Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill

I seek leave of the Committee to reconsider clause 2 to replace the reference in subclause (1AA) to clause 6A with a reference to clause 4A.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I want to raise a point of order, and it is about the House as a whole—the order of the House. Some time today my Acting Leader of the House approached the Labour Party whip—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! No, that is not a point of order. Whatever has transpired between the whips of the parties and any agreement is between them. Leave was sought, I put the question, leave was declined, and that is the end of the matter.

It was a long time ago, before the last election, that we were debating this Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill, and I was proposing that we have an amendment to the bill that would essentially make the whole bill unnecessary. Clause 5A is about inserting a new clause that just simply says a society—in other words, an incorporated society—have in its rules a requirement that a secret ballot be held of its members, who would become party to the strike before any strike was undertaken. We did discuss this at length at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. It was a proposal put forward by Labour to the member. I believe it meets his objectives, which is to ensure there is a secret ballot held should members of unions want to have a secret ballot. What it would do is get rid of the bureaucracy of the bill and the compliance costs that this bill is going to impose, and also the interference of employers, and interference by the State, actually, on the freedom of association of unions as outlined in ILO conventions.

So I am proposing a solution to this bill that, as I said, would get rid of the requirement to have this bureaucratic nonsense that is being proposed by the member. As I said before Christmas, I understand what the member was trying to achieve. So this is a genuine attempt to meet his needs and to find a solution that is not going to cause trouble.

Earlier today my Acting Leader of the House decided to talk to the whip of the Labour Party to see whether we could—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: Who is the whip?

Well, I do not know. Who knows? The whip said: “Yes, not a problem, we can facilitate what you are asking for.” What we have now got in the House is a situation where we do not know who the whip of the Labour Party is. Is it that man over there or is it the black hand of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions? Is it the dark hand of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions? That is right. That is right—Andrew Little. Who is pulling the strings?

I have got news for the Labour Party. [Interruption] You can hear him chipping away in the House. I was asked today a serious question by one of my colleagues: was there—

💬 Andrew Little: You’ve never been taken seriously in your life, Tau.

Oh yes, we have. Oh yes, we have. Listen to him.

💬 Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. As much as Mr Henare is talking about my favourite topic, which is me, he has not so far actually referred at all to new clause 5A of the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill and, as the member in charge, he might want to perhaps bring himself to that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The member is expressing a view of concern. He has plenty of time in which to get to the bill. I am watching closely the clock and he has a few more minutes to go. I will ask the member to continue.

Thank you very much, Mr Chairperson. I was asked a very, very important question by one of my colleagues today about certain strike action going on down in the Port of Auckland. [Interruption] Here is the question: did the workers have a secret ballot for that strike? I hope they did. Andrew Little knows, because he is one of the Labour Party—

💬 Andrew Little: It’s not like in your day, Tau.

That is good. If they had a secret ballot for that strike, then why does the Labour Party not get in behind this bill and say: “Well, why not have it for every worker in the country?”. Why cannot every worker be allowed to take a secret ballot when there is strike action? Why does the Labour Party not do the decent thing? I know it is hard—I know it is hard for the Labour Party, and at present the young fella who thinks he is the whip—

💬 Simon Bridges: They’re scared of freedom, Tau.

It is; it is about freedom. It is about democracy; it is about freedom. It is not about the black hand of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. It is not about the standover tactics that somebody whom I know has been part of for a very, very long time. This is not about that sort of carry-on.

Welcome to the House. Put your credentials on the table, because this bill, when we get around to it, is going to pass with flying colours. Mark my words: democracy is on its way.

I am happy to take a brief call to set the record straight with regard to the concerns that Mr Henare has raised about this piece of legislation, the Employment Relations (Workers’ Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill. I was indeed approached by the Deputy Leader of the House today to ask whether, in fact, we could reach some accommodation to correct for Mr Henare’s total incompetence in shepherding his own bill through the House. I indicated I would look at it and get back to the Government. I got back to the Government whip and said no, actually, sorry, they were just going to have to wear it.

The fact that Mr Henare was too incompetent to move the amendments that were required to this bill at the appropriate moment is not something that this Opposition is responsible for. In fact, it is something the Government is responsible for, and it is going to have to wear that. Perhaps if Mr Henare had paid a little bit more attention, and given a little bit less bluster when he was producing the earlier stages of this bill, the Government might not be in this predicament.

The amendment being put forward by my colleague Darien Fenton is a very sensible one. What it does is it still ensures that the option of a secret ballot is there if the workers want to have a secret ballot, but it prevents an employer going to court and overturning the decision to hold a strike on the basis that it was not a secret ballot. I think that that would be wrong.

The workers, the people who go on strike, could have very legitimately voted in favour of going on strike, and the employer could have that overturned—they could go to court about it—on the basis that it was not a secret ballot. I think what Darien Fenton is doing is actually giving effect to the intention of what Mr Henare says he wants, which is to give workers the choice of having a secret ballot. This, the amendment being put forward by my colleague Darien Fenton, does that.

Then again, I would not necessarily expect Mr Henare to adopt an amendment that made sense, given the approach that he has taken so far to this bill. He has totally hashed it up, and as a result we are going to have to come back and look at it again, so no doubt we will be able to debate it when we go back to the beginning and look at it all again.

It is a great pleasure to stand here and explain why the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill should not proceed any further. This bill is typical National Party. What it tells us is that the National Party does not trust workers. It has never liked freedom. It has never liked freedom of association. It has never like freedom of choice. The great free-enterprise party, the National Party, hates it when working people think for themselves, exercise their voluntary choice to belong to a union, and challenge management—exercise their own rights, stand up for themselves, and do what anybody in a workplace sometimes does and actually find that management does not know everything. Every now and again workers find that they have to stand up for themselves and challenge what managers want to do. This bill is about trying to undermine the choice of those workers who have exercised their freedom of choice to belong to a union—about trying to prevent them from exercising the fullness of that choice. This National Party does not like workers making their own decisions.

This bill is about seeing unions as different from union members, and seeing union members as something different from their unions.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: What are you reading it for?

But unions are their members, and union members are the union. That is the big difference. It is different from the Clerical Workers Union in 1991; it is different from the days—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member; the time has come for me to report progress.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.55 p.m.