Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:676;Page:21561] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I also rise to speak on clause 4 of the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill. As has been mentioned it states that “The purpose of this Act is to require unions”—just unions—“to hold a secret ballot vote of their members to approve a strike before undertaking any strike action.” I will come back to the question of members. One would think that the purpose of legislation should be something that is actually needed; that if we have a bill with a particular purpose it is because there is a need for a bill to meet that purpose. Having listened to the submissions to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee I know that there was no evidence supplied that there was a need to require unions “to hold a secret ballot vote of their members to approve a strike before undertaking any strike action” because they do that. They already do it. So why would anyone bring to Parliament a bill that has a purpose that is something that is already done? It seems nonsensical to me. 
Furthermore the purpose of this bill is already in my opinion well and truly covered off by the requirements of the principal Act the Employment Relations Act whereby that Act requires unions to operate in good faith to their members and acting in good faith to their members must apply in the circumstance of something as serious as a strike because after all a strike is something that is not entered into lightly. As my colleagues have said workers lose money by taking strike action. That is not something anybody relishes. In the economic climate we have now where workers and their families are struggling to make ends meet because of ever-rising prices and because of the actions of this Government it would be even harder to do it one would think except that employers have certainly hardened up as well so workers are trying to get improved income through collective bargaining. They are not making progress so strikes have increased. None the less it is a hard ask to take strike action. 
There must be a ballot of the union’s members. That is what the purpose clause says. Of course membership of unions is voluntary so the other thing that makes me think the purpose is somewhat nonsensical is that in this strange weird world that Mr Henare lives in where union officials stand over workers to make them go on strike those workers do not have to belong to that union. They can say: “I’m not going to be a member any more. I don’t like you. I’m going to stop being a member.” There is no requirement for workers to be members of unions. So again the purpose seems to be somewhat redundant. If there was a union official standing over a worker in the way that has been referred to that worker could either take action under the good-faith provisions of the Employment Relations Act the principal Act or leave the union and have nothing further to do with it. Why would someone want to belong to an organisation where somebody stands over them? 
Those things make me think that the purpose outlined in clause 4 is completely redundant unnecessary and a waste of Parliament’s time. There are many many other things in the Employment Relations Act that I can think of that it would be more worthwhile amending—but that is probably to go wider than clause 4 so I will not go there. 
It interests me also—and my colleague Darien Fenton has talked about this—that it is quite narrow because it applies only to one party in the employment relationship. The principal Act as I said earlier talks about all of the parties. It talks about workers their unions employers and their employer organisations. But this amendment to the Act has a purpose of dealing with only one of the parties in the employment relationship—actually two the members and their union; I guess it is two. It does not deal with the other side of the coin. If some of the members opposite feel that this is about democracy and making good decisions and avoiding the possibility that people are making a decision that is not well-thought-through then we wonder why they are not looking at requiring employers to take a secret ballot of their shareholders for example before they lock out their workers.