Business has “Cried Wolf" too Often: CTU

Thursday, 4 March 2004, 11:10 am
Press Release: New Zealand Council of Trade Unions

Business has “Cried Wolf" too Often, CTU president tells Industrial Relations Conference

“Business organisations are doing their members and New Zealand a disservice with unjustified scaremongering about the Employment Relations Act amendments,” Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson said today.

“They did the same with the Employment Relations Bill in 2000 and the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill in 2002,” Ross Wilson told the Industrial Relations Conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Auckland.

“They later acknowledged that their hysteria had been unjustified,” he said.

“The amendments are all required to redress the bad faith behaviour of those employers who are still stuck in the Employment Contracts Act mentality of the 1990s,” Ross Wilson told the conference.

“They are the employers who still think that slashing wages and attacking unions is the key to business success.”

Businesses following good employment relations will have no difficulty with the amendments, he said.

“Business organisations have cried wolf once too often for anybody to take seriously their misrepresentation and exaggeration of what are mainly fine-tuning changes to make the Act work.”

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New Zealand Council of Trade Unions

Te Kauae Kaimahi

The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi brings together over 350,000 New Zealand union members in 40 affiliated unions. We are the united voice for working people and their families in New Zealand.

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