Disagreeing with Colin
July 24th, 2008 at 2:09 pm by David FarrarIt seems to be my day for disagreeing with gallery journalists. Of course nothing wrong with disagreements. Colin Espiner has blogged on why this is a good week for Labour:
I can just visualise Helen Clark and Michael Cullen doing a little jig in their Beehive offices this morning. A further lowering in the OCR is just what the doctor so desperately wanted. And the more aggressive stance that Bollard seems to be taking to cutting hopefully means more money in homeowners’ pockets before the election.
Agree this is good for the Government, even if bad for NZ.
There are a couple of other reasons why Clark is smiling at the moment. National confirmed its industrial relations policy this morning, which changes little except for introducing a 90-day trial period for workers, cleverly dubbed “fire at will” by Labour. I think this will haunt National during the campaign, and for little political upside. If employers won’t be unscrupulous and sack people after the three-month trial is up, then why have one at all?
I guess Colin has not been an employer. Sacking someone not up to the job is not being unscrupulous. Employers generally want to retain staff. But if a staff member is costing them money rather than earning them money, then a small business has to do what is necessary. And the reality is that a small business has great difficulty in sacking someone just because they are incompetent. They do have have the resources larger firms do.
Colin is right that Labour wil try and scare people off with this policy. But National’s job is to make sure people realise it applies to small businesses only and just for 90 days.
The other reason, curiously, is the Winston Peters donation scandal. I’m not so sure this is bothering Clark terribly much. Why do I think this? Well, for one thing, when junior partners in a coalition or confidence and supply arrangement get into trouble, it’s almost always the smaller party that suffers – the Alliance, for example, in 2002.
I think Colin is very wrong here. First of all he overlooks that every day the headlines are about the Foreign Minister’s secret donations, they are not about stories that are more favourable to the Government. They face weeks and weeks where the main political news is Winston.
Secondly Colin should look back to 1996 and 1997 and Tuku’s Undiegate. Yes NZ First lost support, but so did National – greatly so.
The second reason is that the irony of the donor scandal is that it once again raises the whole issue of anonymous rich people trying to buy elections. And while the heat is currently on Peters, I wonder how long before it will again turn back to the National Party, which has more experience with secret trusts hiding large corporate donors than any other party.
There is a risk there, but the key difference is National has not spent 15 years condemning such trusts and demanding they be ended. Also the latest revelation from Bob Jones suggests a level of secrecy well beyond anything National has done – at least their trusts are known about, commented on, and declare their donations to National. The Spencer Trust appears to pays bills off secretly on behalf of NZ First.
It also limits National’s ability to go quite so hard on the Electoral Finance Act in future. Granted the law is complicated, virtually unworkable, and probably unfair. But it does limit the ability of parties to slip donations under the carpet in the way NZ First is being accused of doing, and as National (and Labour) have done in the past.
I don’t think it does. While the EFA does have better provisions relating to donations (and I am on record support some of them) this is showing the false confidence one can gain from such a regime.
Secret donations to MPs and/or their expenses are allowed under the EFA.
Secret donations to trusts associated with a party are allowed with the EFA.
Donations from different family members and companies associated with them are not discloseable under the EFA so long as each is under $10,000 and each family member and associated company is not proven to make the donation on behalf of someone else.
One can still donate $66,000 in a year without disclosing your identity.
One could donate $250,000 over a year through anonymous $1,000 donations a day if the party doesn’t know they are from the same source.
So don’t think the EFA solves all this.
And National knows it can’t go after Peters too hard in case it needs him after the election. The temptation must be there, though, given if it did manage to finish Peters off an early election would be in its favour. The fear, however, is that if the attempt backfired and Peters survives, National can kiss goodbye to any post-election deal with NZ First.
Indeed. But both Clark and Key will be wondering how long a post-election deal would last, if there are more revelations like this week to emerge, and if Peters is never going to retreat from his stance of never admitting any fault at all, and blaming the media for exposing his secret donations.
So provided Peters doesn’t completely throw his toys and march out of the government, therefore prompting an early election, I don’t think this week has done Labour any harm at all.
Which is why the Prime Minister is still smiling.
The PM will be happy with the cash rate announcement. I don’t think she is at all smiling over the antics of her Foreign Minister.
July 24th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Mmm there is a big difference between 1996 and 1997 and Tuku’s Undiegate and that of Donorgate. That difference is the level of prosecution by the Opposition.
The first was an unrelenting focus of force on a small point of weakness by Labour. And look by 2005 it mattered not a jot to Winston First (albeit there was a falling out in Winston First)
Today, 1 question from National to the Minister of Justice and only indirectly relevant to the PM’s responsibility.
Napoleon would be in tears.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
90 day grace period. It takes a huge effort to introduce an employee to a business. By the time 90 days is up the investment by the employer is far higher than the salary cost. There is no way that any, and I mean any, employer is going to sack a series of staff after 89 days. To suggest that they would do this only demonstrates Colin Espiner’s complete ignorance of what it’s like to be an employer. I would suggest that only if a person had proven themselves manifestly unsuitable would their employment be terminated. Let’s face it, under current laws the only way to end their employment is to go through a complicated chirade of warnings, letters, training, more warnings, more interviews, all to achieve the same ends, but at huge expense to the staff member’s self belief, at large cost to the business and consumption of time by the employer.
What is sad about National’s policy is that it only applies to work places with 20 or less staff. So, typically, it’s too little and too modest and won’t do very much at all to move NZ forward. Very timid, very weak. Hardly worth getting out of bed for vote for really.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Of course the real issue regarding employment and sackings is that as the culture of socialism has continued to impact upon the NZ national psyche, in many fields the chances of hiring a competent and loyal employee from the half educated well indoctrinated flotsam and jetsam that makes up a large part of the available work force is pretty small. An added difficulty for employers is that (again due the influence of brain damaged anti-capitalist socialists) many of these people see employment as a ticket to a legal process whereby they can be granted big payouts for behaviour that is improper or even illegal. We all pay for this in NZ’s inability to produce goods at a globally competitive cost. Once again, the left succeed in the only thing they’re ever any good at- undermining living standards and destroying quality of life.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
DPF: “And the reality is that a small business has great difficulty in sacking someone just because they are incompetent. They do [not] have the resources larger firms do.”
Proof, DPF? It is not that difficult to sack someone who is not performing in the job. And, as most small employers have relatively simple operations, the jobs done are more straightforward, and it’s quicker and easier to sack a non-performer for that very reason. Also, the mediation services are free, fast and informal.
You shouldn’t keep falling for the employer spin all the time. I’m with Colin on this one.
[DPF: JafaPete - what experience have you had as a manager or employer? I first had responsibility for employment issues in a workplace in the early to mid 90s and since then have hired and employed oh over 200 staff. And what is your experience about how easy it is for small businesses?]
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Jubilation at the 9th will will be time limited as the consequences of a lower dollar creep in.
Imports, petrol and food will go up and wipe out the block of cheese before the election.
National need only focus on the ECA to the effect it applies to little companies (who employ the most people) and that little Johnnt stands a better chance of employment in a quickly tightening market.. and..
National can point out that previously when a Minister, Peters was sacked when he acted up by Bolger, and later by Shipley. If Helen struggles on with him she risks direct comparison with Bolger and Shipley who excised the creep even though it cost them.
National should resist the chance to go after Peters and keep pointing out that the turd is in Helen’s kitchen sink, and it’s her responsibility to act at least as prime ministerial as did Bolger and Shipley.
JC
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
freedom 101 Agree Only those of us who have employed people know what it all about In my case the first time was at 21 yrs old 35 years ago when I had a staff of eight wimmin all older than me the nearest mid 20s the oldest late 60s and several my Mums age.
talk about a baptisim by fire. It went from either mothering me to death to scaring me to death and then turning on the water works and accusing me a timid little thing of being a bully.
I quickly learnt the importance of picking the right person and the cost of picking the wrong one and how the interview process deosnt really prepare you for what you actually get.
I laugh at the likes of Colin who clearly have never employed anyone and is as usual talking out his arsehole.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
DPF, I’m puzzled by the Nats’ industrial relations policy. I suspect it may wwell have the opposite effect of that which is intended. At times of low unemployment, many jobseekers will only apply for jobs with larger employers, in the knowledge that they will have no grievance rights if they work for and are dismissed by a smally employer. This will make it harder, rather than easier, for small employers to recruit competent staff.
Also, employees will still have the right to judicial review in the High Court, as set out in the NZ Bill of Rights Act and the Judicature Act, in instances of procedural unfairness. That right is currently not exercised in employment cases because aggrieved employees have cheaper and faster recourse through the Employment Relations Authority. But denied that recourse, aggrieved employees may well bring judicial review proceedings, for which an employee on a low wage would likely receive legal aid but which may financiall cripple an employee.
The policy is also basically unfair. It creates two categories of employees – those will full employment rights, and those with some lesser level of rights, purely on the basis of whoe their employer is and how long they have worked for them. It is also unfair in that a small employer who has failed in his or her obligations to provide adequate training and/or HR management for an employee who isn’t up to speed can then dismiss that employee on the basis of his or her incompetence, when the fault is actually that of the employer, and the employee has no recourse.
Oh, and before the likes of freedom101 and gd accuse me too of not having been an employer, I can assure you that I was for most of the 90′s.
[DPF: If an employee is at all confident and competent, I think the last thing they will worry about is if their performance is so bad that their new boss will want to get rid of them within just three months. Sure it may be a very very minor influence, but let;s not pretend it would weigh on most job seekers minds.]
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
JP,
The average blackmail payout to sacked employees is $6000, at least that’s what the mediation service told me back in 2003.. it might have gone up since then. The moment you decide to sack, you are dependent on the goodwill of the employee to not take you through the mediation/Employment Court. It’s easy for a small employer to rack up $20,000 in costs and payout even before getting as far as the Employment Court.
At least getting some potential relief from this process at the beginning of a new employee relationship means a lot to a small business, and allows a gamble to be taken with some young people.
JC
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
toad: I can see your point, and to some extent see the point of the more hysterical on the left further up the page. Thing is, lots of other countries have this exact law. And I don’t see what you are claiming happening there. But there is evidence that what National is claiming will work – that it becomes easier to get a job if your CV has the kind of gaps that many of our long-term employed have.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Oops – meant to say “may financially cripple an employer.”
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
dpf said..
“.. The second reason is that the irony of the donor scandal is that it once again raises the whole issue of anonymous rich people trying to buy elections. And while the heat is currently on Peters, I wonder how long before it will again turn back to the National Party, which has more experience with secret trusts hiding large corporate donors than any other party.
There is a risk there, but the key difference is National has not spent 15 years condemning such trusts and demanding they be ended..”
do you not think this may be too fine a point/subtlety for the punters..?
they just see slush-funds/secret donations to national..
..and when peters gets up in parliament next week..
..i;m picking he’s gonnabe pretty pissed off..
..and national is who will’ wear it’..
and i see any focus on slush-funds/secret donations/’trusts’ will wash backup onto national..big time..
(the greens have also been handed an election plank..
..their call for an end to anonymous donations seems like a breath of fresh air..
..able to do way with all concerns such as these..in one fell swoop..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
“I wonder how long before it will again turn back to the National Party, which has more experience with secret trusts hiding large corporate donors than any other party.” ooh I can answer that one. It coincided uncannilly with the publication of that very article with the front page of the VDS this very morning.
Perhaps I am biased, but I fail to see how the experience of Helen Clark going on the radio with phrases like ‘The rulebook is only meant as a guide’, and “I have every confidence in Wisnton” and “Winston is a conscientious and hardworking Minister’, and “I take the Honourable Minister at his word.” can possibly reflect well on her.
SHe has tried to scare National off going after Winston with her ‘secret trusts’ threat. She has kept mum over this issue until the very last moment. She rammed through the EFA ‘to stop people leike the EB and John Key rorting the electoral system.” and penned the very rules that are now so flagrantly being used as toilet paper by herself and Winston.
She sacked Dalziel, Benson-Pope, Field and Samuels for lesser acts than this.
But now, Espiner is asking us to believe that this Wisnton issue is somehow a triumph for Helen Clark?
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
PaulL said: … that it becomes easier to get a job if your CV has the kind of gaps that many of our long-term employed have.
Presume you mean “unemployed”. Call me a lefty if you like, but I’d say the way to address that issue is by government subsidies to employers who employ people who have low skills and large gaps in their CVs. I think that was one of the (few) things Muldoon got right back in the early ’80s.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
toad: subsidies are a good idea if there is no other way. But they have some really bad side effects too – either allowing some businesses to have unreasonable advantage, creating situations where people receive no real job skills at all and are just taken advantage of by an unscrupulous employer, and short term jobs.
It depends a bit how the subsidy is structured, but I think we are far better to work out what the barrier is to it just happening on its own, removing the barrier, and letting people get on with it. We get far fewer adverse consequences that way.
Unless you can show that the subsidy scheme is far less open to abuse than National’s proposed policy, I’d suggest that National’s policy is a better means to the end.
Of course, you could join the harpies on the left who think this somehow is going to create a mechanism by which every ‘worker’ in NZ will be screwed by the evil capitalist overlords. Despite evidence in many western countries to the contrary. I suppose we could argue that NZ employers are, by and large, far more unscrupulous than those in, say, Australia.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
I think a few people are missing the point around the OCR. Most mortgages are on fixed term, so in the same way as increasing the OCR didn’t have a quick impact on peoples’ spending habits, decreasing it is also a longer term issue. My children, who all have mortgages, will have no more in their pockets as a result of today’s action, not now and not when the election comes round.
More to the dismay of the Labour Party, if National can get their act together, is the fact that there won’t be more as a result of the Tax reduction either! A reasonable person will understand that the difference in a ‘typical’ week’s expenses (lets say just groceries, petrol and a kilowatt hour of electricity,) at the time of the budget and the start of election campaigning more than eliminates the ‘value’ of the tax reduction.
All in all, think ‘im an’ ‘er just might look at this week as the beginning of the end!
viva le difference
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
DPF, there is an annoying typo in your otherwise excellent comment re smaller businesses: “they do have have (sic)the resources to…….”.
Now, this is a pet subject of mine. I am sick and tired of the way anyone who is a “businessman” is treated by our politicians as a modern-day equivalent of a Jew in Nazi Germany or a non-Muslim (“Dhimmi”) in an Islamic country.
Someone ceases to be an employee and puts their life savings on the line and at risk by going into business for themselves. As an employee, they were entitled to massive protections from the law. What has changed, in their own personal circumstances, to justly put them at the opposite end of those protections? They will possibly take home less money per year than before, possibly take home less money than someone they employ; they will certainly be much more exposed to financial risk, have a bigger mortgage; they will be under more stress (much more stress); they will still be a good person if they were before, they won’t have become an arsehole if they weren’t already one just because they’ve gone into business.
I am sick and tired of THESE people being deemed by our Marxist NAZIS, to be some sort of criminals against whom everybody else needs to be protected.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
The Nat’s “Employment Contracts Act number two” will undoubtedly cost them in the upcoming campaign. I’ve blogged on this several times in the last two days. It’s a disgusting attack on poor and vulnerable workers (who they also hammered in the 1990s), and I hope they go down for it.
http://rogernome.blogspot.com/2008/07/nationals-2008-industrial-relations.html
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
If someone who has been there and done that and lost his shirt off his back thanks to some employee from hell got called a “prick” to his face by Mikhail Kullen I for one would not blame him if he responded by “Mallarding” him. These people are just unbelievably arrogant in their ivory-tower socialist distance from reality.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I’ve recently blogged on the Nat’s IR policy. It really is a return to the days of the Employment Contracts Act, and they will pay for this naked attack on the poorest and most vulnerable workers in the upcoming campaign.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Roger, you’re far overstating the case. You’re attempting to run a fear-based campaign on your own prejudices. I could write an identical looking paper documenting how unions misuse the current “right” to enter workplaces, how those workers who would prefer a bargaining agent other than a union cannot have one, how many workers are effectively forced to join unions despite those unions doing things that the worker does not want to fund such as political activities.
If your argument were to hold water, then incredibly evil things would have to be happening in Australia, who already have this policy. Do you have any evidence that these things are happening? It isn’t like NZ is the first country in the world to have this policy. Your fear is based on what you imagine might happen. My position is based on the evidence of what actually does happen in the country most like NZ. A country, interestingly, with a growth rate and wage rates higher than ours.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
“I can just visualise Helen Clark and Michael Cullen doing a little jig in their Beehive offices this morning.”
Chemical Ali: Hey Saddam, the bombing has stopped!
Saddam; Praise to Allah, Lets dance a little jig!
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
DPF, and the Nats strategists, you need to get the July/August issue of “Quadrant” Magazine. There is a superb article by John Stone (regrettably not “online”) on the history of Aussie workplace law, called “Liberty, Productivity, and Jobs”. Roger Nome can go and suck on it, too.
Here are some extracts, painstakingly typed by me: (But DO buy the mag and read the whole thing)
“Minimum weekly award rates for adult males leapt by 18.2% in 1973-74, by 30.5% in 74-75, and by a further 14.9% in 75-76…..Inflation soared: the CPI rose by 13.1% in 1973-74, by 16.7% in 74-74 and by 12.8% in 75-76. Unemployment more than doubled……..
“……In 1981-82 a second “wage shock” was imposed by the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union………..Average weekly earnings jumped by 13.5% in 1981-82 and by 12.9% in 82-83. With a reduction also in the award working week, this produced a leap in hourly wage costs of 23% and – hard on its heels – a jump in unemployment from 5.6% of the work force to 9.9% two years later………..Paul Keating later put his finger on the point with his characteristically colourful condemnation of George Campbell as having “100,000 dead men around his neck”. These were those former members of Campbell’s Union who, having lost their jobs because of the 1981-82 wage shock, were still found, years later, driving taxis……..
“……..When Paul Keating replaced Hawke in December 1991, Australia had experienced nine years under Labour. During those years the number unemployed actually rose, from 686,000 (9.9% of the labour force) to 898,000 (10.5%), although the number employed also rose by by 1,377,000 (22.1%). But with the CPI climbing by 76.2% between 1982-83 and 1991-92, average weekly earnings for full-time adult employees barely changed in real terms, rising by only 1.1%……..
“……subsequent “Industrial Relations Reform Act 1993″, while incorporating much of what Keating had laid out, also came at the cost of new and particularly irksome provisions relating to “unfair dismissals”. These imposed onerous new obligations on employers wishing to dismiss an employee, and provided the framework for the system of industrial blackmail known as “go away money”…………
“The first phase (1996-2005) of the Howard government’s workplace relations record was marked by three positive developments and one persistently negative one……….
“in August 2001 the then Minister for for Employment and Workplace Relations, Tony Abbott, established a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the building and construction industry, headed by Mr Terence Cole, QC. Its report in February 2003 found that a “culture of intimidation, coercion, and industrial lawlessness is rife” in the industry, which was “singular in the degree of its disregard for the law”……..It recommended prosecutions of the twenty-three Trade Unionists and eight Employers responsible, and also named sixty-six others………
“In researching this article, I have lost count of the number of occasions on which, for example, the government’s attempts to reform the unfair-dismissal provisions of the law were frustrated……..
“Such frustrations notwithstanding, during these years much changed…………
“In the Autumn 2006 issue of “National Observer” I sought to assess the overall record of “The Howard/Costello Decade”……
Over the ten-year period (end 1995 to end 2005) total employment grew by 1,691,000 (20.3%). Full-time employment grew by 865,000 (13.8%), while part-time employment grew by 826,000 (40%). That much faster rise in part-time employment no doubt owed something, in a positive sense, to the greater flexibility of labour markets. But it was undoubtedly also due to employers choosing to offer part-time rather than full-time jobs because of the unfair-dismissals regime.
The unemployment ratio fell, over the same period, from 8.1% of the labour force to 5.1%
Moreover, the proportion of the working age population (15 to 64) employed rose remarkably, by approximately five full percentage points. Since this proportion had barely changed over the preceding thirty years, clearly something had happened.
Full-time adult male ordinary time average weekly earnings, deflated by the CPI increase over the period (27.1%), rose by 21.2% in real terms. Over the preceding Hawke-Keating decade, they had risen hardly at all (2.8%).
Real average total weekly earnings for all employed persons grew more slowly, by 14.5%, reflecting the shift towards a growing proportion of part-time workers. Again, however, the comparable figure for the preceding decade had been a FALL of 4.4%……..
“John Howard’s 2004 election victory saw gains of seats not only in the House of Representatives but also, vitally, in the Senate. It was immediately apparent that the government now had an opportunity to advance labour market reform significantly. ……..
“…….consider the following facts relating to the eighteen-month period March 2006 to September 2007, during which the new legislation was operative:
The period saw 499,000 jobs created, 92% of them full-time. Over the previous decade only 51% of the jobs created were full-time. The major roll-back of the unfair-dismissal provisions clearly had a large hand in this remarkable change.
The unemployment ratio, 5.0% (seasonally adjusted), of the labour force in March 2006, fell to 4.2%.
The ABCC’s establishment had created a “cultural revolution” in the building and construction industry. Time lost on building sites in this formerly dispute-ridden industry shrank to virtually zero. Productivity improvements were huge, and commercial building costs fell commensurately.
By August 2007 Trade Union membership, with all its associated bullying and other unsavoury behaviour, had fallen by 5% from a year earlier. Only 14% of private sector employees now belonged to Trade Unions (compared to 41% in the largely state Labour government-controlled public sector)……….
“The ball is now at the feet of the Rudd government………….The Trade Union movement is in “payback” mode…….
“……Key ministers must know that the government’s future, and their own, will largely stand or fall on its economic performance………It remains to be seen, therefore, whether in these circumstances it will continue to rush upon its own destruction……….”
SUCK ON THAT.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
It will be a short lived jig as gas prices jump back up & the warehouse shoppers note the bargains arent quite as sharp as they were last year.
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
PhilBest:
Not all collective bargaining is cased on inflationary wage demands. There was a particular breed of unionism in the anglo-saxon countries in the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s that caused this though. Most countries in the OECD with strong unions have a highly disciplined centralised union movement, which accept wage restraint as necessary to lower unemployment. There’s a vast economic literature on this subject which you don’t appear to know about.
Also, the truth is that wage inflation was falling rapidly in the years before the Employment Contracts Act 1991.
i.e. The increase in the average wage fell from 15% in 1987 to be 5% in 1990 - largely due to a provision in the Lange Government’s Labour Relations Act which allowed employers to opt out of arbitration.
Paul:
“I could write an identical looking paper documenting how unions misuse the current “right” to enter workplaces,”
So because a few unions enter workplaces when employers don’t like it, no one should be able to belong to a union. You want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
“workers who would prefer a bargaining agent other than a union cannot have one”
Workers are allowed to seek advice on the bargaining process from a lawyer etc if they want. Also, there’s nothing from stopping them from forming their own union if they don’t like other unions on offer.
“how many workers are effectively forced to join unions despite those unions doing things that the worker does not want to fund”
There’s no compulsory unionism in NZ, and there hasn’t been for 20 years. I’m surprised you don’t know this.
“incredibly evil things would have to be happening in Australia, who already have this policy”
Ignoring the fact that the Probationary Employment Bill isn’t the only IR change that National’s wanting to make, actually there has been some horrible outcomes as a result of the “work choices” legislation. It was used as a way to cut the wages of the working poor further, as will be the case in NZ (where 500,000 workers in the retail and hospitality are paid the same real hourly wage rate that they would have been 20 years ago, for doing the same job).
Vote:
July 24th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
PhilBest:
Not all collective bargaining is based on inflationary wage demands. There was a particular breed of unionism in the anglo-saxon countries in the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s that caused this though. Most countries in the OECD with strong unions have a highly disciplined centralised union movement, which accepts wage restraint as necessary to lower unemployment. There’s a vast economic literature on this subject which you don’t appear to be familiar with.
Also, the truth is that wage inflation was falling rapidly in the years before the Employment Contracts Act 1991 – which meant that the Nat’s policy was an unnecessary piece of overkill.
i.e. The increase in the average wage fell from 15% in 1987 to be 5% in 1990 - largely due to a provision in the Lange Government’s Labour Relations Act which allowed employers to opt out of arbitration.
Paul:
“I could write an identical looking paper documenting how unions misuse the current “right” to enter workplaces,”
So because a few unions enter workplaces when employers don’t like it, no one should be able to belong to a union. You want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
“workers who would prefer a bargaining agent other than a union cannot have one”
Workers are allowed to seek advice on the bargaining process from a lawyer etc if they want. Also, there’s nothing from stopping them from forming their own union if they don’t like other unions on offer.
“how many workers are effectively forced to join unions despite those unions doing things that the worker does not want to fund”
There’s no compulsory unionism in NZ, and there hasn’t been for 20 years. I’m surprised you don’t know this.
“incredibly evil things would have to be happening in Australia, who already have this policy”
Ignoring the fact that the Probationary Employment Bill isn’t the only IR change that National’s wanting to make, actually there has been some horrible outcomes as a result of the “work choices” legislation. It was used as a way to cut the wages of the working poor further, as will be the case in NZ (where 500,000 workers in the retail and hospitality are paid the same real hourly wage rate that they would have been 20 years ago, for doing the same job).
Vote:
July 24th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
sheesh..!..phil-the-inferior…
how do you get it so wrong..
..all of the time..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:July 24th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
The only issue that is going to matter for the election is the perilous state of the economy. People will notice their real and sudden decline in their own personal standard of living and vote according.
Labour is finished. Couldn’t happen to a better bunch of people.
Vote:July 25th, 2008 at 5:41 am
yep. Kiwi rouble down and oil up. repeat over the next few months.
Vote:July 25th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Nice TRYYYYYYYY, Roger Nome.
What your braindead cheerleader philu thinks is irrelevant.
You and your poison are TOAST, roger. Come over from the dark side……..
Vote:July 25th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Roger Nome, start a business and employ someone who has been on the benefit for a long time, with an attitude problem. WINZ will help you. (Hey! You could employ philu!)
It will be a cathartic experience for you.
But no-one in the Heleban has EVER done that, have they ……. and it SHOWS.
Vote:July 25th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Much easier to show how much YOU “CARE” about “the poor” by passing laws to force OTHERS to look after them without getting any work out of them in return……..
Vote: