Roche Denise: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Roche Denise: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 09 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2107. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENISE ROCHE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be voting against this bill the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill. We will not be voting for this bill because we do not see the need to meddle with stuff when there is no reason to meddle with it. This bill is a solution looking for a problem as others have said before me. There is no problem so I cannot see why we are dealing with this time-wasting bill and why it is being passed.  
In the last few months there have been three main industrial disputes. One has been around rest home workers care assistants nurses cleaners and cooks who between them care for the most vulnerable and frail seniors in our communities. The work is hard. It is demanding both physically and emotionally. At Oceania rest homes across the country some of those workers have been paid as little as $13.61 an hour. That is just 11c above the minimum wage. Today comes the news that the Human Rights Commission is looking at these workers’ pay and saying that they may be discriminated against because they are underpaid and their work is undervalued. Over the last few months these workers members of the Service and Food Workers Union and members of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation have been attempting to negotiate a decent rate of pay and they have had several quite short strikes to shoot home the message. Each time there has been a strike—and it takes a lot to get rest home workers caregivers and nurses to go on strike—those union members have had a vote and each time it has been a secret ballot. 
 When the Ports of Auckland Maritime Union members went on strike when their negotiations over their collective employment agreement broke down over the ports’ unreasonable demands about casualising the workforce they had a vote to decide whether they would take action. Each time that they have elected to strike they have had a vote. Each time it was a secret ballot. By contrast these workers have been locked out several times and they have been locked out illegally as well. They have been through mediation and facilitated bargaining and they have a court case pending regarding some of the employer’s unspeakable tactics to cow the workers into submitting to casualised employment including the threat of losing their jobs altogether by being locked out. At no time was the Ports of Auckland board of directors required by law to first hold a secret ballot when it decided to lock out those workers and when it decided to take its own industrial action against the Maritime Union members.  
Currently we have the New Zealand Meat and Related Trades Workers Union members who work for the Talley’s AFFCO - owned meat processing plants in small towns right across New Zealand who have been in the throes of a particularly nasty dispute with Talley’s since Talley’s locked out 700 of its 2100 staff on 29 February after only 10 hours of negotiations around their employment contracts. The Meat and Related Trades Workers Union has a longstanding core collective employment agreement with AFFCO. Alongside this there are site-based agreements that provide for things like daily production levels work speeds staffing levels pay rates start times and finish times and shift patterns. Core pay rates range from only $13.48 below the minimum wage to $15.76 per hour and on top of that workers are paid a rate based on the numbers of animals killed each day. The work is not secure; it is seasonal—2 to 11 months per year with many short days and short weeks even during the season. Seniority—the “last on first off” principle—is enshrined in the collective employment agreement and helps ensure some kind of job security for the workers who live in these small communities.  
Talley’s behaviour since it took 100 percent ownership of AFFCO has been quite simply appalling. The company has bullied workers into processing more lambs per minute without consulting them. It has chosen not to consult on staffing levels length of the working day wages productivity payments and penal rates and it has taken to re-employing inexperienced workers on individual employment agreements while not re-employing experienced workers who just happen to be union members. Many inexperienced workers end up getting hurt and leaving the industry.  
Like Ports of Auckland Talley’s has actively set about to bust the union. Managers have offered meatworkers a 3 percent pay increase a $1000 attendance allowance better jobs and more training if they leave the union. Workers have been taken aside for one-to-one meetings where they have been told to adapt to new work practices or be replaced. Understandably many workers have felt compelled to accept individual agreements and leave the union as a way of trying to appease the boss. And while this has been going on Talley’s management has undertaken a strategy to lock out some of those members some of the time while expecting other union members to carry on working. This classic divide and rule tactic has unleashed exceptional hardship to over 5000 children of the union members who have been unable to work because they have either been locked out or been on strike to support their colleagues.  
Since the first lockout AFFCO workers have taken five separate 1-day strikes one separate 2-day strike and more recently two 5-day strikes. Striking workers are ineligible for Work and Income support. They are suffering and their families are suffering. Each and every time they have taken strike action there has been a secret ballot. We do not know what if any process or procedure the Talley family went through to make its decision to take its industrial action against these workers. This bill is not even-handed. It does not even address that issue. This bill is not needed. Secret ballots already occur.  
As the Employers and Manufacturers Association stated in its submission to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee: “The Employment Relations Act requires a union to have rules that are democratic (Section 14(1)(c)(ii)). It also states a unions’ role is to promote their members collective employment interests (Section 12(a)).” Modern unions are democratic. They have to be not only because of the Employment Relations Act but also because with voluntary unionism they will lose members or not attract members if they are autocratic or lacking in accountability and transparency. Votes around strike action are at the very heart of that democratic practice. Unions or union officials do not try to impose strike action on union members. This is a decision made by members and it is never made lightly because to take strike action means to lose pay and there are very few workers who can afford to do that.  
Not only is this bill unnecessary but it is also meddlesome. One of the aims of the Employment Relations Act in section 3 is around reducing the need for judicial intervention. Unions are incorporated societies. We believe that this bill intrudes on the functioning of voluntary associations far more than is necessary. It is an undemocratic Act.  
We oppose this bill because it goes against all good international practice. In fact the New Zealand Nurses Organisation in its submission went so far as to say: “By implication this bill contravenes fundamental rights of workers protected under the United Nations International Covenant on Economic Social And Cultural Rights (ICESCR) Articles 6 7 and 8 to which Aotearoa is a signatory.”  
Finally we are concerned that this bill if it becomes law will allow unscrupulous employers—and there are some like Talley’s—to frustrate union members’ industrial action by taking legal challenges. As union members from the Meat and Related Trades Workers Union or the Ports of Auckland can tell you there is quite a delay in getting your case heard in the Employment Court. This bill is anti-union it is anti-worker and above all it is anti-democratic. I urge you to vote against it.