Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 That was a very useful and informative contribution by my colleague Darien Fenton. I too would be very interested in knowing the views of the member in the chair Tau Henare about the title of this bill the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill why the original title had “Workers’ ” in it and what his views are on the striking out of the word “Workers’ ”. We now have the “Employment Relations”—struck-out “Workers’ ”—“(Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill”. 
The first part will obviously be a change to the Employment Relations Act. The Employment Relations Act is about the relationship between a number of parties in the workplace. Those parties include unions and employers and individual workers and individual employers so both collectively and individually all of those groups are part of the employment relations that take place in a workplace. So it would be very interesting indeed to know Mr Henare’s views on the striking out of the word “Workers’ ”. 
Just to follow through on a point that Darien Fenton made my understanding is that the UK legislation deliberately uses the word “workers” for the very reason she identified which is that it is broader than the term “employee” and therefore covers the multiplicity of relationships that now exist. In fact—and this is certainly true in New Zealand—many of those relationships have been established in such a way as to remove rights from people so employees have a number of rights that do not necessarily apply to other groups like for example contractors. So that term “workers” is a broader term. 
We are talking about employment relations. Specifically this bill is focused on secret ballots for strikes. I would be very interested in getting to the bottom of the question why this bill is even here and why we have wasted time in the House in the select committee and again here in the Committee of the whole House looking at this bill. It is an absolute joke. The submissions we heard made it very clear that there was not a problem to be dealt with. I have to again reinforce the points that Darien Fenton made: if this is a problem it is a problem that is perceived to be of an earlier time. It is certainly not reflective of the relationships between unions and their members and employers in the 2000s. It is not a problem. 
Generally speaking secret ballots exist. Generally speaking in fact strikes are comparatively rare and bullying union officials like the sort of union official that someone like Tau Henare was are not commonplace. Members opposite might mutter under their breath about whether we can say that but that is a fact. If members opposite want to hear more about that I am sure we could give them more information. 
I was a union official for many years of my working life and I never once stood over a worker. I never once put pressure on a worker to take strike action. Those decisions were indeed the decisions of the workers concerned freely made. That is the only way in common sense that we can see how a strike can take place. We cannot force people out the door. We cannot lock the door behind them unless we are the employers and keep them out. The reality is that it is harder and harder in the current environment for workers to get together collectively to take action to improve their wages and their conditions of employment. It is much harder in periods of high unemployment. It is much harder in the anti-worker and anti-union environment that currently exists and if National is re-elected that will get a whole lot worse. 
It is not easy for workers to take strike action but the reality is that it never really has been that easy because we all know—and just in case members opposite do not know—that if we go on strike we lose pay. That is quite hard for the average working person because they need their wages and salaries to live on. 
I go back to the title of this bill. The bill is supposedly about secret ballots for strikes. We will be talking a lot more about industrial action during the course of the evening because striking is a form of industrial action and of course the flip side of that is the lockout.