New Zealand: Labour passes new union legislation
[Workers Power New Zealand/Aeotearoa, February 2000]

The Employment Relations Act is now law. Much of the electoral campaign of the Labour and Alliance was based on their policy of repealing the Employment Contracts Act.

The debate became one of the politically defining issues in NZ, with the Right - National, ACT and the rump of NZ First supporting the ECA.

The passage of the ERA through parliament was at times fraught, at others ludicrous. For only the second time since the Second World War, parliament sat on a Monday.

The behaviour of the ACT and National parties during the ERB debate is at least some evidence that the Act is some improvement on the ECA. ACT demanded that amendments be translated in to Maori.

In another absurd moment, the highest legislative body in the country discussed the permissibility of fruitcake in the chamber during its extended sitting hours.

It was ruled that the cake was permitted, but its consumption was ruled out of order. The presence of elected fruitcakes in parliament was not challenged.

The union movement has rallied around the ERB, and union membership has apparently already risen. The reunification of the CTU and the TUF gives workers a united, albeit heavily bureaucratised voice, for the first time in ten years.

The new Act contains many improvements on the repressive ECA, but it fails to challenge the most dangerous elements of the ECA.

For example, an employer still has the legal right to employ scab labour during a strike. Bargaining can be initiated by employers at any stage, forcing unions on site to declare the names of their members in a workplace. This provision can clearly be used to hinder the building of unions on work sites, and to identify and victimise unionists.

The Act does nothing to address the issue of bosses unions such as the ëPeopleís Firstí Warehouse union. Unions must be registered with the Registrar of Unions, but there are no provisions for challenging the legitimacy of boss controlled unions.

The ERA limits further the situations in which workers can legally strike. A strike is only lawful after a collective employment expires, and after at least forty days of negotiation. There is no provision for solidarity strikes, strikes over unfair dismissals or personal grievances.

The optimistically named “Good Faith” provisions legislate for some of the worst aspects of union bureaucracy. The Act prevents union negotiators from discussing information disclosed to them by the employer with union members. How accountable are the bureaucrats under these conditions?

Margaret Wilson, the Attorney General, makes the pro-capitalist stance of the Act, and the reformist parliamentary parties, explicit. She has stated that wage rises will not occur unless there is an ability for business to pay.

Negotiation under the Act, she says, shall be on the basis of information rather than industrial muscle. If she were demanding that companies open their books to workers, well and good.

But the Act specifically prohibits this. She describes the Act as containing “incentives to keep talking, not to strike”. In other words - incentives to keep workers from action.

Workers Power has consistently called for the repeal of the ECA for the last ten years. Likewise, we called for workers concerns about the ERB to be raised in union branches.

The concessions in the ERA are merely that, concessions. Of course, these are better than the retention of the ECA proposed by National, or the complete deregulation proposed by ACT, but it is still not good enough.

Labour and the Alliance are not socialist parties. They are not for the overthrow of the cause of inequality - capitalism - but are for its reform. They have a base of working class support, and indeed, arose out of important workers struggles.

All they can attempt with their commitment to business, is to moderate capitalism, and in doing so, they tie workers to the illusion that capitalism can be reformed.

But the ERA is evidence that this reform is simply not good enough. Unionisation in NZ has already fallen to under 20% - the chances of a recovery to pre-ECA standards under the conditions of the ERA are dim.

The CTU claims that thorough consultation has taken place ñ but this is simply not true. What consultation has happened has been with union officials ñ and their interests, rather than those of the workers they represent, are held up by the ERA.

Even the Service Workers Union lawyer is able to say that the ERA is in the interests of unions as organisations rather than the explicit interests of the worker.

And it is in the light of this new legislation that the CTU and the TUF have managed to patch up their differences and re-unite.

Obviously it is good for the working class to be represented by a single union body and Workers Power have argued since the split ten years ago, that such unity was necessary.

The question is whether the rank and file of the TUF in particular have been consulted and whether they feel they will be well-represented by the new federation. Our guess is that the answer is No.

Either way it seems unlikely that the new ERA will fulfil the pre-election expectations of the working class or the pre-election promises of the Labour or Alliance parties.

It will certainly not take us back to the time before the ECA and it will not supply the things that the working class really needs to be an organised force.

Most significantly the ERA contains even harsher restrictions on the most basic of workers rights – the right to withdraw labour ñ to strike!

Rather than celebrating, unions in the wake of the ERA, should be planning how to organise to defy the continued ban on solidarity strikes and strikes within the tenure of a Contract.

They should be planning how to take the fight directly to the Labour/Alliance government and force them to provide legislation which is in the interests of the workers who voted their parties into power.

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