By AUDREY YOUNG political reporter
All an employer need do to circumvent the law giving greater workplace access to unions is take a mattress to work and call it a dwelling-house, says Act leader Richard Prebble.
The Employment Relations Bill gives unions access to workplaces whether or not the employees are members, which the Opposition objects to. But a "workplace" cannot include a "dwelling-house."
In order to make a workplace a dwelling-house and forbid union access, an employer just had to furnish a mattress and pillow, Mr Prebble suggested.
And National argued during Parliament's detailed debate on the bill that the same clause could lead to a proliferation of sweatshops.
National MP Gerry Brownlee said sweatshops tend to be set up in dwelling-houses.
In order to avoid unions entering workplaces, more businesses could be set up in dwelling-houses, creating more sweatshops.
National MP Max Bradford and Labour MP Graham Kelly were ejected temporarily from the House by Deputy Speaker Geoff Braybrooke for overzealous interjections.
The Opposition is being frustrated in the debate by a limited participation of Government speakers - a common ploy in long debates no matter which party is in power.
National MPs demanded greater input from Labour Minister Margaret Wilson, who spoke at the beginning of the debate on union access but who failed to respond to points raised later.
The bill gives unions the sole right to negotiate collective agreements and a union must have at least 15 members - up from two in the draft bill at the behest of the Greens.
National MP Lindsay Tisch said that meant he could not bargain with his six employees in two businesses as a collective unless they joined a union.
Margaret Wilson has said there is nothing to prevent workers from negotiating their individual contracts together.
National's Simon Upton condemned the bill for what he said was a legal nullity in terms of the union deregistration clause.
The effect of the bill was that a union could be deregistered not for its actions, but if its rules were in breach of the legislation, he said.
"It's like the Soviet constitution. It's the sort of clause you have when you never intend anything to be brought into effect."
Nick Smith said the clause allowing two paid stopwork meetings a year for union members would cost employers $100 million annually. "It's a very expensive exercise in political correctness."
Mr Prebble lost an amendment seeking to prohibit unions from supporting political parties, and National's Brian Neeson lamented that "the [union] monster is back."
Colleague Lockwood Smith, who has just returned from attending the Republican convention in the United States, said he encountered a honeymooning couple at Dulles Airport, Washington DC, who had had six flights cancelled that day because of industrial action by United Airlines staff.
But Mr Kelly said the Opposition was continuing the scaremongering evident in the select committee stage.
Margaret Wilson defended the role of unions in a democracy.
"I want to stress the contribution the union movement has made to this country, not only to the working conditions and the rights of individual working people but also to the social fabric of this country.
"A union is a group of people coming together to further and protect their working interest. Why would you want to oppose that unless you wanted your interest to dominate always?"
Sleep on the job to thwart union access says Prebble
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