Battle lines drawn on jobs law review

By PAULA OLIVER

The Government is about to reveal how it plans to "tweak" the Employment Relations Act (ERA) - and employer groups are promising a fight if old issues are resurrected.

The ERA review began in the Department of Labour months ago, and has stretched past its intended finish date.

But a spokeswoman for Labour Minister Margaret Wilson said final issues were now being worked through and announcements were near.

The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) and Business New Zealand have contributed to the review.

The big question for unionists and employers is how far the Government will go in altering the act.

Unions claim the almost three-year-old law has had little effect in terms of promoting collective bargaining, and are lobbying for changes to strengthen it.

Business groups have also put forward suggestions for changes - but the two are poles apart.

Whatever it decides to do, the Government will be keen to avoid a repeat of the drama of 2000 when employers mounted strong opposition to the Employment Relations Bill and business confidence slumped.

That fight ended with some of the bill's most controversial clauses being removed, diluted or sent to working parties for investigation.

Now business groups are worried that unions will push to revisit those clauses.

CTU president Ross Wilson there was clear evidence the ERA was not doing what it was intended to do.

Among the changes he wanted were:

* Protection of the conditions of workers when a business was sold or work contracted out.

* Promotion of, rather than just permission for, collective bargaining.

* More concrete and meaningful good-faith provisions.

* Moves to combat "free-loading" by non-union employees.

Wilson said the Government engaged in a balancing act in 2000, and the balance was still too far in the employer's favour.

"We said at the time that the ERA was a very moderate change, and we've been vindicated in that view.

"It's now acknowledged by everybody. We need to beef it up a bit and that's what we're asking for."

The CTU has cited research issued last week by Victoria University's Industrial Relations Centre as vindication of its view.

The research found that employment law changes since the Employment Contracts Act 1991 had not fundamentally changed the bargaining environment.

Centre director Pat Walsh said that contrary to the fears of some employers before the ERA was introduced, the legislation had presided over a fairly steady environment.

The centre, which holds a database of collective agreements, found that private sector collective bargaining rates were falling.

Overall collective bargaining rates had also appeared to drop, but that result was related to problems with measuring how many non-union employees were affected by a collective agreement.

Public employees were now five times more likely to be collectivised than their private counterparts.

Other research has shown that more than half of trade union members are public employees.

Wilson said the Victoria University research showed that the CTU's proposals for change were not unreasonable.

"They're modest when you compare it to what we could be asking for in terms of legislated compulsory unionism and the sort of systems we used to have."

Wilson said he would be pushing hard to secure the changes.

The prospect of a raft of changes to an act the Government has said it intends simply to "fine-tune" or "tweak" has employers worried.

Business New Zealand executive director Anne Knowles said it was a concern that unions were "dusting off their old wish list" for the review.

One such "wish", ensuring that workers kept their conditions if a business was sold, was one of the clauses dropped in 2000.

Knowles listed changes that employers want:

* Preventing unions having a monopoly over the negotiation of collective agreements.

* A ban on strikes to force employers into multi-employer collective agreements.

* Abolition of the rule requiring staff who join a business that has a collective agreement to be subject to those conditions for 30 days.

* Freedom to replace striking and locked-out workers.

Business Roundtable executive director Roger Kerr said it was important for new owners of a business to be able to make changes, and a law protecting workers' conditions would prevent that.

"It's hugely important these days for business to be able to arrange its operations flexibly through contracting out arrangements in appropriate circumstances.

"It must be one of the options open to firms in order to survive and prosper."

The CTU says workers' conditions are protected during a sale process in many European countries, and that eventually restructuring could take place if there was a surplus of staff.

The prospect of legislation to prevent "free-loading" - non-union workers taking the same conditions as those on a collective agreement - is a hot spot for the Government.

There had been talk of a bargaining fee being charged to non-union workers in that position, but the High Court ruled against a dairy company which made that arrangement with its workers. The case is going to the Court of Appeal.

The CTU hinted there were other ways of tackling the issue, but Wilson was reluctant to say what they were.

He mentioned recent agreements between Government departments and the Public Service Association in which union members got bonus payments. "Free-loading really concerns a lot of people," he said.

"Some employers connive and encourage it by saying, 'Don't bother joining the union because I'll pass on the benefits to you'."

The engineers' union is making free-loading its single biggest issue for the review.

As the Government nears its decision, business groups insist they are ready for a fight - if necessary.

"We have to wait and see what they come up with," Knowles said.

Kerr suspects the review has taken longer than expected because the Government may be "sizing up whether it wants a fight or not".

He said the review needed to be put into the context of wider labour law change, such as the Health and Safety in Employment Act, proposed changes to the Holidays Act, a taskforce looking into pay equity, and ratification of International Labour Organisation conventions.

National Party industrial relations spokesman Roger Sowry said much would depend on whether the business community could muster as much strength as it did last time to stop change.

Asked if he agreed the ERA had not had the effect predicted by many, Sowry said the Government had benefited from a strong economy.

"And the unions have still been on a good behaviour bond with Labour. That's all about behaving well so that things like this current round of change is delivered.

"There's just a steady stream of anti-business legislation that comes through every month. That's enough to keep the unions quiet."