Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, February 26th, 2010 - 46 comments
If National is going to legislate democratic procedures for unions taking industrial action, aren’t they bound by consistency to do the same for employers?
Requiring a secret ballot of shareholders before lockouts are allowed would be a good start.
Written By: - Date published: 6:58 pm, February 23rd, 2010 - 14 comments
Two industrial relations bills from the Right were pulled from the ballot today.
The first, Roger Douglas’ bill to restore youth rates, is just the usual ACT Party kick the poor stuff.
But Tau Henare’s bill on strike ballots is just plain stupid.
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, February 15th, 2010 - 38 comments
When the Government came under fire over National Standards John Key was quick to raise the anti-union bogey. The old stereotypes are certainly still strong in National, but they have led Key into a trap. What might have worked for Muldoon or Maggie in the past won’t work now for a number of reasons.
Written By: - Date published: 7:37 pm, February 11th, 2010 - 13 comments
Campaign for a living wage is protesting the offices of National MPs this Saturday to protest increases in GST and the miserly increase in the minimum wage. The protest is part of Unite union’s campaign to force a referendum on raising the minimum wage to $15. At the moment they have 100,000 signatures but need […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, February 5th, 2010 - 48 comments
Nearly a year ago, John Key, shaken by the first whispers of disquiet over his government’s month-long holiday at the height of an economic crisis (whispers that would later grow into cries of ‘Do Nothing’ Key), decided to hold the Prime Minister’s Jobs Summit. This would not be a talk-fest, it would be a ‘do-fest’ […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, February 3rd, 2010 - 70 comments
The latest round of the Labour Cost Index is out and it shows that the nation’s 400,000 union members are the workers holding their ground as businesses try to cut wage costs to preserve their profit margins: Inflation was 2% this year. If you didn’t get a pay rise to match or beat that, your […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:06 am, December 16th, 2009 - 1 comment
Over at FairDeal, NZEI have announced that the support staff in schools have managed to get a wage increase. The campaign by support staff members and the wider union has finally resulted in a settlement of the support staff collective agreement. There is now a $14 minimum rate for Grade A, a $14.62 minimum rate […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, December 10th, 2009 - 7 comments
About a month ago I used the Stats NZ Labour Cost Index to come up with the approximate distribution of payrises for unionised and non-unionised workers. I showed that most union members got payrises this year and most non-union members didn’t. Turns out that was pretty much on the money. The EPMU released figures yesterday […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:05 am, November 12th, 2009 - 42 comments
The Labour Cost Index tells us that most workers this year failed to get pay rises to match inflation in the past year. 52% got no increase. 4% got less than inflation (2%, represented by the green line on the graph). 1% even got pay cuts. That’s a dramatic change on a year ago. Well, so […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:01 am, October 26th, 2009 - 3 comments
Credit where it’s due.
Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, October 22nd, 2009 - 20 comments
John Key says that if school support staff want pay-rises then teachers should sacrifice the ones they bargained for. Tell him to get stuffed. I don’t see him and his rich mates handing back the hundreds of dollars a week each in tax-cuts that National gave. I don’t see Key or his buddies Mark Weldon and Rob Fyfe […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, October 21st, 2009 - 16 comments
Next Monday, you have a paid day off. Do you know why? Because workers organised themselves into unions and fought for better pay and conditions, starting with an 8-hour day. Labour Day is both a product of those achievements and a chance to celebrate them. The TEU has set up a Labour Day website to remind […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, October 15th, 2009 - 9 comments
Non-political staff Parliamentary Service are in industrial action. They want to keep their redundancy provisions that were bargained for years ago and get pay into the collective. Right now HR decides their wages. They’re meant use this performance pay system but now they’re saying there’s no money and no cost of living adjustments. The pay […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, October 14th, 2009 - 2 comments
Farrar’s published what he calls an ‘internal union email’ about the PSA and the SFWU’s decision not to amalgamate. Considering it was sent out to 70,000 people more than a week ago I wouldn’t get too excited. The amalgamation talks always struck me as an odd idea. The organising cultures and the membership profiles of […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 pm, October 8th, 2009 - 14 comments
The Bridgeman Concrete workers locked out for nine days hardened their picket last week. Two concrete trucks couldn’t leave the depo, costing the company $3,000 in ruined concrete. The company responded by caving in, and lifted the lock out. As well as lifting their lockout Bridgeman also conceded to workers’ demands for a fairer redundancy agreement that […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, October 8th, 2009 - 7 comments
Well the intransigent owners and managers of Infratil / NZ Bus finally went on strike this morning in their quest for higher profits. They locked out the bus drivers for threatening to abide by their contract. This is causing widespread chaos amongst other businesses as their employees are unable to get to work. We just dispatched […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:38 am, September 28th, 2009 - 27 comments
While filling his own pockets with our money, Bill ‘Double Dipton’ English is threatening public sevants with a five-year pay freeze – with inflation, that’s a 10% pay cut. The government can afford to give its workers small cost of living adjustments – the cost is relatively trivial. Parliament workers recently rejected an offer that […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, September 25th, 2009 - 60 comments
Tau Henare has put a private members’ bill in the ballot that would require ballots by union members on strike action to be held in secret. Henare draws on his memories from the 1980s as a union organiser and reckons that open ballots are used to intimidate workers into toeing the line. Well, maybe it […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:45 am, September 21st, 2009 - Comments Off on Talking union
Eddie’s piece on the importance of joining your union if you want to avoid a pay cut reminded me of another Peter Seeger classic:
Written By: - Date published: 10:40 am, September 21st, 2009 - 42 comments
Right now, spurred on by the hypocritical words of Bill English and John Key, employers in the public and private sectors are saying they can only offer a 0% pay increase this year – and many are trying to cut conditions like redundancy and overtime. 0% is a pay cut. The cost of living went up 1.9% […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:14 am, September 18th, 2009 - 16 comments
The Open Country Cheese dispute is underway. Workers are striking against the bosses’ attempts to casualise their hours and reduce their conditions. They are not striking for huge pay increases, despite the lies of Open Country. Open Country Cheese, part-owned by the notorious Talleys and tied to various National MPs via the Dairy Investment Fund […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 pm, September 13th, 2009 - 25 comments
Finance Minister Bill English has told doctors, teachers, and other public servants that they will not be getting pay-raises when their collective contracts come up for renewal. That is constitutionally outrageous and a big political mistake. Ministers are not allowed to direct public sector pay negotiations. It is clearly against the rules of the State Sector […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, September 11th, 2009 - 20 comments
A coalition of unions, Labour, the Greens, the Maori Party, and community groups has come together to support Darian Fenton’s Redundancy Protection Bill. There’s a website, facebook group, petition, and other ways you can get involved. The Bill, due to be debated later this month, would set a minimum level of redundancy protection for all […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, September 11th, 2009 - 7 comments
We’re seeing a new pattern in work relations emerging. The big employers, emboldened by having their party in power and using the recession as an excuse, are attacking workers’ pay and conditions. But this isn’t 1991 redux. The unionised workers of today have joined voluntarily and believe in collective action; the unions are no longer […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:43 am, September 11th, 2009 - 11 comments
Today, 200 Telecom engineers in Auckland and Northland will be fired. Not because there’s no work for them but because Telecom and it’s $7 million CEO want to cut ‘labour costs’ – that’s workers’ incomes, families’ livelihoods to you and me. Here’s how Telecom’s scam goes. Currently, the engineers are employees of Telecom contractors Transfield […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, September 8th, 2009 - 20 comments
By John Ryall, SFWU National Secretary While The Standard readers know that the air traffic controllers were the excuse that Kate Wilkinson used to signal a repeal of parts of the 2008 Employment Relations Act (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Act, they are probably not aware of who is really going to be affected by […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, September 8th, 2009 - 7 comments
Yesterday Infratil got their NZ Bus hand-puppets to announce that they will be going on strike. On Wednesday, if the bus-drivers refuse to donate their time freely to increase Infratil returns to investors, the company will remove bus-services from the commuters of Auckland. If the reasonable attempts of the bus drivers to increase their wages […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:10 am, September 2nd, 2009 - 38 comments
I find the Right’s assumption that the bosses are acting in some greater interest fascinating. There’s this unwillingness to believe that the bosses would be acting in their own interests and that what’s in their interests are often not in the interests of the rest of us. Look at the comments yesterday on the Telecom […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, August 28th, 2009 - 12 comments
“I’m not going to resign” – Kate Wilkinson It’s one of the truisms of politics that when you’re a minister and you say you’re not resigning, it’s only a matter of time until you are. Kate Wilkinson’s behaviour has been almost universally disgraceful- the Kiwisaver debacle, her vitriol during the Shawn Tan affair, refusing the let […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:31 pm, August 26th, 2009 - 15 comments
This morning the National Distribution Union put out a statement saying the Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, had refused to attend an executive meeting on the absurd grounds that Telecom lines engineers belonging to a different union, the EPMU, had recently been on strike. In Question Time today Sue Bradford asked whether the Minister’s refusal […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, July 3rd, 2009 - 91 comments
Yesterday in Question Time, Bill English sent a message loud and clear to teachers, police, doctors, nurses, and all other public servants (‘frontline’ or not): under National, you’ll be getting pay-cuts, don’t expect cost of living adjustments, watch as your pay-packet buys less and less. Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has stated a number of […]
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