Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:675;Page:21124] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I was really looking forward to taking a call on the previous clause of the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill but I will make do with this one. I think it is worth discussing exactly what we are amending under clause 3 of the principal Act—that is the Employment Relations Act. We are amending quite a significant part of the rights of employees under the Employment Relations Act. It sounds really simple and easy to say that there should be a secret ballot for strikes and we should put it in this amendment. We might ask who has a problem with it as it is about democracy and so on but I do not think that members opposite understand what this will involve and the change and red tape and all sorts of— 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: Compliance. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Compliance—absolutely. The Hon Tau Henare did not speak on his Supplementary Order Paper 195 but it amended clause 2 and it goes on to make some other amendments. This bill will require unions to amend their rules because the principal Act the Employment Relations Act is being amended. Unions have to be registered under section 14 of the Employment Relations Act. They have to be registered as unions. There is a whole provision in the Act that says when they are entitled to be registered as unions. There are a whole lot of rules about them having to be democratic not unreasonable not unfairly discriminatory not contrary to law and interestingly independent and at arm’s length from employers. Yet here we have a provision to amend the principal Act that will allow employers to interfere in the democratic processes of unions. 
Unions will have to change their rules. Because it has been a while since the member in the chair Tau Henare has been involved in unions I do not think he understands the requirements of the Incorporated Societies Act and the provisions in the Employment Relations Act as to the requirements a union has to meet in order to change its rules. Unions have to get their members to approve those changes. For the union that I come from the Service and Food Workers Union it would involve something like 50 stopwork meetings throughout the country. That means arranging with employers for workers to be released and that is not always easy. It is a cost on employers. It also means getting the workers to the meetings so that they are able to vote on the changes to the rules that this bill will require. This bill will require that unions change their rules so that there is a provision as set out in Supplementary Order Paper 195 relating to the process for holding a secret ballot. 
I think that unions could live with that. Certainly I will have an amendment a bit later on that proposes that that is all this bill does. All this bill needs to do is amend the Employment Relations Act so that unions have to have in their rules a provision for holding secret ballots. Then the unions themselves with their members can decide in a democratic way what the process is. That is what all of the international conventions around freedom of association and the whole tenor and support for freedom of association and collective bargaining under the Employment Relations Act are about. It is about unions being independent of employers. It is about them being able to run their own business just as employers’ organisations are able to. This bill will not require employer organisations or shareholders to amend their rules and go through the process that unions will be required to. 
I think that when we talk about amending the principal Act everyone needs to understand what is being asked. We are imposing a whole lot of red tape not only on unions but also on employers. Employers will be affected by this because unions will have to go through a process of changing their rules and in order for them to do that employers will have to comply. Employers will have to cooperate or the rules will not be able to be changed and then over a period of time those unions will be in breach of the amended Act. 
We oppose the bill for a whole lot of other reasons that we will get into a bit later.