Kiwiblog

1. Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill – Tau Henare
2. Smart Meters (Consumer Choice) Bill – David Clendon
3. Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill – Sir Roger Douglas

Tau’s bill requires all votes on strike action to be secret ballots. In theory almost all unions do this anyway, but there has been some dispute on the West Coast recently about whether this does always happen, so it will be good to have it a legal, not a voluntary, requirement to prevent intimidation.

David Clendon’s bill is inherited from Jeanette and regulates the use of smart meters. Not sure of all the details, but it looks to be worth supporting at first reading anyway so a select committee can look into pros and cons.

Sir Roger’s bill will allow the Government to set a different level of minimum wage for younger workers. I welcome it as there is pretty clear evidence that the huge increase in youth unemployment is bext explained by the scrapping of the youth rate for the minimum wage. National will be nervous about being seen to be “cutting wages” but I hope they will support it to select committee, so arguments can be heard about the linkage.

Rather than cut the minimum wage for any current workers, what I would do if I was the Government is just use it to increase the youth minimum wage more slowly than the adult minimum wage.

The SST reports:

BUSINESS BOSS Phil O’Reilly is predicting 2010 will be a year of industrial strife and an “ugly” budget that will bump up the GST rate.

O’Reilly, the chief executive of Business NZ, said he expected “fireworks” from public sector unions as the government tightened the screws on spending, and Finance Minister Bill English has said total government spending cannot increase more than $1.1 billion in the May budget, a difficult task considering that public hospitals alone have been soaking up an extra $700 million a year in recent budgets. English has warned public servants such as teachers and nurses not to expect pay increases that are “out of line with realistic expectations”.

More than 50,000 primary and secondary teachers will negotiate a new pay deal with the government when their current agreement expires at the end of June.

“I think we will see quite a few sparks fly,” O’Reilly said. “Government departments are being told how much they can spend so you’re going to see an ugly budget from the perspective of government spending and that will impact people like the state sector unions, the teacher unions and so on. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of that was turned into industrial action.”

NZ Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly said O’Reilly was being “hysterical” but warned that public sector workers would not tolerate zero pay increases or cuts in services.

“We are ready for that kind of a year but we hope commonsense will prevail.

I am all for common sense. Common sense is that the economy has grown only 0.4% in the last six months, so pay increases greater than the rate of economic growth are not common sense. Likewise borrowing more money to fund pay increases is not common sense when you are borrowing $240 million every week just to pay for current salaries.

The Herald reports:

Auckland bus drivers turned their back on a $500 sweetener from the region’s public transport agency when they rejected advice from union leaders yesterday to accept a new company pay offer.

Emotions ran high at Alexandra Park racecourse after about 55 per cent of almost 650 drivers and cleaners voted by secret ballot to reject the offer from Infratil subsidiary NZ Bus of pay rises amounting to $2 an hour by the final stage of a three-year deal.

That would have lifted the top hourly wage for drivers with nine months’ service or more to $17.45 now, $18.15 next year, and $18.75 in February 2012.

Putting aside the $500, that is a 12% increase over three years. A full time salary of $39,100 for driving a bus.

At a time of low inflation and rising unemployment, their decision is regrettable. They even went against their own unions’ recommendation to accept.

If they think they can do better than $39,000 elsewhere, maybe they should offer their services to another company.

I have not followed the bus dispute in Auckland very closely, but find this story interesting:

The Employment Relations Authority has made public its recommendations to settle the pay dispute between NZ Bus and Auckland drivers.

The ERA suggested a wage increase of 4.2 per cent for the first 16 months, back-paid to July this year, then 3.9 per cent for the next 14 months from November next year.

Both increases amounted to 70 cents an hour.

The collective agreement would expire on December 31, 2011 after the Rugby World Cup, ERA recommended.

NZ Bus agreed to the recommendations and requested they should be released to the public.

So the employer is willing to accept the ERA recommendation, but it is the union that is not.

I note inflation is now running at 1.2%.