The Employment Relations Act Amendment Bill - what it means for TEU members
LESLEY FRANCEY TEU NATIONAL PRESIDENT
The government has recently tabled changes to employment law that it intends to pass through Parliament in coming months. These changes are serious attacks on collective bargaining - that is the way unions negotiate with employers. The result may lead to lower pay, less safe jobs and poorer employment conditions.
Employers walk away from negotiations
The right to information about your job
The government wants to remove the employer’s duty to conclude a collective agreement. While this sounds like a technical matter, it is vitally important. It greatly weakens collective bargaining, and makes it much easier for employers to reduce pay and conditions that members have previously fought hard to maintain as core conditions in some collective agreements.
Two years ago TEU won a significant employment law case confirming that employees have a right to see and comment on information about why they are being made redundant or dismissed. This legal victory was an important element of natural justice in the workplace. Moreover, it has helped save many tertiary education jobs where employers have tried to make staff redundant and subsequently been challenged by TEU for not sharing information about why they were making people redundant.
The law currently says that it is a breach of good faith (which means the employer could be taken to court) if they refuse to conclude collective bargaining once initiated unless there is “a genuine reason, based on reasonable grounds, not to”. Allowing employers to apply to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) to seek an order to declare that bargaining for a collective agreement has ended has very serious consequences. Members will lose their right to take industrial action (which is only legal during collective bargaining or for health and safety reasons) if the ERA orders that the bargaining is deemed to be over. This will mean that all members’ terms and conditions will be in an individual agreement based on the expired collective agreement. Further, no new bargaining will be able to be initiated for 60 days from this order. This will see new employees placed on individual terms and conditions - possibly different to those in the expired collective agreement. FOR MORE INFORMATION AND FACTSHEETS - UNION.ORG.NZ/WHYCUTOURPAY
The Government now proposes to change the law to prevent workers from accessing this information. The effect will be to shut down the employees’ opportunity to comment on their employer’s proposal to dismiss them.
Tea and meal breaks Under the current law your employer is obliged to give you (at the minimum) a paid 10-minute break for every four hours you work in a stretch plus a 30-minute meal break if you work more than four hours. These provisions protect employees’ health, safety and wellbeing. Working long stretches without a break also contributes to workplace errors and accidents. The Government wants to remove your legal entitlement to breaks of a certain length at a particular time and replace these tea breaks with a general obligation for your employer to “provide [you] with a reasonable opportunity for rest, refreshment, and attending to personal matters.”
The government has a wafer thin majority of one vote as it tries to pass these anti-worker laws through Parliament. We want your support to stop these law changes and to campaign for better laws that give all New Zealanders the opportunity for good, safe, fairly-paid jobs with family friendly conditions.
TEU - THERE’S A PLACE FOR YOU
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The government’s employment policies have failed. We have an economy that is not growing, high unemployment, stagnant wages and salaries and increasing poverty. Unions like TEU have a better vision for New Zealand based on a living wage for all, safe working conditions that allow people to bring up a family, investing in our people’s education, and creating jobs.
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The government has recently tabled changes to employment law that it intends to pass through Parliament in coming months. These changes are serious attacks on collective bargaining - that is the way unions negotiate with employers. The result may lead to lower pay, less safe jobs and poorer employment conditions.
Protecting our lowest paid workers The current law protects workers in sectors that are particularly vulnerable to exploitation: all cleaning and food services plus caretaking, orderly and laundry services in certain sectors such as health, aged care and education. Under the current law, when these services are contracted out the workers have the right to transfer to the new employer with their existing terms and conditions of employment. The new law proposes that incoming employers with less than 20 employees should be exempt from all these requirements. There is a big incentive for employers to form companies with 19 employees since they can undercut other tenderers for contracts by telling the workers: ‘take these lower rates or get another job.’ These employers will have a head-start in a race to the bottom on workers’ pay and workers’ rights. They will be able to employ everyone on 90-day no rights trial periods if they like.
New employees not entitled to collective agreement terms
Lost pay for partial strikes
The government intends to take away the right of new employees to be offered the terms and conditions union members have previously negotiated, as an individual agreement, in their workplace for the first 30 days. That legal right is currently there to protect new employees and give them a chance to find out about what rights they have in terms of pay and conditions and decide on union membership if they wish. Employers could pay new employees less or they could pay new employees a higher rate but remove important conditions from the collective agreement such as leave, overtime rates, allowances, or hours of work provisions. A new employee may face a pay cut if they opt to go on the collective agreement. With fewer people on the collective it makes it harder when the members next enter negotiations.
When union members decide to take part in a partial strike (say for two hours or half a day), work to rule or other industrial action short of full strike, such as withholding marks, employers will be able to tell all union members that they intend to reduce their pay. The notice will not need to specify how much pay they will lose. The salary or wages deducted will be a guess by the employer of “how much time the employee (or employees) would have spent performing the work on the day of the strike.” Or the employer may simply choose to dock the workers’ pay by 10 percent, regardless of how much time is actually lost.
It’s really important that we get lots of submissions from members - and lots of people asking to speak to the Committee. Your submission only needs to br brief - one or two paragraphs saying who you are, where you work and why this Bill matters to you. In particular we encourage you to use real examples from your working life where the changes proposed in this Bill will make things worse. Make a submission at: teu.ac.nz/fairness-at-work
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND FACTSHEETS - UNION.ORG.NZ/WHYCUTOURPAY
TEU - THERE’S A PLACE FOR YOU
Even if you’ve never made a submission before, or don’t feel you know much about parliament, now is the time to get involved. The government needs to hear our voices, and talking to MPs on the select committee dealing with the bill is one of the most important ways we can get some focus on our concerns. It also helps guide our allies in Parliament who are working to stop the law changes going through.
MAKE A SUBMISSION AT TEU.AC.NZ/FAIRNESS-AT-WORK
The Employment Relations Act Amendment Bill - what it means for TEU members
We need to campaign against the bill and tell the government we want fair employment laws.