“We have had successful work-from-home partial strikes in this campaign. People like it... It’s more of a moral victory than anything else.”
Burnside-Woods said the strike vote was close but more than 70 per cent of eligible workers approved the work-from-home plan.
Areas of dispute between Unite and One NZ included long service leave, working from home, pay rates, pay for weekends and pay for time worked after 6pm.
Today’s votes happened almost one year after Vodafone NZ formally started trading as One NZ.
Burnside-Woods said he was not aware of the company’s staff ever going on strike before.
“A lot of the workers don’t really understand... what the company can do to retaliate, which is not much.”
An estimated 104 members were eligible to vote.
Most of those were call centre workers but a few members had moved into other roles at One NZ, Burnside-Woods said.
The dispute over remote work has been simmering for at least seven weeks.
“The decision was made somewhat unilaterally by the company to make workers come in three days a week instead of two.”
One NZ previously said some staff felt it was difficult to foster team culture, support personal development and build connections when people were working remotely.
But Unite said workers should have more choice, especially in the current economic landscape.
“Ultimately the shift is somewhat minor but people are doing it it pretty hard at the moment,” Burnside-Woods said.
He said some staff had to spend a lot of money on petrol or spend money and time commuting, which in the current cost-of-living crisis could be challenging.
Unite also wanted more pay for evening and weekend work.
“Quite often in the call centre environment you’re working till 9pm, sometimes on the weekend.”
“Penalty rates” for such hours were widespread in Australia, Burnside-Woods said.
He said Unite wanted time-and-a-half for hours worked after 6pm and on weekends.
The union also wanted an extra week of annual leave for workers who had served five years, another after 10 years and another week after 15 years.
Burnside-Woods said those incentives could help reduce attrition rates and reward loyal staff.
He said some One NZ workers were offered just 1.56 per cent in a recent annual pay rise.
He said some others were offered 5 per cent but would still be paid less than the living wage rate of $26 an hour. One NZ disputed that.
The union had an inflatable rat which would feature at an event in Unite’s Morningside office for the call centre workers tomorrow.
One NZ spokesman Matt Flood said One NZ had engaged in good-faith negotiations and offered a fair market salary above market rates when factoring in benefits.
“So we are disappointed they may take this action,” Flood said this afternoon before the vote was finalised.
“Unite’s claim that our offer is below the living wage rate is factually incorrect. We are in fact proposing an entry-level rate for all of our contact centre employees that exceeds living wage by $2 per hour.”
Total union membership was a very small proportion of the telco’s overall workforce and declined since negotiations started, Flood said.
Members were now 3.6 pent of the workforce, he said, down from 4.2 per cent in October.
“We’d also note that within that membership, engagement with the proposed actions that Unite is promoting is very low, with only around 40 per cent of members voting on the most recent proposal put forward,” Flood said
He added: “Given the low engagement in industrial action and the low representation of our overall workforce, we are fully prepared should industrial action take place and are confident customers won’t see an impact.”
John Weekes is online business editor. He has covered court, crime, politics, breaking news and consumer affairs.
