Delahunty Catherine: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 09 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2122. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. I am delighted to have an opportunity to address this issue. Before I go to the bill the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill I would just like to assist the member from Auckland Jami-Lee Ross. His experience is obviously rather limited about what happened at the Ports of Auckland. I suggest that maybe he has not got a lot of union experience but he might like to go and count the number of secret ballots that have already been held by the union in industrial disputes. He might like to go down there and check it out before he makes those statements.  
The Green Party considers this bill to be in the same category as the Immigration Amendment Bill which suggested that boatloads of migrants would arrive en masse via the Tasman Sea. This is a bill again looking for a problem—or is there a more sinister dimension? 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY 
: Indeed! Is the bill trying to legislate a time-honoured practice of the secret ballot over the right to strike so that it can chip away at the right to strike itself? The technicalities in the bill allow this outcome. If a union can be challenged legally for failing to follow the letter of this law or even cannot prove to the employer that they held a secret ballot the strike decision can be undermined. The Green Party holds dear the International Labour Organization position on the right to strike. The right to strike was won through sacrifice and suffering and any moves to use the law to technically undermine its power is basically abhorrent.  
Union membership is voluntary. No one has to join and no one has to strike. Unions hold ballots. That is their business and not the business of the employer or this Parliament. How the unions conduct secret ballots to decide their industrial action is an internal matter.  
Like all bills this bill has a context and that context is a Government that sees unions as a problem rather than an essential part of the industrial relations arena. If you cannot strike or decide to strike without the interference of the law there is not a lot left. The bottom line for workers in this country and indeed in the world is the right to withhold your labour—our labour. No one wants to do this because—light bulb moment perhaps for some people—when workers are on strike they do not actually get paid. They do not get paid and they cannot feed their families. Have a talk to the AFFCO workers right now about feeding their families. They only take this collective agreed action at the end of the road. Now under this bill their decisions will be made subject to the negative scrutiny of people who do not want that strike to take place in the first place.  
It appears there are always new ways to make workers’ rights and striking unlawful. On 13 November 100 years ago Frederick Evans was beaten to death in Waihi by the strikebreakers and the police. His death was an example of what is fortunately a rare occurrence in the labour history of this country—but not of the world—but it acts as a warning to anyone who thinks this is a frivolous matter to anyone who thinks that going on strike is something that we take lightly. The workers from the Ports of Auckland Oceania Group and Talley’s are enduring stress and financial hardship through lockouts and strikes. They are struggling in an effort to negotiate fair pay and conditions and crucially the right to make collective decisions including the right to strike. The fundamental rights of working people to organise themselves and to decide action for themselves without interference from the Crown or employers are what these now voluntary membership-based organisations need to have legally upheld.  
I am afraid the Green Party believes this bill is not a helpful contribution. It is not the result of many working people who are union members begging Mr Henare for assistance to help them with their right to organise. The question of who would actually benefit from this legislation always has to be asked and the answer would be the employer. It is no surprise when employers want to have a go at the right to strike but let us not dress it up as something else. That is what is sinister.  
I stood on the picket line with the aged-care workers of Oceania Group the people doing the most vital job caring for our elderly for the minimum wage. They were not there because they were coerced. They were not there because they were manipulated or through shonky ballot. They were union members at their wit’s end on how to live on low wages. Let us respect their rights and the rights of unions to withhold their labour.  
The chant outside this House on Friday was “When workers’ rights are under attack stand up and fight back.” The National-led Government has repeatedly engaged in attacks on workers since it was elected in 2008. I can think of the 90-day bill the holidays bill the right of unions to visit the workplace and workers’ ability to take sick leave without being interrogated.