A change is as good as a holiday

A change is as good as a holiday – which is what it could cost you if you are not careful!

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A change is as good as a holiday – which is what it could cost you if you are not careful! 

Dominon Post Column: Helen Kelly, Council of Trade Unions President
Published Monday 19 May 2008

There is a danger this election that the ‘time for a change’ mantra will over-ride all rational attempts to explore just what that change might mean for workers.  Industrial relations has always been a defining issue between the two major parties and it is likely to be again this election. 

The National Party are being rather coy about their industrial relations policy despite spokesperson Kate Wilkinson giving significant detail away in a number of public speeches.  An analysis of these speeches suggests in this case, a leopard doesn’t change its spots!

Anyone comparing Ms Wilkinson’s recent comments with former National Minister Bill Birch’s speech during the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act will wonder if National have learnt anything since the repeal of that mean little piece of law that stripped working people of even the most fundamental of labour rights.

Here’s just one example of many comparisons between the two speeches:

Bill Birch said: “... In the past our system has arbitrarily restricted employers and employees from making arrangements that suit themselves”

Kate Wilkinson says:  “...Workers should be able to offer their services to an employer on terms and conditions that they want.”

In the period of the ECA, workers saw a huge number of their terms and conditions at work stripped away.  These included penal rates (now back for public holidays), collective bargaining obligations and recognition of unions (now back in the ERA) and probably harshest of all – cuts in real wages. For instance in the supermarket sector real wages fell by 11.2% for Monday to Friday workers and 44.4% for part-time students. Coupled at that time with benefit cuts and high unemployment, times were extremely harsh and New Zealand felt like a nasty little country. 

Since then there has been a change.  Not everything has changed and more needs to be done. And at the moment workers are feeling the pinch through high food prices, rents and mortgage payments and increased fuel prices. And there have been some factory closures announced. But in recent years there have been a huge number of changes delivering real benefits.  These include the additional weeks leave (a dream come true for many), a 70% increase in the adult minimum wage and more for youth (the youth minimum was $4.20 in 1999 – hard to imagine!), 20 hours free early childhood education, 14 weeks paid parental leave (from nothing in 1999!), ACC was bought back from privatisation, the new apprentice system was introduced and the latest benefit – KiwiSaver which now has over 600,000 people signed up and saving for their retirement.  In December 1999 there were 161,128 people on the unemployment benefit. In March this year that dropped to 19,034.

All these things are real and when considered along-side other changes which have improved the social wage (big reductions in doctor visits and prescriptions, thousands of additional teachers and nurses, state housing,  interest free student loans and Working for Families amongst other things) the ‘time for a change’ mantra needs to be seen for what it really means for workers.

And if you think Kate Wilkinson is not to be taken seriously, the last 8 years should prove to working people that she must be, given National has opposed every decent piece of employment policy over the last nine years.

I meet employers every day who tell me they don’t want to go back to the bad old days of the ECA.  The ECA forced employers and employees into confrontation rather than relationships that were respectful and balanced.  There has been 8 years of unprecedented growth under the ERA – growth that was almost non-existent under the ECA.  It was an ideological and unnecessary piece of legislation. 

But it is not just the ECA that Kate has been talking about in her speeches – she has indicated that National will cut into public holiday pay and allow employers to offer contracts with three rather than four weeks annual leave.  She has said National is considering reducing employment law rights for workers in small businesses and for those in the first 90 days of work so they can be dismissed unfairly (what sort of party supports law that legitimises unfair behaviour?).  She has said she wants to repeal provisions that make good faith bargaining work; removing what they view as a “more and more detailed prescription of the bargaining process” is how it is put.  And you can see from her speeches National will reduce collective bargaining rights of unions, rights recognised internationally by the tripartite International Labour Organisation. 

The CTU wants change as well, but we want more change in the same direction New Zealand is going.  This is change for everyone, and where there is big investment in making business successful, in areas such as skills training and research and development tax credits.

But also where the rights and needs of workers are recognised and improved. We want change but don’t want workers to be short-changed.

We call on National to release its industrial relations policy and let the debate on change begin in earnest.