Katene Rahui: Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Katene Rahui: Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15212] 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 The Maori Party when it comes to the Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill has to admit to being really open to the possibility that it can either support or oppose the proposal to force unions to hold secret ballots on strike action. We start from the position that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has recommended that the bill be passed with amendments such as the requirement for a union to hold a secret ballot before a strike and before unlawful strikes or lockouts when in contravention of a preceding requirement. 
The bill’s intention is very straightforward. It requires unions to hold a secret ballot for their members when voting on strike action. The Council of Trade Unions has signalled its support in principle for the bill. Its secretary Peter Conway has said that it largely reflects current practice. According to Andrew Little secret ballots are already a core component of the New Zealand Amalgamated Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union’s rules and in his view he presumes that some 95 percent of other unions are the same. Other big unions like the 14000-member Post Primary Teachers Association are among those that already hold secret ballots. 
Despite the status quo in the Council of Trade Unions’ submission to the select committee the council called the bill “fundamentally unfair and practically flawed.” It concluded that “the Bill is little more than [a] cheap stunt and a poorly disguised attack on workers seeking to exercise their collective right to organise.” If that is support in principle then I would be fascinated to see what the council’s opposition looks like. But to be fair the Council of Trade Unions—which in its Maori arm of Te Kauae Kaimahi represents approximately 60000 Maori workers—really challenged us in our thinking about whether we should support or oppose this bill. 
Although the Council of Trade Unions said that it would support the bill the Unite union promoted much the same message but reached the decision that it should vote against the bill. Duncan Allan a management representative from Unite stated that the bill was unnecessary; it would stifle union members’ ability to take strike action it was prejudiced against employees and it breached the Employment Relations Act. Mr Allan advised the committee that the bill breached the Act in two ways. It contravened the principle of acknowledging and addressing the inherent inequality of power in employment relationships and it was inconsistent with the move to reduce the need for judicial intervention. When we went to the National Distribution Union its advice was absolutely clear-cut that we should not support this bill. 
The contrary positions of these three leading union organisations leave us in a quandary about whether this bill has the appropriate balance. On the one hand we must ask whether it is our business to interfere in the practices that unions seek to uphold. In Aotearoa union membership is voluntary and as such we believe that unions should be free to run their own organisations according to their own agreed rules. On the other hand we could support secret ballots for strikes as that merely represents the status quo of current practices amongst unions. 
This question of balance deserves a little more thought for although this bill focuses on the opportunities for workers to be involved in strike action it could have required—but did not require—employers to follow democratic procedures including holding a secret ballot of shareholders prior to a lockout. The Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly came out publicly and said that the bill fails to put the same onus on employers to ratify the lockout actions that have been used several times recently to force workers into accepting terms and conditions they do not want. That is right—that is from the Council of Trade Unions the union organisation that is supporting this bill. 
One of the key issues that the National Distribution Union raised as a concern was the fact that there has been no demonstrated pattern of unions engaging in strike action without a democratic mandate; that is simply not part of the worker history. This bill therefore provides a solution for an issue that does not actually emerge from an identified problem. What is even more fascinating about this bill coming from a party that is supposedly opposed to nanny State intervention is that it imposes another level of bureaucracy on the employment legislation paperwork. So this bill starts from a dubious base introduces a laborious level of accountability for unions and then produces a process by which the validity of legitimate votes in favour of strike action can be challenged. 
But the issue that has made us the most concerned is the claim from various unions that this legislation unfairly and disproportionately impacts on low-income New Zealanders. It makes for a fairly dismal context to recall that the New Zealand income survey results for the June 2010 quarter showed that income had decreased since the June 2009 quarter. The median weekly income for all people decreased to $529 compared with the June 2009 quarter figure of $538 and the June 2008 quarter figure of $536. Why would we intentionally want to support legislation that the unions tell us could be disadvantageous for low-income workers when we could instead be putting our efforts into far more worthwhile projects such as raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour? Our priority in employment legislation is that we give due consideration to initiatives that enhance labour relations rather than threaten to impact negatively on one side and advantage the other. 
The Maori Party promotes a framework for labour relations that is mutually beneficial to the collective and that encourages reciprocity and active participation on both sides of the employment continuum. We support people working together we support exemplary employment standards and we support a respectful environment that both is worker-friendly and avoids undue compliance costs for employers. For all these reasons we have given this bill serious and due consideration. In the final estimation we come down more clearly in favour of the unions which have shared their concerns about the adverse impact this bill would have on low-income workers. We are therefore opposed to this bill.