The little girl who cried wolf

OPENING SALVO:

Last week, Labour Minister Simon Bridges announced changes to employment law.

This being the Key government, most were just election promises and all are anodyne.

The most significant are allowing employers to dock pay if faced with go-slows, letting new employees start on employment agreements different from the industry collective, requiring written notification of strikes, and making the Employment Relations Authority announce timeframes for its decisions.  The centrepiece of Labour’s Employment Relations Act – good faith – remains untouched.

It’s incredible that four and a half years into a National-led government, these changes are only now being made.

Mr Bridges’ proposals may encourage some businesses to risk hiring new staff, and so help the 6.9% unemployed put a first foot on the employment ladder, but they are hardly anything to get excited about.  Unless you’re a paid union boss wanting to protect your funding base.

Attack on workers!
Helen Kelly is president of the Council of Trade Unions.

It’s not clear why the media thinks she speaks for the New Zealand workforce given only 17% of employees belong to a union, the other 83% deciding to do without Ms Kelly’s advocacy.

However, according to Ms Kelly, Mr Bridges’ proposals are the worst attack on workers’ rights since the 1990s.

Interestingly, that’s broadly what she wailed in 2010 about the 90-day trial period, saying it stripped away “fundamental” rights and was a “massive attack on the job security of every New Zealand worker”.

Lo and behold, later that year, Ms Kelly screeched that the Hobbit legislation to clarify the status of contractors was yet another attack.

No matter how minor a proposal, Ms Kelly can be relied upon to cry wolf at full volume.

Working-class lad
Ms Kelly’s histrionics create a dilemma for Mr Bridges.

Currently, the new minister is odds-on to become Judith Collins’ deputy after John Key’s likely defeat next year.

Mr Bridges’ working-class backstory beats even Mr Key’s.  Of Ngati Maniapoto descent, Mr Bridges grew up in Te Atatu, his Baptist-preacher father and primary-school mother struggling to feed six young mouths at the height of the Rogernomics restructuring.

From Rutherford High, where he became Head Boy, Mr Bridges reached Oxford University, became a Crown prosecutor, joined the Tauranga National Party and has now made a highly successful entry into Cabinet.

Such a background, while superb with the general public, risks suspicion among some of his colleagues about his true political leanings.

In that sense, the union hysteria about his labour market proposals can only help his prospects with a National caucus increasingly irritated with Mr Key’s policy timidity.

More importantly, despite his Key-like willingness to submit to any photo-op, Mr Bridges’ working-class background makes him a conviction politician, especially on labour law.

He genuinely believes that the freer the labour market, the easier it will be for struggling people from Te Atatu or Te Kuiti to get a job, prove themselves, eventually support themselves and find security and fulfilment.

Freed from the constraint of Mr Key and Steven Joyce’s political strategy, Mr Bridges’ reforms may have been much more bold.

At-will employment
The dilemma is that if Ms Kelly is going to slam Mr Bridges and the government for relatively bland proposals, why not do something meaningful?

Why not legislate to stop employers, including schools, from having to collect union fees and accept union activity on their premises?

Unions could be required to publish transparent accounts, salary bands and membership numbers, and disclose donations – cash and in-kind – to political campaigns.

The Employment Court could be abolished and replaced with the District Court.

The whole concept of employment agreements could be replaced by normal contracts.

Holidays – how many and when – could become a matter of private agreement.

Good faith obligations could be removed.

If Mr Bridges were really bold, he could go further.  Why not adopt the doctrine of at-will employment, where either employer or employee can terminate the relationship at any time, without reason, notice or liability?

It sounds radical, but it is the basic labour law of the United States – the society, which, for all its faults, has delivered higher standards of living for its citizens than any other in the history of the world.

Ms Kelly has cried wolf enough.

Mr Bridges should call her bluff.