Dominion Post Business Forum article, Monday 12 October

Helen Kelly, CTU President

Industrial relations in New Zealand seem to have taken a turn for the worse in recent months. Bus drivers and dairy workers find themselves locked out by their employers and telecom engineers have been made redundant en masse and are refusing to buy back their jobs while the network rapidly crumbles.

Until recently the reaction to the global downturn in New Zealand was characterised by a willingness on the part of workers, unions and employers to work together to mitigate the worst effects of the recession. The jobs summit and the 9-day fortnight are examples of that. Is there some reason why it has all gone sour?

Each of these disputes has different origins. Only one is straightforwardly about pay and conditions. Another is about every worker’s right to bargain collectively, and the last is about an attempt to shift cost and risk onto a workforce at the expense of their job security, livelihoods and bargaining power under the cloak of ‘contracting out’ through a third party.

On the face of it the global crisis has nothing to do with any of these disputes. Significantly, none of the three employers – Telecom, Talley’s and NZ Bus – is in any way struggling financially. But there is little doubt that the recession is a factor in the way they are handling the disputes.

Even though redundancies are not being forced on any of these employers there is an implication that workers should feel damned lucky to have a job in the current economic climate and should accept whatever wages and conditions are tossed their way. There’s a recession on, don’t you know? Belts must be tightened. I don’t know how many holes Telecom boss Paul Reynolds has on his $5million belt but I don’t see much tightening going on there.

That’s not boardroom bonus jealousy. I think it’s legitimate to ask why these companies are taking such a hard line against the workers who are delivering their respectable profits in otherwise tough times. The truth is that they are looking at the unemployment figures and thinking that now would be a good time to stamp down on wages, hours, and workers’ bargaining power. Workers won’t put up a fight, they think, while fear of the still lengthening dole queues stalks the land.

Unfortunately the employers have got it wrong. Workers are perfectly capable of understanding the situation of their own employer and acting accordingly. Hence the many settlements which have been reached in recent months where unions have acted reasonably and responsibly and employers have offered fair and realistic terms.

Unemployment is a real fear for many New Zealanders right now. But there are plenty who know that their companies are doing well enough, and they are not about to bow down to employers who throw their toys out of the pram at the first sign of resistance to their plans.

Both of the current lockouts which employers have imposed on their workers are gross overreactions to the state of negotiations. The actions of Talley’s-owned Open Country Cheese in particular, where a wholly disproportionate and illegal six-week lockout has been accompanied by intimidation of union members, use of strikebreaking outside labour and misinformation, are reminiscent of the bad old days of industrial strife. All this in response to the employees simply exercising their legal right to union representation and to bargain collectively. Someone is living in the past here and it isn’t the Dairy Workers’ Union.

The DWU has worked harmoniously with employers and has not been engaged in any serious industrial action for over 20 years. It is sad and so unnecessary and you have to wonder why OCC have acted with such unwarranted ferocity.

Could last year’s change of government be an influence? The Government wasted little time when it came into office before forcing through its removal of unfair dismissal rights from new employees in small firms in the first 90 days of their contracts. There was no good economic reason for this move, but it immediately set a tone for its attitude to workers’ rights.

Cuts to public sector payrolls, moves to make the 4th week of annual leave sellable and other policies that have negative impacts on working people seem to confirm the impression of an administration more behind the cause of the employer than the employee. None of these moves would have any positive effect on the country’s productivity, our ability to pull out of recession or the length of our dole queues.

The Jobs Summit and support for the 9-day fortnight present a different face of the Government, albeit one which has had limited effect. We would all be better off if employers took their lead from this approach. In the end, what will be positive is employers dealing honestly and openly with unions and employees, working cooperatively in the best interests of each enterprise and not reaching for the factory keys as a negotiating tool.