Employers On The Warpath
WELL, THAT DIDN’T take very long, did it? Nine months into this government’s first term and employer organisations up and down the country are on the warpath. There are full-page adverts and billboards for all the old folks who still respond to the printed word and a digital campaign for everybody else. The message? Simple. The proposed reforms to the Employment Relations Act must be “fixed”. Not “fixed” as in repaired, you understand, but “fixed” as in “the fix is in” and “the fight is fixed”. Basically, the bosses’ reps are telling the Labour-NZF-Green government that their members are happy with the way things are in the workplace and that no changes are necessary. Got that? No changes!
Wait a minute! Are these the same employer groups who, just a few weeks ago, were announcing their determination to be “part of the solution”? Yep, they sure are. But, a lot can happen in a few weeks. For example, you can be bombarded with hundreds of angry e-mails (from the businesses large and small that fund these groups) saying: “What the fuck do you idiots think you’re doing!”
Seems that New Zealand’s employers are not about to let union officials onto their premises at any time of the day or night simply because they’ve received an anguished call for help from one of their members. And why should it only be the small employers with fewer than twenty staff who get to have all the fun of waiting until Day 89 to fire their naïve 90-day probationers? No. New Zealand’s employers have made it very clear that they’re not paying their subs to have a bunch of pinko politicians order them to go on negotiating with their employees in good faith until a settlement is reached. No way. If Simon Bridges could be persuaded let them walk away from the negotiating table whenever they decide there’s nothing more to say, then so can Iain Lees-Galloway.
He’s a weak link that Iain Lees-Galloway. Ever since he backed away from his party’s solemn promise to repeal the hated “Hobbit Law”, it’s been clear that the guy isn’t what you’d call a tower of union-backing strength. Word is that the MBIE bureaucrats had him house-trained in a matter of days. Hugh Watt he’s not. Nor Stan Rodger neither. [Ministers of Labour in the Kirk and Lange Labour Governments respectively – Ed.]
But, if Iain Lees-Galloway is a weak link, then the NZ First caucus is a frayed rope. The various employer groups saw what just one full-page ad from the Sensible Sentencing Trust could do to the populists’ reluctant agreement to repeal the Three Strikes legislation. How long is their willingness to sing “Solidarity Forever” with the unions likely to last once they’ve driven past a few 10-metre-long billboards encouraging them to “fix” the employment relations legislation?
The answer – as always when the question is NZ First – depends on Winston Peters. A decision to throw in the towel of workplace relations reform would be a decision to leave a legacy of gutlessness and surrender. Certainly, it would make a nonsense of his determination to give capitalism a human face. It would also render incomprehensible his post-Cabinet press conference remarks about workers seeing his coalition government as a friend willing to listen. Winston won’t turn his back on all that just yet. He’s not about to let the unions carve the single word “Scab” on his political tombstone.
The other reason why Winston is more likely than not to urge resistance to the employers’ campaign is because he, unlike so many of the youngsters writing National’s attack-lines, remembers very clearly what happened in the 1970s.
Rather than the grey Polish shipyard so beloved of neoliberal revisionist historians like Michael Bassett, Peters remembers a New Zealand in which a dirt-poor Maori family from Northland could send their talented son to Auckland University without going into debt. He will recall, too, an era when working people did not live in fear of the boss. Yes there were strikes, and they could be damned inconvenient. But, seeing what happened to New Zealand after 1984 and 1991, Peters – along with his old comrade Jim Bolger – has come to understand that it was precisely because working people had trade unions to defend them that they also had jobs that paid them a living wage, houses they could afford, and children who could, and did, expect their lives to be better than their parents’.
So blow you employer windbags: crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! Spew forth cataracts of media releases, unleash your Facebook hurricanoes. Spout your nonsense about the Seventies until the voters are drenched with lies and the public square awash with fake news.
Spit and rage all you want. This government is determined to put a human face upon New Zealand capitalism – regardless of its well-funded protests.
Not for the bosses’ sake – but for ours.
And the Nats have now captured the Speaker who’s lambasting Twyford and favouring the Nats with extra questions, for being no more obtuse or offensive as the people asking the questions. People like the ever-hopeful LOTO lady, Mrs Smug herself, J.C.!
Remember who put you in The Chair, Trev! (Otherwise you’re in grave danger of being made Sir Trev by the next Nat govt – if you’re blessed to live that long!)
i’ve watched mallard as speaker..and would refute what you say..he appears to be trying to be even-handed…
I note this decades version of the Employers Winter of Discontent, that business confidence is “plummeting” etc etc etc.
But FFS, business in this country have become so addicted to doing as they please on their way in the fastest race to the bottom NZ style.
Business is so hooked on the blank cheque from government of base wages and even more exploitative conditions that they are blind to the fact they are actually shit at business.
Last week trying to convince an internet provider to do business with me, UFB, was next to impossible. Some such as Spark couldn’t even answer the phone, not once but three times. Being on hold for lengthy periods Spark does not make a great first impression. Spark, of course, make headlines for laying off staff more than anything but forgot that you need humans to be there to sell stuff, much less give the impression that backup is a simple call away!
Contact Energy similarly forgot to employ humans to answer phones so it was like that call to find out why the power has gone out only to realise they have 2 people in their call centre who could not give a minimum wage shit.
Voyager’s website told me UFB was not available when it was and 2degrees did pick up but failed to get back to me. And Vodafone and their infamous after sales 3rd world call centres, no thanks. Oh, My GOD!
Next, the NZ Herald ran a quite good promotion to lure back subscribers but then could not even manage to deliver even half the papers they said they would and they didn’t have the staff or the systems to see that.
A dealer that I had to nag to buy a vehicle from them. Real story.
And on it goes, pay peanuts get monkeys. They cannot see it. Same goes with workplace conditions.
Dear “Business”. Instead of sulking, tantrums and wasting money trying to improve the appeal of the polished turd that you are and wishing Bill and John were back to lie and at the same time crush wages and the ability to pays one’s bills, how about taking a damned good look at yourselves and start embracing a little more sharing of the cake that you are hell bent on reducing.
The smart ones, the ones who are not up their own arses in their angry Mark Richardson stereotypical stupors will know that then, EVERYONE WINS!
So true Xray, and CT another fine piece. My workplace is totally over staffed and very low wages for most which is very badly run and so much potential untapped for want of some brainpower. Totally shit at business. For some reason the company seems happy with this, probably the crap wages allows this low productivity.
Yeah.
Winston Peters and his NZ First party.
Old school. Yet more up to date than just about anyone else in that institution we call parliament. There are times when the old adage ‘ if it aint broke, dont fix it’ has more than a ring of truth.
NZ never was broken before the 1984 neo liberal heist of NZ.
We were just lied to again and again and again.
When Peters retires, we will be flooded with nonsense, – neo liberal nonsense if he cannot effect change within the next few years. Politicians like Key will become the norm. So too will corruption and rort.
So,… heres hoping. It cant go on like it is.
And I cant think of a better person than Peters to get this show back on the road.
@ Chris T
I think you actually do I L-G a bit of a disservice. I’m busy biding my time watching to see ‘the long game’
The absolute bugger’s muddle (the Munstry for Everything) that is MoBIE has a record that stands for itself, and it’s a cynic’s gift that keeps on giving.
I’m fairly sure your sources (sauces) are convinced they have their Minister ‘house trained’, and there are others in that bugger’s muddle of a Munstry where they’re responsible to another Minister who’re probably just as convinced they have their master ‘house trained.
You could pull out another of its great fails that hit the media just yesterday for example (it’s to do with their crying crocodile tears because they havn’t enough resource to round up overstayers – when it can be clearly demonstrated that the increased numbers are a result of their own policy implementation).
And then we could get into their role in policing worker exploitation
I think you might find I L-G is well aware of what’s going on – no matter what the messages being sent to ‘his officials’ (going forward).
There have been too too many fuckups (and not just the plethora that is in the public domain).
I could be wrong, but if I am, it won’t just be I L-G who gets it in the neck
Putting a human face on capitalism is like putting a smiley-face mask on an executioner.
Chris, I am all for the “living wage”, and the unions’ role in pushing that. We should have pay rates comparable to Australia, and Bill English should not have been able to trumpet, as he did, an NZ advantage to employment prospects due to a low-wage economy. The labourer worthy of his hire, &c.
But I remain bemused by “the small employers with fewer than twenty staff who get to have all the fun of waiting until Day 89 to fire their naïve 90-day probationers?” I asked once before in this organ (but got no response), why any employer would be so silly as to train someone up for 89 days and then fire them. Surely, if an employee works well, or at any rate satisfactorily, a self-interested employer would be quite crazy to fire them and start out again. Why?! Or, if an employee turns out to be unsatisfactory by or before day 89, an employer should be obliged to keep them on.
Any answers?