Faafoi Kris: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Faafoi Kris: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:675;Page:21110] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Taloha ni Mr Chair. It is a pleasure to speak on clause 1 of the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill. We are on the title clause and I guess that people at home may be thinking that the title clause is mundane and boring but in this instance as Darien Fenton and Kelvin Davis have mentioned it holds a lot of the motivation for what this bill is about. 
Usually when legislation is passed in the House it is to give some benefit or to right a wrong but the fact that the word “Workers’ ” has been removed from the title shows what National is really all about: if benefit or advantage is to be afforded to anyone it dare not be to any workers so the word “Workers’ ” had to be removed from the title of this bill. It dare not be the workers so the word had to be removed from the title of the bill. 
This bill does nothing for the benefit or the advantage of workers at all which is a sad indictment on this Government in terms of its Employment Relations Act amendments in this House. We first saw the provisions of the 90-day fire-at-will bill—as we like to call it over on this side of the Chamber—extended to small businesses and then expanded out to larger businesses with restrictions on unions and of course we cannot escape the fact of this Government’s miserly increase in the minimum wage. Yet again this bill is another change in employment relations that has nothing to do with increasing or at least protecting the rights of workers in New Zealand. 
I think it is a little bit ironic that we have this bill which makes it compulsory to have secret ballots when unions want to have strikes before the Committee today when the previously debated bill the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill is to remove the compulsion from student union membership. It is very odd; it is ironic. I do not know what members want to call it but at home people may see the muddled thinking behind what this Government is doing in terms of that. 
There is a Eurythmics’ song entitled “Why”; I guess a lot of people at home are wondering why this bill is being introduced. Moana Mackey has already traversed why this legislation needs to be changed what the problem is what the issue is why we are doing this and what is not working. The answer to those questions is nothing. This bill did not need to be introduced. Secret ballots can already be held at the moment to ensure that when a strike is called a majority of workers agree with it. So why this bill has been introduced we do not know. 
There were a handful of submissions to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on this issue. If Andrew Miller of Auckland is watching tonight I commend him for the first line of his submission which says: “this bill serves no meaningful purpose in improving industrial relations in New Zealand”. That is a nice sentence. It pretty much sums up the opinion of members on this side of the Chamber on this bill. 
Let me move to the Council of Trade Unions’ submission on this bill the “Employment Relations (Scratch the Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill”. The Council of Trade Unions agrees with Labour in terms of the problem that this bill seeks to resolve and why it has been given priority over so many other issues that are facing Kiwi workers today: “It appears to be designed as more of an attack on workers their unions”—and Moana Mackey has already traversed the chequered history of Mr Henare with unions—“and the right to organise than as a response to any real problem with the industrial relations framework.” 
We have seen the recent example in the UK where the introduction of compulsory secret ballots has caused real problems for unions to exercise their right to take strikes. Two recent challenges to strike ballots in the UK were based on what we would consider to be trifling reasons and resulted in injunctions preventing strike action. Such challenges not only prevent workers from being able to exercise their freedom of association rights but also—and here is the nub of it—delay resolution of disputes and can harm and worsen industrial relations. In that respect this bill could be counterproductive to making sure that any industrial disputes are sorted out in a timely and in what members on this side of the Chamber would call a fair manner. 
There was one change I think at the select committee to this bill. It concerned the fact that secret ballots do not need to take place in terms of health and safety.