Matt McCarten: Labour keeping close watch on Wilkinson

Trade unionists were surprised when John Key appointed little-known Kate Wilkinson as Minister of Labour. Apparently she was surprised, but it's well known that Key rates her highly.

I've met Wilkinson a few times and she seems very pleasant and comes across as a moderate. I assumed her appointment meant the Government had no agenda to deliberately deal to workers - at least not in the short term. However, a couple of worrying mishaps in the last few days are starting to make me uneasy about Wilkinson.

The first matter is frankly bizarre. Last week Wilkinson's ministerial executive assistant phoned the National Distribution Union leaving a recorded message saying the minister was cancelling a meeting with their executive because the EPMU, another union, had taken strike action the previous day. The message said that the minister had consulted her advisers and they believed it was too risky for her to come. Huh? On this sort of logic the finance minister wouldn't meet with a corporate board because another business was having a dispute with its workers or suppliers.

When Parliament was told it was a simple matter of a clash of appointments, the union released the recorded message. Wilkinson then responded saying her staffer was mistaken and it was just an error of double-booking. Hmm. The staffer concerned has been in senior parliamentary roles for years and insiders say she wouldn't make such a mistake. The fact Wilkinson wouldn't say what her other appointment was is revealing. Labour believes it can prove Wilkinson lied to Parliament over the incident. If so, she's a goner.

But her behaviour over the next issue is even more worrying. As far as I can see Wilkinson, like previous National Party ministers, doesn't intervene in disputes when workers are getting screwed - but she can't wait to jump in when bosses can't get their way.

Therefore it was no surprise she took the side of airport bosses claiming the Airline Pilots' Association was being unfairly intransigent in applying the law over meal and rest breaks for air controllers at regional airports.

Wilkinson has used the dispute to claim the law guaranteeing workers rest breaks will have to be weakened because controllers were insisting on their legal right for smoko break even if planes were waiting in the air to land. If that was the case all of us would agree with her. But it's not.

The controllers had already offered to not take breaks during any period a plane was scheduled to arrive or leave. When they did have a break they proposed to carry a device so they could return immediately if there was an emergency or a plane unexpectedly arrived. But the air controllers' union contract had always stated that in any emergency all hands are on deck. These guys are professionals, for goodness sake.

Wilkinson's agenda to use this so-called dispute to take rest breaks off other workers soon ended in farce when it was revealed that the dispute over rest breaks wasn't caused by the workers or even their own managers in the first place.

The problem was actually caused by the Government's own Civilian Aviation Authority which had issued a directive that all air controllers must take their breaks at the same time nationwide. It could have been avoided if she'd told the idiot at CAA to pull their head in.

So Wilkinson clearly hasn't given the air controllers' problem a cursory glance before she tried to use it as an excuse to change the law on breaks.

These two matters expose Wilkinson either as someone who doesn't know what she is doing, or as an ideologue pushing an anti-worker agenda. Whatever it is, Key will need to keep on eye on her because Labour certainly will.