* THIS COLUMN
Matt McCarten's column was remarkably similar to a column by John Minto which ran in the Christchurch Press the following day. The columns, about a dispute at Auckland airport over staff breaks, were written after a briefing by Unite director Mike Treen who employs Minto and who reports to McCarten. An urgent family matter meant McCarten was out of town last week so discussed his column by phone with a Unite worker, who eventually penned the column. The worker used Minto column as a base for the work, believing it to be a background briefing on the airport issue. The Herald on Sunday has accepted McCarten's apologies for what he says was an honest mistake and has reiterated the requirement for all columns to be wholly his own work.
KEY POINTS:
A couple of weeks ago one of my colleagues received a call from a member of our union in a distressed state. She had started work at 4.30 that morning but was not given a break until nearly midday. She was exhausted.
With hundreds of others she works at Auckland Airport serving food and drinks. These workers are on their feet all day and are expected to be our country's ambassadors to visitors.
They are required to smile at all times and deliver constant, attentive service. They also have to take the flak for the exorbitant prices charged so that the beneficiaries of the airport monopoly can continue raking in the healthy profits, that they frequently skite about. But it seems business is so brisk there is no time for the workers to have any breaks.
Last week, we had another call from the same site. Another worker was about to be formally disciplined for taking a break without permission and telling another worker to take a break. She had been told to look after a new worker on her first day.
The new worker had been on her feet working flat-out for six-and-a-half hours. The worker couldn't find a manager so she told her new charge to take a break.
When her co-worker returned she then took her break as she had been working non-stop for seven hours. When a manager found out, she was angrily denounced in front of other staff and warned about her breach of the company's policy on breaks.
These two incidents are just the latest in the endless problems over workers being able to take breaks at the airport. We have raised this issue with management so often it's become pointless.
The feedback from workers is that airport management treats the matter as an irritant. We have raised this for a year, but there has been not one memo from management to their frontline supervisors ensuring workers have breaks.
Until last week there was no law that required an employer to give breaks to their workers. Decency and common practices always suggested that all employees do get rest breaks, normally a couple of paid, 10-minute smokos and an unpaid 30- or 60-minute meal break. Unions always negotiate these rights into their collective agreements. Whether workers belong to the union or not they tend to get them.
But you would be shocked how many employers see no obligation to give their workers this basic right.
Even when we negotiated a union contract for the airport workers, which included two paid smoko breaks over an eight-hour day, their employer retaliated by reducing their shifts to 7.5 hours to avoid giving them the second break.
Our union organiser for the site tells me the employer gets great pleasure getting around any obligation to its employees. I wonder how the senior managers at the airport sleep at night.
The employers' official reason is that they can't get enough staff to cover breaks and their turnover is too high. Duh! The airport food staff are paid close to the minimum wage, and have Dickensian-type work conditions. But the employer doesn't care about turnover because there is a steady supply of new workers, courtesy of Work and Income New Zealand, which refers women re-entering the workforce to this site.
The workers are women, mainly Maori, Pacific Islanders or recent migrants to New Zealand. You see them when you go through the airport. If they look tired you now know why.
They probably have another job, as well as raising a family. When the mayor of Auckland, whose council is a major shareholder at the airport, claims he's the people's mayor for those on Struggle St, I assume he means these workers.
They are also Labour's core constituency. So it was refreshing to see an announcement last week from the Government that it will amend the law to guarantee minimum meal and refreshment breaks.
The boss at Business New Zealand, Phil O'Reilly, says employers are in favour of adequate meal and rest breaks. But he says he has never seen any evidence that requires a new law.
It's clear some education is needed. I will contact O'Reilly on Monday and invite him to Auckland Airport to talk to these workers.
If he has a free day we can pop into a luxury burger bar that writes into its employees' contracts that they are required to work eight hours and are not to take breaks.
We also can pop into a restaurant, a cleaning company, a hotel and a retail shop if he has time.
If he has no time, I will take him to lunch in his own break (I'm sure he gets one). I can take him to any food court, where he can talk to any number of workers.
It's an embarrassment to all of us when the Government has to pass a law to force corporations, largely owned by the public, to give their minimum-wage workers a 10-minute break.
It was first won in New Zealand more than 100 years ago. It has taken a century to force some employers to be decent to our poorest people.
