Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill

This is a very narrow debate.

Clause 4 is about the purpose of the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill. I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I just seek your advice on that. You said it was a narrow debate. Can I get an explanation about why it is a narrow debate, given that it is about the purpose?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Well, just look at it: it requires unions to hold a secret ballot of its members. You cannot talk about things other than what clause 4 says.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for that explanation. Let us talk about the purpose of the bill. I am happy to do that. The purpose of the bill is to require unions to hold a secret ballot of their members to approve a strike before undertaking any strike action. I want to understand why this purpose clause is necessary. What is the mischief that we are trying to cure? We heard from various parties in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that there was no mischief to cure, and that the bill crushes a gnat with an anvil. There is no problem.

The purpose clause apparently prevents union members from pressuring other union members into striking. Tau Henare said it came from his time as a union organiser in the 1980s. I do not want to keep repeating our allegations about his time in the 1980s, but he said he stood in front of workers before a “show of hands” vote with a presence that would have made them think twice about voting “no”. I say again that that was the 1980s. But is that really—

💬 Lynne Pillay: That was Tau Henare.

That was Tau Henare too. Is that really a problem in 21st century New Zealand? Is it really a problem in 21st century New Zealand unions? The member in the chair, the Hon Tau Henare, talked about a miner’s wife. There was a press release from a miner’s wife. An anecdotal report, as I understand it, behind the purpose of this bill was that a West Coast miner’s wife was blasting the union because it failed to hold a secret ballot. But I also understand that the union involved was the Amalgamated Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union. As a matter of interest, that is the union that represents the miners in mines like Pike River. Dreadful consequences have gone on there. If only there been a strike over health and safety in Pike River, we may not, perhaps, have had to have an amendment to the Act in which the member is saying that unions should hold a secret ballot for strikes.

I say on that point, though—if I may while we are talking about this—that I am pleased that during the select committee process the member did listen to the submissions where people talked about the restrictions the purpose would place on secret ballots for health and safety, and what a concern that was. I am pleased that he has taken that on board and that that has been included in the bill. The select committee said that that amendment was good.

But even if under this bill there had been no secret ballot, the member, under the purpose of this bill, would have had a valid complaint against the union. The union has it in its rules. Its rules, as do the rules of many unions, already require there to be a secret ballot. For example, the rules of my own union, the Service and Food Workers Union, say that any member can call for a secret ballot on anything—not just strike action but any action at all, whether it is election of officers, expenditure, or anything else—provided 10 percent of the members sign a petition. Many rules already cover what the purpose of this bill, which is in clause 4, purports to do, so there is no need to have this legislation. There is no need. No union organiser that I know in this day and age would attempt to organise a strike without a secret ballot.

I think clause 4 assumes that workers are really stupid and that they do not have a mind of their own. When workers go on strike we are talking about people walking off the job and forfeiting their salary or their wages for the day. That is a big call that they make. I think it is actually quite insulting to say in the 21st century that workers are so stupid and so pathetic that they cannot even stand up for themselves. We hear that from National members all the time, do we not? Is that not what we hear from the Minister of Labour? We hear that the Labour market is very flexible, that people know their rights, and so on. With clause 4, the purpose clause, this bill is imposing a 1980s solution in the 21st century.

We heard an interesting thing in the select committee, and I know it from my own experience. The only accusations that I can recall are of union organisers attempting to dissuade workers from going on strike. It is very ironical that it is one of the accusations that we hear. One of the things I think the member in the chair does not understand is how much things have changed. Unions in workplaces bring a kind of discipline that we did not see in the Hon Tau Henare’s time in the 1980s. It is different. Far from the situation where a union organiser goes out and says: “We should all go on strike. Pull the pin and let’s go.”, we often see union organisers meeting with the members and trying to work through the offer in a reasonable way, because it is mostly about collective bargaining. The biggest problem unions have is trying to persuade the odd disaffected member who wants to take a more militant approach.

Currently the Employment Relations Act does not require unions to hold secret ballots before striking, but this is the usual practice in most unions. As we heard in the select committee, most unions already have that practice in their rules. Requiring unions to hold a secret ballot vote is not unusual, but there are some practical difficulties with it. I think the biggest objection to the purpose clause is the imposition of a requirement of unions to hold secret ballots, when unions are democratic organisations. They have rules that are bound by the Employment Relations Act, and they have to demonstrate through the Employment Relations Act that those rules are democratic. They have a whole range of things.

The purpose of this bill would have been easily amended, easily fixed, and perhaps would have met the objectives of the member in the chair if we had simply said that every union must have rules for determining the process when there is going to be a strike or industrial action. A strike under the Employment Relations Act is much more than just stopping or withdrawing labour; it is often going slow or a whole range of things. There are a whole lot of different ways of taking strike action under the Employment Relations Act.

The other part about this purpose, of course, is that it picks on one side of the employment relationship; it completely ignores the other side of the employment relationship. The other part of the Employment Relations Act is that employers can lock out workers. They can make a decision to take industrial action. They can take industrial action and lock out workers. In fact, I have been involved in some of those lockouts. They are pretty vicious. But there is no corresponding duty under the purpose of this bill to require either employers or shareholders to ballot their members about imposing lockout action.

That is one of the amendments I am proposing. It seems fair enough to me. If we have to live with this, why should it not be an equal duty? Why should there not be a balanced approach to the purpose of this bill? If unions are required to hold secret ballots, shareholders should be required to hold secret ballots if they are proposing to lock out their workers. The consequences of a lockout are just as devastating as the consequences of a strike. As I said, unions take this very, very seriously. There have been some pretty vicious lockouts in recent times. There is no requirement on employers to take the views of their shareholders and investors into consideration. I think that is wrong, and I would like to see the purpose of this bill changed. If we are going to require secret ballots of workers, why not require secret ballots of shareholders to approve a lockout? It is a corresponding action.

We are talking about fairness and balance. I know that the Government likes to talk about balanced employment relationships. Let us do the right thing by changing this purpose clause. Thank you.

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.

I will probably repeat some of what has been said by other members, in the hope that the member in the chair, Tau Henare, will get it. As others have said, the purpose of requiring unions to hold a secret ballot when membership of the union is voluntary is in itself absolutely bizarre. As my colleague Carol Beaumont has said, if members do not like the outcome, then quite frankly they do not need to belong to the union. I think the member in the chair is going back, back, back in time to when union membership was compulsory. I would like him to take a call and explain to the Committee whether membership was compulsory or voluntary when he was a union official. He seems to have no comprehension at all about the secret ballot process.

If people do not feel compelled to take a strike vote, then they do not need to be members of the union. But, frankly, if they do not approve of the process, then they have the option of not withdrawing their labour. The very point of having a strike vote is that the members have to have faith in the democratic process, they have to have that sense of unity, and they have to think: “We are taking this step, which we treat very seriously, because we are withdrawing our labour and we are therefore not getting paid for the day.” Before they do that, they give it very careful consideration. If they do take that strike vote, then they need to know that it is transparent and that they are supported by their fellow union members. The whole point about this Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill is that it contradicts itself in so many ways.

I think the member did indicate that he would take a call, and if that is the case—yes, I see a little smile, as though he is going to get to his feet next—he can enlighten the Committee on the points that have been raised. I think that is the respectful thing to do for members who are genuinely perplexed about what this bill intends to do.

As Carol Beaumont and Darien Fenton have said, if there is this Draconian approach—this is what the union has to do—then how will that be enforced? What will not be acceptable is some naughty employer saying: “Look, I want to sit in on your union meeting, because I want to make sure that those members there are having a secret ballot.” I am not saying that this is every employer by any stretch of the imagination, but I tell this Committee that if there is any intimidation or stand-over tactics, it is when bad employers, not good employers, try to interfere with the democratic process of unions.

I am worried, and I would like the member, when he addresses all the other issues that have been raised, to explain how this will be enforced. Who will police it? Who will make sure it is policed? There will be employers out there who think: “I had better go in and, in the interests of those workers, just make sure that it is a secret ballot.” If that member thinks it is not intimidating to have an employer sitting there when employees are discussing the terms and conditions in their collective agreement, then he is quite clearly dreaming.

I am looking at the submission from the Council of Trade Unions, and I compliment it on its very measured submission. Like us, the Council of Trade Unions does not fundamentally oppose the principle of a secret ballot. In fact, it supports it. But what it is saying is that on balance, if that is the case, then before the employer makes decisions like locking out workers, there should be a secret ballot. As Darien Fenton said, it seems a very, very unbalanced and unfair principle, which is exactly what I said before.

I first came across the Hon Tau Henare in the late 1980s when he was an organiser with the Clerical Workers Union and I was an organiser with the Service and Food Workers Union. We jointly addressed—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: He’s come a lot further than you.

Does Mr Smith really think so? We jointly addressed a new group of union members at a rather flash Auckland hotel. I remember Mr Henare at the hotel, persuading these new workers of the benefits of the Clerical Workers Union and what a great redundancy agreement they would be entitled to if they joined the union. It strikes me as very unlikely that the Clerical Workers Union in the 1980s would have been the kind of union that bullied and bludgeoned its members into taking strike action. I invite the member to take a call, draw on his personal experiences in the 1980s, and tell us how the Clerical Workers Union bullied and bludgeoned its members into taking strike action. I find that very unlikely. But I am happy to be persuaded. I am happy to be contradicted on that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I just remind the member that we are actually in the 21st century, not the last century, so I ask him to focus on clause 4.

Thank you. We are discussing the purpose of the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill, which is to require unions to hold a secret vote of their members to approve a strike before undertaking any strike action. My point is—I do have one, and it echoes comments that my colleagues have already made—that this bill is essentially a solution looking for a problem. It is a throwback. Looking at the purpose of the bill, it is clear that it is a throwback to a bygone era, a previous century, as you, Mr Chairperson, said yourself. I think that the political mentality of the member who brought this bill to the House reflects a view of industrial relations that was shaped in the Māngere Bridge dispute and in the BNZ dispute. It is from a bygone age. It no longer exists. The challenges of the 1970s and 1980s are no longer the challenges that face New Zealand workers and that face New Zealand firms and workplaces.

The bill requires unions to hold a secret ballot of their members to approve a strike, and I am completely baffled as to why the member thinks this is enough of a priority to bring a bill to this House, and to waste the time of this Parliament, the Parliament of New Zealand. Really, it is axe grinding on a huge scale. The member is basically trying to make an ideological point about industrial relations in this country. But no one—and, I suspect, not even the members on his side of the Chamber—has any particular enthusiasm or affection for this cause.

It reflects a one-sided and old-fashioned view of industrial relations that we should have left behind a long time ago in this country. It plays to some kind of cartoon stereotype of unions and employers in this country that no longer has any basis in reality. But it does tap into a deep anti-union sentiment that runs through some employers in this country. Some parts of the National Party and the right of politics in this country have made it their mission over the last 20 years to drive unions out of the economy and drive them out of New Zealand society. It is all there in the purpose clause.

The bill is completely oblivious to the real challenges facing New Zealand today. The real challenges are how we raise the productivity of our firms, how we increase the skill level of our workers, how we involve workers and tap into their creativity and ideas to actually improve the productivity and the innovation in New Zealand workplaces, and how we tackle the appalling levels of health and safety. These are the challenges that bedevil New Zealand firms, but this bill—

I move, That the question be now put.

I withdraw my amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 195 to insert clause 6A and table in its place my typescript amendment to insert new clause 4A.

New clause 4A When society entitled to be registered as union

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Tau Henare be agreed to:

to insert the following new clause:

4A When society entitled to be registered as union

Section 14(1) is amended by inserting the following after paragraph (c):

“(ca) the society’s rules contain a provision relating to the process for holding a secret ballot for the purposes of the Act; and”.