NZ workers’ rights eroding, ILO conference told

Workers’ rights are being eroded in New Zealand, against the international trend for governments to protect jobs in the wake of the global financial crisis, the 99th International Labour Organization (ILO) conference in Geneva has been told by Andrew Little, EPMU national secretary.

“In 2008 we saw law changes that eroded some protections from unfair dismissal. Now, the government is considering a proposal to erode the protections against unfair dismissal even further,” he told government, employer and workers’ representatives in his speech to the annual conference today.

“It is also considering undermining collective bargaining by permitting non-union groups to undertake collective bargaining to create collective agreements, even where there are existing collective agreements for unionised workers,” he says.

“The last time New Zealand’s employment legislation permitted this, which was during the 1990s, it led to some employers promoting and encouraging collective agreements with inferior wages and conditions to non-union workers who had no access to independent advice or advocacy,” he says.

“As a consequence, to this day, the most commonly cited problems with the New Zealand labour market remain its low wage levels and growing income inequality, especially when compared with other nearby developed nations.”

“Finally, there is an even more insidious development that is causing the total elimination of any employment rights for a growing number of workers. Increasingly, the use of corporate legal structures and outsourcing is being used to turn workers, who have the full range of internationally-recognised rights and protections, into independent contractors with none of the ILO-based rights and protections we celebrate here each year.”

“As an example, last year nearly 1000 New Zealand telecommunication technicians, a significant proportion of those in the industry and many of whom had worked for 20 years or more in their trade, were told that the telephone company which engaged their contractors was changing to a new contractor which would employ these workers on the independent contractor basis only.”

“These highly skilled workers were suddenly told they had to purchase their own equipment and “bid” each day for their work. When the new arrangements were implemented these workers lost all their longstanding entitlements and since then their incomes have fallen. For many today, their employment is no longer viable and they are leaving the industry.”

Each of the 183 ILO member States is represented by a delegation consisting of two government delegates, an employer delegate, a worker delegate, and their respective advisers. Andrew Little is attending as a member of the New Zealand delegation.

ENDS

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