KEY POINTS:
I have just come from a lively workplace policy forum in Wellington hosted by the Council of Trade Unions and there are no prizes for guessing which party charmed the audience and which got a hard time.
Green MP Sue Bradford got the warmest reception for both her party's record in getting work-friendly private member's bills passed (flexible working hours, abolishing youth pay for 16 and 17 year olds) and for its other policy.
Trevor Mallard, the Labour Minister, foreshadowed new policy - statutory minimum redundancy protection for employees. More parochially, he got stuck into the "dogs" at NZ Bus who had removed a subsidy for the 60-plus group of passengers since the free off-peak transport for over 65s was introduced.
It's safe to say that David Garrett from Act got the worst reception and he got pretty upset when EPMU official and Labour Party official Paul Tolich heckled him from the front row, calling him a "redneck".
Garrett who is the legal adviser to the Sensible Sentencing Trust and No 5 on Act's list said he spent 11 years in grubby overalls working on the Maui gas line and the methanol plant in Taranaki and was a union delegate.
He explained that Act wasn't actually opposed to unions so long as they operated along market lines ie. EPMU was the biggest union because it offered the best value to its members. But he did not support any minimum wage nor basically any statutory enforcement of workplace rights. Leave it all to negotiations and contracts was his message.
Garrett also said he found the term "redneck" as offensive as Maori or Blacks found the the "N" word a few years ago.
Kate Wilkinson from National got a hard time for National's policy to allow employees to sell the fourth weeks extra holiday gained under the fifth Labour Government - an Alliance-Progressive initiative.
There was a general "yeah, right" reaction to Wilkinson's assurances that it would be able to be initiated only by the employee.
But I was quite surprised at how moderately she presented herself and I lost count of the number of times she referred to "good faith", the concept that underpins the Employment Relations Act.
She avoided most of Mallard's baiting on cuts to Kiwisaver scheme excepting for one classic line: "One billion dollars [out of it] is hardly gutting it!" she said.
Josie Pagani for the Progressives was quite a hit. She used to be Matt Robson's press secretary and until recently has been working a couple of years with the OECD in Paris, France, where they have a 35 hour working week.
"We don't have a tax problem," she said. "We have a wage problem."
New Zealand First deputy leader Peter Brown went down exceptionally well, because the party now has come credentials in workplace policy. It has supported the minimum wage increases every year and wants it raised from $12 to $15. Brown was also able to claim the initiative for a bill before Parliament that gives great protection to casual workers.
The Maori Party's Derek Fox was a late ring-in for Hone Harawira and acquitted himself well. He challenged the CTU to do more to help close the wage gap for Maori workers. In the Ikaroa-Rawhiti electorate where he is standing, the mean average income was $15,000 less than the rest of the country's.
The most intriguing line came from United Future's Robin Gunston who said his party would not be prepared to see any aspect of Kiwisaver compromised.
I am just about to call his leader Peter Dunne to see if that is true.
