Alliance plan to extend gains to non-unionists

By Vernon Small

deputy political editor

The Alliance would extend union-negotiated gains to non-union workers on site and would ensure non-union members shared the cost of striking a deal.

The plan, part of the party's collective bargaining policy released yesterday, is a potential flashpoint with Labour in a centre-left coalition government.

"The interest of the workforce over time cannot be protected if collective agreements are limited to individuals by virtue of union mem-bership as proposed in Labour's policy," Alliance workplace relations spokeswoman Laila Harre said.

But Labour leader Helen Clark said it was up to the workforce to determine its own interests.

"One can argue [the Alliance plan] is backdoor compulsory unionism really. Now we have never agreed to that," she said.

Some unions were not prepared to go in to bat for non-members and some employers passed on collective contracts to non-union members now without a bargaining fee.

The Alliance would also allow unions to immediately seek a new agreement once law replacing the Employment Contracts Act was in place, irrespective of when an existing contract was due to expire.

Laila Harre said some employers had negotiated contracts lasting up to five years because they realised change was inevitable and wanted to lock workers in.

Labour, which would limit the length of a contract to three years and allow contracts signed since January 1, 1999, to expire on July 1, 2001, said that the measure went too far.

"It is important that there is not an expecta-tion that every agreement that has been entered into can have notice served up to it under a new set of rules immediately," Helen Clark said.

Asked how Labour and Alliance policy could be reconciled in coalition, she said the relative weightings of the parties going into the election showed Labour support was seven or eight times higher than the Alliance.

The CTU's view, which was closer to Labour's policy, would also carry weight, and the Alliance's outline was closer to the Trade Union Federation, which represented only a fraction of the union movement.

Laila Harre said the present industrial relations regime encouraged employers to compete on the price of labour and that had pushed wages down.

She said companies should compete on their products and services, not wages and working conditions.

The Employers Federation chief executive, Steve Marshall, said that Labour and the Alliance were orchestrating a public relations stunt by releasing a policy that was so bad for jobs and growth it would distract New Zealanders from Labour's own "bad industrial relations policy."