Moroney Sue: Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Moroney Sue: Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to speak on this member’s bill the Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill although I am quite perplexed as to why we are taking up the time of Parliament debating an issue that is already fixed. I think that everyone who has already contributed to the debate has said that unions because they are democratic entities operate in that way anyway. None the less it is good to see a National member standing up for the principles of democracy because that has not been the case lately. Democracy has seemed to take second place to what the Government thinks is right for communities such as Canterbury for example. Democracy has taken a back seat when it comes to the good people of Canterbury and the environmental needs of their area. But moving on from that I thank the member for bringing this matter to our attention. This is about saying that when workers make the very very important decision to go on strike—and it is the course of last resort—when they make the decision to go without their income to not to be able to pay their mortgage to not to be able to be sure that they can put food on the table for their children that very very serious decision should be one where they can ask themselves through a secret ballot whether they really want to take that course of action. 
Today we heard that sadly more and more frequently under this Government workers feel forced to make exactly that decision. It was announced just today that under this Government the number of industrial disputes is at its highest level for 5 years. That is the issue that really does need addressing. Tau Henare can play around with the right of people to cast a secret ballot in order to make this terrible decision but it is a terrible decision and it is one that is happening more and more frequently under this Government. Workers feel forced to cast their vote to go on strike and to go without an income in order to fix up an inequity and unfairness in their workplace. No worker takes that lightly. 
I speak from experience not as far back as the 1980s—although some of it was during the 1980s—but I have more recent experience than that. The era that weighs particularly heavily on my mind—and I hope that one day I will get to bring in a member’s bill that will fix up some of the things that I have been harbouring for 20 years—was my experience as a union organiser during the 1990s for the nurses union. I know that employers stood over union members and forced them to sign pieces of papers saying they resigned from the union. They were then faxed through one after the other to the union office from rest homes. That was so that those rest home owners could ensure that they could take penal rates away from people who worked weekends and nights during the 1990s under a National Government so that they could make more profit out of the care of older people and not pay for the people who had to work those unsociable hours to care for them properly. 
It is important that we continue to discuss industrial relations issues because the rights of workers to get fair pay for the work that they do is fundamental to this country going forward. We have not always done well in that regard in this country. Sadly we are seeing more and more situations in this country where workers are voting to go on strike. It is not because they feel like going without pay not because it is a great lark for them and not because it is a holiday but because something their employer has done under this Government has caused them such grief that they are prepared to stand up and fight for it. They are prepared to put their mortgages at risk and they are prepared to maybe not be able to feed their children because the inequity going on in their workplace under this Government is so serious that they will take that course of action. I say to Mr Henare that that is the real mischief that needs fixing.