As is only fair, the staff have been resisting cuts to their entitlements, and yesterday held a perfectly legal stop work meeting. Catherine Delahunty and Kevin Hague went along to support them.

Now their employers have responded by threatening a lock out! This is an unreasonable bullying tactic which needs to stop.

Parliamentary Service need to start playing fair and get back to the negotiating table and work out a reasonable settlement.

What struck me was that Labour and the Progressives have got a down a tidy patter talking about the achievements they have won and attacking National for wanting to take away those gains. Their campaign is basically shaping up as a list of achievements and attacks.

Whereas, by comparison, Sue’s answers to questions were essentially forward looking – what can we achieve next?  She talked about improving the Employment Relations Act, starting work on a 35 hour week, creating a new Mondayised holiday for workers, lifting the minimum wage to $15 and extending paid parental leave.

That practical positivity accords with what Ben Thomas noted in the NBR recently:

But where are the government’s new ideas coming from to continue the dream of moderate social democracy it has been working on for nine years?

At least as far as its key area of employment relations is concerned, the answer is probably – the Greens. To a large extent the Labour government has outsourced its industrial relations policy-making to the Greens over the last three years.

Labour’s campaign strategy is fine is fine as far as it goes. In the area of employment relations there are significant differences to highlight between the Labour Progressive government and the National party.  And I’m sure it’s got more policy to come. But Sue’s positive and, dare I say it, ambitious approach seemed to go down well with workers and union members yesterday.

Photo credit: Finsec

Laila Harré at the NDU said:

It would be a good thing if the Green Party is able to have a strong influence on industrial relations after the election. They understand that most workers still do not have access to unions and collective bargaining because unions were gutted in the 1990s.

Andrew Little at the EPMU welcomed the policy, stating:

The Green Party’s work rights policy clearly lays out their plan for a fair society and a high wage economy, and we commend them for that. We are particularly pleased to see support for industry bargaining, minimum redundancy entitlements and regular increases in the minimum wage.

Andrew Casidy at Finsec says:

The Greens are proposing new policies that would improve the situation of New Zealand workers. On the issues that matter in the workplace – decent pay, fair terms and conditions, health and safety and a voice at work, the Greens’ proposals offer real improvements.

And Helen Kelly at the CTU:

The Greens already have proud record of supporting worker rights, in particular through their work in Parliament to guarantee the full adult minimum wage for most 16 and 17 year olds, giving people with care responsibilities the right to request flexible work, and their work in the Buy Kiwi Made project. A Green Party presence in the next Parliament is essential so that this work can continue.

The actual policy is here.  The main points include:

• A full review of the Employment Relations Act rather than ongoing piecemeal amendments.
• Significant resourcing of a separate Government agency linked to the Department of Labour focused on supporting the capacity of unions and employers to bargain MECAs (multi employer collective agreements).
• Introducing a new framework for state sector collective bargaining aimed at ensuring consistency and fairness in employment conditions across the public service.
• Introducing an additional Monday-ised statutory holiday to fall between Queens Birthday weekend and Labour Weekend.
• Working to extend Paid Parental Leave to 13 months.
• Ongoing support for pay and employment equity, improved workplace health and safety, and for better working conditions for temporary, casual, part time and contract workers

More than 150 years after a carpenter in Petone famously insisted on working an eight-hour day, one in three full-time workers are clocking up more than 50 hours a week.

Meanwhile the Dominion Post reports:

National  Party  plans to allow workers to cash in one week of annual leave will effectively result in the abolition of across-the-board four weeks’ annual holidays, according to Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly.

I agree with Kelly.  It seems like National has come up with the wrong solution to the wrong problem.  I’m yet to meet a worker who says they have too much annual leave and would really like to work harder and longer if only they were allowed.

We’ve got a culture of overwork, with many people unable to do their job they need to earn a decent family wage and still have time left over to spend with their friends family and community. Last year Sue Bradford proposed we establish a task force to investigate the economic and social effects of a 35 hour working week. Just this week France’s right wing government has just voted after ten years to repeal its famous 35 hour working week but it seems it will not be a popular move:

The new law maintains the working week at 35 hours but gives businesses the right to negotiate with employees to decide their working hours…

Opinion polls show the French view the 35-hour work week as a progressive measure they do not want to surrender.

It is interesting, given the widespread debate in France of the positives and negative of the policy, that it seems to be widely supported after 10 years of experience.

Currently if a company is struggling financially there are three groups of people who are likely to suffer; the company’s customers, the company’s investors and the company’s workers. Customers are normally in the best position as, unless they are dealing with a monopoly of sorts, at least they can take their custom elsewhere. The investors face a risk if they stick with a struggling company, but they also normally have the liquidity to escape quickly and invest their money elsewhere if they need to. In fact if anything investors have the most potential to exacerbate a situation for struggling businesses if they get too speculative and short term in their investments.

Workers on the other hand cannot easily transfer their loyalty from one company to another. Finding a new job can be a months long project in good economic times and nigh on impossible in a local economy as that economy tightens and a major employer like PPCS, Fisher & Paykel or Carter Holt Harvey announces mass redundancies. And the consequences for workers who lose their jobs are on average far more significant to them and their families and communities than they are to the customers and investors of that same company.

If employment laws are about ensuring fair outcomes and protecting those exposed to unfair risk, then redundancy is a crucial area to examine. Because that is when workers (as well as investors) are most exposed to risk. At the moment it doesn’t seem fair that everybody can potentially flee the scene of the crash except the workers who have the most at risk.

First we have Spotless Cleaning company which last year had to be compelled to accept a nationwide deal that everyone else in the health sector had signed up to, to raise the living wages of cleaners and cooks in our public hospitals. Nine months after that dispute it is back saying it has changed its mind and is not going to increase its workers pay after all.  So 800 hospital workers from around the country who are on or close to the minimum wage have been back on strike again for pay rise they have already been promised.

Then we have little PSIS.  At the moment PSIS workers are paid significantly less than workers in doing the same or similar jobs in big foreign-owned banks.  Union member workers and the bank are currently in pay negotiations and one of the things PSIS is seeking is a claim that all future pay increases in PSIS be limited to the level of inflation only. This means PSIS staff could never negotiate wages that are in real terms higher than their current rates of pay.  The workers and their union have launched an online petition which basically just seeks the right to be allowed to ask for a higher than inflation pay rise.

To quote the Judges’ Statement:

After looking as though the company would finally come to terms with regulation in the public interest, the year 2007 saw yet another round of delaying tactics, the Xtra debacle that stranded customers in cyberspace, the cabinetisation project which undermines the potential for local loop unbundling to deliver competition, an obscene $5.4 million final year payment to outgoing Chief Executive Officer Theresa Gattung, the scrapping of concessions for non-government organisations and the School Connection scheme. These sins and more ensured Telecom was in top form in this race for the worst transnational in NZ in 2007. Far from taking heart from the appointment of a new soft-sell CEO, the judging panel has heard too many Telecom promises of co-operation to feel anything but dismayed at the confidence the Government is placing in UK import Paul Reynolds.

The judges described Spotless as

a company prepared to destabilise the public health system, to illegally lock out and further impoverish minimum wage workers and their families, to create insecurity and fear among NZ patients, and to coopt a few elected District Health Board members to boot… If there was an award for the stupidest TNC in NZ in 2007 it would have been no contest”. Of joint runner up British American Tobacco: “Smoking is responsible for more preventable deaths than anything else, and BAT is the worst culprit in New Zealand”. In giving the first Accomplice Award to the Whanganui DHB for its role in backing Spotless against its lowpaid hospital workers, they said: “We recognise not only their 2007 services to overseas profiteering on poor health and public money in NZ, but also the leading role they have played in the creation of Public Private Partnerships through the extensive contracting out of core hospital services with a consequent reduction in quality, loyalty and dignity for patients and workers alike.

Charming, these TNCs, no?