Roundtable lists benefits of ECA

The Business Roundtable echoes the nervousness of the authors of bifWorld Famous in New Zealand about interfering with the flexible work practices that helped manufacturers to conquer export markets.

In its submission on the Employment Relations Bill, the Roundtable points out some of the dramatic gains under the doomed Employment Contracts Act.

Among them:

* The unemployment rate plummeted from a peak of 11 per cent in early 1992 (soon after the act was introduced) to 6 per cent now.

* The participation of women, in particular, in the labour force has boomed.

* Average ordinary time wages rates did not decline. They stayed the same in 40 per cent of firms surveyed and rose in 50 per cent.

* The number of industrial disputes collapsed. In the five years before the ECA, an average of 520,000 working days a year were lost because of industrial action. In the five years since, the figure has dropped to 66,000.

* The rate of the chronically unemployed has fallen faster than the overall rate, especially among youth.

* Most of the jobs created in the five years after the ECA were full-time, not part-time.