not cover the lawyer’s costs.
Michael Woodhouse has been put under pressure, believe you me, by the hardliners within National, such as Judith (Crusher) Collins and her libertarian friend from Papakura, same as a few others within their caucus.
Those that hope for fair workers’ rights and laws under this government are dreamers, nothing but dreamers, it simply won’t happen.
So workers have only one solution, join the union, that is if the union is interested in recruiting them on such marginal employment. At least UNITE stand ready to support them, I guess.
And do not forget, that WINZ will consider most work as “suitable” and “reasonable”, no matter how few hours and on what conditions. No job no pay, refusal to accept a job, no benefit. You are screwed under all this crap law and system we have.
Both the IRD and WINZ are still operating in the old Industrial Age – thanks to successive fantasizing governments.
The entire span of available work in this country has changed, is changing, will become unrecognisable by anyone older than 40 before 2025 rolls around.
There was this recent opnion piece in the Herald: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11482797
That kind of training and commitment is impossible for casuals and zero hours staff. Dumbing down the workforce, and cutting the capacity to grow a business. NZ employers as a group seem to be perennially spoiling their ships for a ha’porth of tar – or a quarterly ‘profit’ to appease the bank manager, or brag on the nineteenth hole.
So a word to the numpties in parliament: if you want the apparent freedoms of the US to throw out workers in a downturn (because management skills are pathetic) – let’s have all the support systems the US has for affordable retraining, too.
So many of our ‘illustrious’ employers are not the swashbuckling barons of enterprise they’d like to be. More like Captain Pugwash meets the Teletubbies…
And every enterprise using zero hours needs to be on an IRD watch list. If they’re cheaty on wages their wee fingers won’t be clean elsewhere. Simples.
L00L !!!
Love it.
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