CTU pushes for return to old awards

By JIM EAGLES

The Council of Trade Unions has put the Government on notice that it wants a return to the old national award system with significant scope for compulsory arbitration.

The message was delivered in the CTU's shopping list for the changes it wanted in the Employment Relations Law Reform Bill.

In his list, CTU president Ross Wilson told the Government he accepted that employment law would not be "fundamentally changed".

But looking to the future, the CTU wanted to see "more fundamental measures such as a return of the award system".

As a step in that direction, his list included a proposal to use compulsory arbitration to establish more multi-employer collective agreements, the nearest equivalent to the old national awards.

"The CTU believes that various forms of arbitration should be promoted to assist in the resolution of collective bargaining," Wilson wrote.

"The specific categories are for greenfields bargaining, multi-employer bargaining and also as a remedy available where it can be established that a breach or breaches of good faith undermined bargaining to an extent that settlement is justified on the basis of arbitration."

In particular, Wilson sought the power to invoke compulsory arbitration on all proposed multi-employer collectives, not only if the parties failed to reach an agreement, but also if some employers wished to stick with their own site agreements.

The bill appears to move only part of the way towards meeting that request with a provision for the Employment Relations Authority to rule in cases of serious bad faith.

But employer groups fear that when interpreted by the courts - especially in light of the bill's broad definition of good faith and powerful presumption in favour of multi-employer collectives - it could lead to compulsory arbitration anyway.

Certainly, the CTU seems to have got almost everything else it asked for. Comparing the submission with the bill - which is far from easy - suggests that of 53 requests, perhaps 40 have been directly picked up and a further four or five indirectly incorporated.

The union wishlist has been made public as a result of an Official Information Act request by the Business Roundtable.

Chief executive Roger Kerr said it had taken four months - much longer than the act's guidelines - to obtain the union submission.

"Now we can see why."

Kerr said the CTU clearly saw the bill as "just another staging post. The ultimate agenda is to engineer a return to the dark ages of national awards, compulsory unionism, compulsory arbitration and pay equity."

The document also made it clear that "the real architect of the bill is Ross Wilson".

Among the CTU requests incorporated in the bill are:

* The definition of good faith is declared to be much broader than the common-law obligations of "mutual trust and confidence" and the bill is thick with examples.

* The bill picks up CTU wording in declaring that good faith "requires parties bargaining for a collective agreement to conclude a collective agreement unless there is a genuine reason not to".

* The bill incorporates a CTU request to include among its aims "to recognise that the promotion of multi-employer collective bargaining is a necessary means of addressing the inequality of bargaining power" and "to enable unions to advance their members' collective employment interests".

* The Government has agreed to ban individual employers from initiating collective negotiations while multi-employer talks are in progress.

* Included in the bill is a CTU proposal broadening the extent of the consultation an employer must have with the union when planning changes to a business.

* The bill takes up a CTU request for the law to be changed to overturn the effect of recent Court of Appeal decisions on the Employment Relations Act.

* Workers may be given extra benefits as a reward for joining a collective.

* Employers are banned from giving an employee on an individual agreement "substantially the same term or condition" as one who is on a collective agreement (which seems to mean unions would have to approve the wording of individual agreements).

* The bill adopts the CTU submission's wording in broadening the definition of the coverage clause in collective agreements.

* The bill clarifies that staff must continue to be paid when having discussions in the workplace with a union representative.

But one or two items on the CTU shopping list were rejected.

The Government has not adopted its suggestion that the duty of good faith be expanded to require an employer to "recognise Te Tiriti o Waitangi; recognise the employment needs of Maori; recognise the employment needs and cultural differences of ethnic or minority groups; recognise the employment requirements of women; recognise the employment requirements of persons with disabilities".

Nor did it put into the bill proposals that would have made it easier to "challenge the registration of a union on the grounds that it was never independent of the employer".

The CTU submission also states that at some point it wants to see "pay equity" - as opposed to equal pay - and "work-life balance" incorporated in industrial legislation but that has not been acted on this time.

* In Forum tomorrow, Business Roundtable researcher Norman LaRocque and CTU economist Peter Conway offer their perspectives on labour law reform.

Timeline

* OCTOBER 2, 2000: Employment Relations Act comes into force, replacing the decade-old Employment Contracts Act.

* DECEMBER 12, 2002: Council of Trade Unions sends the Government its wishlist for further employment law reform.

* DECEMBER 2, 2003: Government tables its Employment Relations Law Reform Bill in Parliament.

* FEBRUARY 27, 2004: Submissions on the bill will close.

* JUNE 10, 2004: Transport and industrial relations select committee will report to Parliament on the bill.