KEY POINTS:
Something is stirring among the workers. I can't quite put my finger on it yet, but if National does win the next election I don't think it will share the same passive relationship Labour's had with New Zealand's working poor.
I'm sure this has a lot to do
with the fact Labour introduced four weeks' annual leave, effectively abolished youth rates, brought in the Working for Families package, raised the minimum wage by $3 in the last term and generally gave workers more legislative protections.
But it seems although the economy is weakening, workers' expectations are not. Employers have had a great couple of decades in which industrial power has been in their favour. It's been up to the current Government to pass pro-worker policies, largely with the support of the Greens, Maori and New Zealand First parties.
Three separate incidents last Tuesday made me realise that maybe there is some awakening of workers' power. The first was early in the day, when police arrested one of my staff after a call-centre employer called the cops to stop him talking to employees.
Over the past four weeks, he has unionised approximately 600 workers in call centres - which have been de-unionised for a generation. He effectively did this on his own, and tells me about four out of five of these workers - who have little job protection and are paid minimal wages - wanted to join a union and bargain collectively to improve their situation. Whenever employers call the police (which isn't as infrequent as you might think) they are almost used as their private security force to prevent the workforce unionising, even though the law permits unions this right.
The week before, management called police to another call centre where a stand-off between my staff and the police developed. In the past, this would have terrified workers, and any attempt to ask them to join a union would have fallen flat. But after our staff left, workers circulated recruitment forms and sent us a bundle of new membership sign-ups.
Even I am wondering why call-centre workers segregated into cubicles want to fight together for better wages and conditions.
Later on Tuesday I popped into the SkyCity casino, where more than 1000 of our members had earlier voted to take rolling strikes for the rest of the year after their wage negotiations broke down. When I walked up to the site, a line of cleaners were walking out, saying they were on strike. The security guard told me the cashiers on the main gaming floor had walked off the job an hour earlier. Before I left the premises, a large number of dealers had also walked off.
What was extraordinary was that no union officials were on the site at the time. That means no official led the action; workers did it for themselves.
In fact, all last week, hundreds of SkyCity staff walked off their jobs or put work bans in place, such as refusing to clean vomit and excrement in guest rooms or toilets.
This weekend, 1000 SkyCity staff have taken part in a 24-hour strike and management and non-union staff were expected to do double shifts to keep the place open. These workers were prepared to sacrifice a day's pay to send a strong message to their new CEO that his wage offer - that includes new employees starting on the minimum wage of $12-an-hour - is unacceptable.
The third instance occurred later that night when I was working in my office and a number of security guards turned up. They had been in negotiation with their company for the past few months and had had enough. Spontaneously, they radioed each other and decided to strike immediately. Within an hour, a large number of security cars were parked outside our office until their national management turned up to plead with them to go back to work.
I wouldn't normally recommend wildcat strikes, but you can appreciate the effectiveness of any negotiation where alarms are activated across Auckland and no one is turning up to investigate.
With a promise that a deal would be on the table the next day, the security workers went back on the beat. Within minutes of this action being radioed around the security workers' fraternity, security guards from another company informed their employer that they would take similar action if their concerns were not met. The following day, both groups of security staff were made new wage offers.
Some of you may dismiss these incidents as the result of rabble-rousing by union agitators like me. But my point is that these instances were initiatives made by low-paid workers without union officials involved. I see more of this every day and feel - probably for the first time since the 1980s - workers are not prepared to roll over at their employer's whim as they did in the past.
National has released its industrial relations policy that indicates it wishes to roll back workers' rights. My advice to John Key is that he should tread carefully. It may unleash something it may regret.