KEY POINTS:
What employer would want someone like Shawn Tan working for them?
The 10th-ranked list candidate for Act would have us believe he is some hapless innocent who has been bullied for his political beliefs. On the surface, it does seem his employer, the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union,
has acted rather clumsily in squashing Tan's political aspirations.
The union gave a rather awkward defence that it is an employment issue as Tan did not comply with its policy. No one in political circles believes if Tan was running for the Labour Party he would face the same problems.
But the union does have a point as its employment agreement makes it clear any employee intending to stand for public office needs permission.
Failure to comply with the requirement results in suspension.
Tan apparently tells anyone who will listen he has a law degree. So I find it strange he would be unaware of the contractual stipulation. When rumours circulated that Tan intended to stand for Act, the union reminded him of its employment policies.
The EPMU is a highly political union with deep roots and formal affiliation to the Labour Party. It was a founding member and regularly puts its union affiliation to a vote of its members. Rex Jones was the Labour Party president in the late 1980s while heading the union.
Union head Andrew Little is a popular fancy to replace Mike Williams as Labour Party president after the election.
Tan would have known this when he sought employment with the union. As a result Act leader Rodney Hide's protestations are clever politically, but morally bankrupt.
It's wrong for Tan to knowingly accept a position in a union affiliated to the Labour Party and then covertly engineer political office in an organisation proud of its anti-union policies.
EPMU members pay their financial dues each week on the basis its leadership and staff do its utmost to work in their union's interests, not for organisations trying to screw them.
I don't believe Tan wasn't asked for his political affiliation when he applied for the EPMU job. Nor would he have told them that he was a budding opportunist for Act. Mind you, the EPMU should have vetted him a little better. Tan was formerly a paid official with another Labour-affiliated union, the Service and Food Workers Union, where he promoted himself as a revolutionary left-winger and was a member of a socialist group. He also spent some time with the Green Party. His reputation among his peer group was of a political opportunist. The EPMU must rue the day it thought it had employed another union hack wanting a cushy job in its call centre, rather than the ambitious careerist he seems.
Surely even the most partisan observer would accept it's clearly a conflict of interest when an employee works for a politically aligned organisation while running for a ticket with an agenda in opposition to the interests of the employer. I can see why Hide has whipped it into a political thunderstorm, given the EPMU has frequently crossed swords with him, but his claim Tan's suspension was racist is appalling.
Every employment contract for white-collar staff has a conflict of interest clause that would have sacked anyone in Tan's position. Public servants, such as schoolteachers, nurses and clerks, are required to step down if they run for public office.
But before I am accused of blindly supporting the union's behaviour, I should outline how what happened to Tan also happened to me 20 years ago in almost identical circumstances. Jim Anderton and others of us broke from Labour and formed the New Labour Party, which later morphed into the Alliance. I was its founding president.
I was subsequently suspended as a union official from what is now the Service and Food Workers Union because it was (and still is) affiliated to the Labour Party.
Anderton wanted to make the issue public in the same way Hide has done, but I would not agree to make my suspension a political stunt. Instead, I put my case to the union's elected executive, comprising ordinary rank and file members. They determined it was a conflict of interest for me to be a paid employee of a union affiliated with Labour while I held office in another party.
I didn't like the decision, but believed they had a right to protect their organisation. I accepted my suspension and never regained employment in the union. But unlike Tan and Act, I didn't try to pretend I was an innocent victim. I accepted I had entered a political situation where I knew I couldn't have it both ways.
The outrage isn't about what the EPMU has done to Tan, although it was hamfisted. It's about the ethics of Act and its newest recruit insisting low-paid workers should pay him while he campaigns to become an MP for an anti-worker party. Workers get screwed enough without this sort of unethical behaviour.