Labour reform bill bears scars

Press, 19 December 1986, Page 4

Labour reform bill bears scars

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Wellington The Government’s Labour Relations Bill was introduced in Parliament last evening, wearing the scars of a rough passage through the caucus. An important contestability provision has been deleted in the effort to find a formula on which both sides of the dispute could at least call a temporary truce.

The provision would have provided workers with an opportunity to leave their existing unions to set up a new one provided they could meet the requirements of the 1000 minimum membership rule. But the proposal became a victim of significant opposition within Government ranks and of intensive lobbying by the unions.

Their concern was that employers might have used it to coerce workers into setting up “sweetheart unions” vulnerable to employer manipulation.

For the Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas, it must have been a difficult concession to make as he is known to favour a shift towards enterprise bargaining and one-union sites.

Mr Douglas was apparently swung round by the

need to get the legislation in the House before Christmas so that it could be passed in time for the next wage round.

It seems this will now be possible, as the bill is to come into force on June 1, 1987.

Still, in accepting the compromise, the Government has put employers seeking radical reform even further off-side. Nor has it necessarily bought peace with the unions or their allies in the Labour Party, as they are opposed to any steps that would have unions competing against each other for members. Provision for this has been retained. The bill provides that a union may seek to extend its coverage to include workers covered by another union, and sets out the procedures to be followed.

Essentially, they require first that the workers concerned are an identifiable group and, second, that the Registrar of Unions approves the move.

The union must then ballot its members on whether they wish to extend membership, after which the registrar will ballot those workers who would transfer.

Possibly the most dramatic change is in the

imposition of a 1000 minimum membership rule — a requirement that w’ould wipe out almost two-thirds of New Zealand’s 233 unions, although they will not be required to meet the limit immediately, being given a period of grace in which to either recruit new members or amalgamate with another union.

National awards will be retained but workers covered by registered secondary agreements will be dislodged from coverage. Registration of second-tier deals is now the exception to the norm but will probably become more common under employer pressure. Other significant changes are:

© The parties will bear the costs of wage negotiations and take responsibility for the enforcement of documents, a task that will be assisted by guaranteeing unions the right to inspect wages and time records. © The insertion of an unqualified preference clause into awards will be subject to union-employer negotiation with the proviso that, if they cannot agree, the matter be decided by a ballot of workers.

The difference between this and existing rules is

that the decision is taken on an award rather than union basis, with the result that a single union could contain some voluntary membership and some compulsory. Measures to make unions more internally democratic include:

O A requirement that all officials with the power to vote on union business put themselves up for election at least every five years. © Anyone may stand for office.

® Secret ballots are required before anv changes are made to union rules.

Other provisions are:

® The opening of union membership to the unemployed and to outworkers.

© The removal of legal restrictions on union activity so that they are subject to the same freedoms and constraints as apply to companies. ® The scrapping of the Minister’s power to deregister unions, although he retains the power to cancel awards.

© The enlarging of personal grievance procedures to include sexual harassment and discrimination.

In the structural area, the Arbitration Court will be replaced by an Arbitration Commission and a Labour Court.