Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Fenton Darien: Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15209] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I am delighted to make a contribution on the Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill after that expert on industrial relations the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee David Bennett. My goodness! We learnt a lot about workers’ rights and employers’ rights and all sorts of things through the bills that we have been through in the last few weeks. I think he just said it all really about his experience. Labour did support this bill at the beginning because we thought it was a bit harmless but I said some things in my first reading speech and I have not changed my mind about them. In my first reading speech I said that that this was a completely unnecessary bill. I do not doubt that the member the Hon Tau Henare means well but he is basing this on his experience as the only clerical workers union organiser who ever got sacked in the whole history of the country. That was 25 to 30 years ago and things have changed massively since then. 
His experience was so different. He does not seem to understand that today union membership is voluntary. That means that workers are free to join or not join unions. It means if workers do not agree with the decisions of their unions or their fellow union members they can resign. They are not captured. In his day it was compulsory union membership. That member used to go around and conduct strike ballots and I have no doubt he would stand over people but it does not happen these days. Unions are democratic organisations and members have a variety of ways of raising disagreements with their unions including resigning. They also have rights under the Employment Relations Act to raise issues of good faith because there is an employment relationship between members and their unions. 
As I said on the face of it this bill seems pretty harmless. It is unfortunate and I feel a bit sorry for Tau Henare actually that since this bill had its first reading and went to the select committee this Government has launched an attack on New Zealand wage earners and salary earners. It has removed any goodwill from unions or workers and any goodwill or trust on this side of the House. The truth is that bad employers are being given permission by this Government to behave even worse. I accept that most employers are good employers but we are legislating through a whole range of bills including this one for bad employers. When we combine this bill with other legislation that is coming through the Order Paper such as the meals and rest breaks take-away-your-rights legislation the 90-day trial fire-at-will legislation and the sell-your-holidays legislation we see that this bill is a lot less innocuous than it seems and that the member would have us believe. 
In addition during the submissions process I got quite worried. When we open the door to these sorts of provisions we start to get some bad employers who get some crazy ideas. For example Business New Zealand and the Employers and Manufacturers Association came along to submit and said that the ballot level should be 75 percent—there should be a 75 percent vote in favour of strike before it goes ahead. The majority applies to everyone else except workers. That is what they said along with a whole lot of other things that made me more uneasy about the bill. I acknowledge that the bill was improved in the select committee. I support some of the changes which I am greatly relieved about. I record my thanks to the officials and the clerks and the department for their advice and assistance with making this bill make at least a little bit of sense but it does not make a lot of sense. I am pleased that National and the member in charge of the bill took on board the right to strike on health and safety. This bill restores that right of workers not to be in a situation where they have to work in a situation where their lives or their health could be in danger. I am glad that we have at least fixed that part of the bill. Some other things are there that I think are good clarifications. They are all useful changes but it does not make the bill any less pointless. 
I think the member would acknowledge that at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I genuinely tried to understand where he was coming from and what his intentions and motivation were. I accepted the comments he made in the first reading that he was trying to protect a person’s right to withdraw their labour and to ensure that they were fully informed and not under any threat either physical or mental—I have not heard of a worker being under a physical threat of strike recently. But there was no evidence from workers that there was a problem; nor did the committee hear from anyone who said they had been intimidated into going on strike. As I say I know the member is referring back to his experience 25 years ago and maybe it happened then but it certainly does not happen now. If workers had come along and told the committee there was a problem then honestly we would have listened and that would have been more convincing but there were none. 
If the intent of the member in charge of the bill is to provide for more transparency and democracy he should look overseas and see what international conventions say about freedom of association which is an international convention that New Zealand has signed up to. His Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson goes off to the ILO and makes big speeches about New Zealand signing up to fundamental conventions but here we are considering a bill that will interfere with the rights of workers’ organisations and employers’ organisations to run their organisations democratically. As I said what does it mean when we combine this with the Government’s proposals on restriction of access? There would have to be a strike ballot but the employer may not let the organiser in to run the strike ballot. Often strikes are very very tense and complex situations. Even though the chair of the committee David Bennett does not believe this unions are more often than not involved in solving tensions and difficulties not creating them. The ability to deny access will only create more escalation. 
And while I am talking about strikes let us talk about the problem we have in New Zealand today with escalating strike action. The latest statistics for the year ended June 2010 show that there were 29 stoppages involving 13829 employees losses of 17989 person days of work and an estimated $3.1 million lost in wages and salaries. That was a combination of strikes and lockouts and it was much much worse than it has been in the past. Holding a secret ballot will not change those shocking statistics; the only thing that will change them is changing the Government. It is the only way we will get through that because this is a Government that does not care about workers’ rights. It does not respect workers. The Government sold out a whole group of workers a couple of weeks ago because an American corporate came over and waved a big stick. It is removing access to justice for every worker in New Zealand in their first 90 days of employment because ACT told it to do so. What sort of Government is that? 
If we are talking about fear I suggest that workers will be far more fearful of losing their jobs and getting the sack with no rights within their first 90 days of employment than being made to vote in favour of a strike. There was one way through this and I suggested it to the select committee. I genuinely tried to understand the member’s intent and I put up a proposal which I will put forward by way of Supplementary Order Paper during the Committee stage. We proposed a simple amendment to Part 4 of the Employment Relations Act which is about union rules. The chair of the select committee did not understand this but under the Employment Relations Act unions are required to have rules governing the democratic processes of their unions. I proposed that they should have in those rules under the law a requirement to have secret ballots for strikes. That would achieve the stated aim it would keep employers out of the mix it would stop litigation—because I think this bill will make the process extremely litigious—it would keep the process democratic and it would stop unnecessary compliance costs being imposed on unions. 
I think this bill will harm employment relationships but most of all it will do nothing to improve our economy our wages and the lives of New Zealanders. That is why Labour opposes this bill. Thank you.