Q+A: CTU President Richard Wagstaff
Q+A: CTU President Richard Wagstaff interviewed by Corin
Dann
Council
of Trade Unions calls for a national standards system for
setting wages.
CTU president Richard Wagstaff told Corin Dann on TVNZ 1’s Q+A programme that, ‘we want something that’s fit for the 21st century.’
‘If you look at countries who do better than us, who pay wages better, who have more competitive industries, more successful economies, they have systems where there are national standards. We need to bring ourselves that way. The trouble is the Contracts Act. The Contracts Act was a disaster. The Employment Relations Act was supposed to promote collective bargaining. It was supposed to address the inherent imbalance between employees and employers.’
CORIN So, what,
for dairy workers there would be a standard pay that you
couldn’t go below?
RICHARD That’s correct.
That’s what we’d be looking to do. We’d identify
occupations, negotiate with employers and set floors around
basic conditions for particular occupations.
Please find the transcript attached and you can watch the full interview here.
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Q + A
Episode
7
RICHARD
WAGSTAFF
Interviewed by Corin
Dann
CORIN Welcome back to Q&A.
Well, unions were celebrating a big pay rise for healthcare
workers this week. Around 55,000 care and support workers
– mainly women – will get pay rises after a four-year
equity pay battle. The government initially fought back
against the claim. It’s now settled with a package worth
around $2 billion over five years. Well, Richard Wagstaff is
the president of the Council of Trade Unions. He joins me
now. Good morning to you,
Richard.
RICHARD Morena.
Good
morning.
CORIN How
significant is this? Will it actually ripple out, do you
think, across the
economy?
RICHARD Well,
I certainly hope so. I mean, it’s been a fantastic week
for us and we’re absolutely delighted, of course. This
hasn’t—This isn’t the beginning or the end of equal
pay. We have a long way to go when it comes to correcting
the imbalance between men’s and women’s pay. This really
was started decades ago. This is a very significant
milestone. We hope to go on from here, but time will tell,
really. There’s certainly some more cases we can see that
need to be
received.
CORIN Let’s
talk about some of those. Social workers is one of them,
isn’t
it?
RICHARD Yeah,
well, what’s happened is while this case was proceeding—
I mean, the first thing is it started with Kristine Bartlett
and the union took a very successful legal case on behalf of
Kristine, and then the unions negotiated with the government
and said, ‘Let’s broaden that out. Let’s bring in
other groups of workers who are very much like aged
residential care workers.’ So we brought in other unions
– the PSA, the NZNO and the CTU – and we brought in
other industries like home support and disability. So we
ended up doing a deal for 55,000 people. Tremendous, of
course, but there are many others in the wings. What
happened—We have social workers. We’ve got clerical
staff in the health sector – PSA are taking cases there.
NZEI are taking cases for teacher aides and support
staff.
CORIN But
Prime Minister Bill English did say there would be a high
hurdle, didn’t he? What did you take from
that?
RICHARD Well,
the government made such a good run of doing this case,
which was really positive and we’re pleased about that,
but there’s a bit of a fly in the ointment. A couple of
days after we made that settlement, they introduced
legislation which doesn’t really follow the existing act
in all regards, the Court of Appeal case or, in fact, the
negotiation process. They’ve actually—We think there’s
a potential to inhibit further equal pay claims and we
really need to work that
through.
CORIN Why
is that? This is about trying to equate one type of work
with another, isn’t it? It’s to try and get a proper
comparison.
RICHARD Yeah.
The essence of the Kristine Bartlett Terranova case was this
idea that women who aren’t being paid properly need to be
able to compare themselves with male-dominated industries,
and what the proposed act is doing – it introduces a new
principle, which is that, in fact, you should compare
yourself with your same industry in the first instance. We
think that that’s really an impediment to getting decent
settlements. We want appropriate comparators. We want
relevant comparators. We want the best comparators. The
point is not actually to agree exactly on who the comparator
is. The point is to have reference points in the bargaining
process, and this whole thing is about bargaining. The
Kristine Bartlett case – the care and support case – was
bargained through. It wasn’t a rigid process; it was a
flexible
process.
CORIN How
many workers would we be talking about with those extra
groups? Because, I mean, it’s costing the government $2
billion for this particular settlement. Could it be looking
at another $2 billion over five years if it brought all the
others
in?
RICHARD Yeah.
Well, I think a better way of putting it is that it’s been
costing those workers $2 billion, and for a very long
time.
CORIN Sure,
but people will want to
know.
RICHARD Yeah,
well, that was a very big chunk. Social workers, education
support workers and teacher aides, clerical staff –
there’s nothing like 55,000 of them. But there are a lot
of other women or female-dominated occupations. Mental
health hasn’t been covered. There’s other workers for
MSD. There’s early childhood workers. Then you move into
the private sector. You know, I know unions like First will
be looking at retail. We can’t fix the equal pay imbalance
if we don’t actually do something, and we need to take it
beyond these 55,000
people.
CORIN Sure.
And if it does go into the private sector, I’m sure one of
the pushbacks will be from businesses that they can’t just
give an extra pay rise without a productivity gain to match
it. They’ve got to find the money from
somewhere.
RICHARD Well,
if only that were so, Corin. If you look at productivity
gains in New Zealand – which we don’t do very well,
really – but in fact, if you look at, say, the mid-80s up
until today, if we’d been sharing productivity gains, by
our reckoning every worker would be about $10,000 better
off. Productivity isn’t being shared. We
need--
CORIN And
why isn’t it being
shared?
RICHARD It’s
not being shared because we have an employment relations
system and wage-setting system that simply doesn’t work,
and we think we need some real amendments to the Employment
Relations Act to ensure that people can join unions when
they want to and ensure that we have proper national
standards.
CORIN All
right. Let’s talk about what those changes are, then, and
I’m sure the Labour Party will be
listening.
RICHARD Yeah,
well, we’ve told them about our ideas and we think we’ve
been well-received. I mean, the fact is that most working
people in New Zealand don’t get to negotiate their pay and
don’t get adjustments to their pay. We know that four out
of five workers aren’t in unions and the majority of them
don’t get an annual adjustment to their pay. Sure, union
members do, but it’s really hard yards, and if you look at
the commercial arrangements we have, they tend to compress
pay rates all the time, and good employers who negotiate
with the unions are at a disadvantage to those employers who
just undercut their
standards.
CORIN So
tell me what that means. What’s the concrete outcome of
that? What’s the change that you
want?
RICHARD Well,
what we’re looking for is a way of setting some national
standards for occupations so that when in commercial
processes and competitive processes, employers don’t
basically drive down the cost of labour. We’re a real
outlier in New Zealand. We are the only country, if not the
only country in the OECD, who doesn’t have a national
standards system where wages are
protected.
CORIN So,
what, for dairy workers there would be a standard pay that
you couldn’t go
below?
RICHARD That’s
correct. That’s what we’d be looking to do. We’d
identify occupations, negotiate with employers and set
floors around basic conditions for particular
occupations.
CORIN What
if it put a dairy company out of
business?
RICHARD Well,
I don’t think it will put a dairy company out of business.
One of the things that’s happening is that employers who
pay decent wages are the ones who are undercut all the time
by the cheapskate employers who try to drive wages
down.
CORIN It
sounds like quite a big change, doesn’t it? Is it a return
to the awards system? Is that what you’re
saying?
RICHARD We
want something that’s fit for the 21st century. If you
look at countries who do better than us, who pay wages
better, who have more competitive industries, more
successful economies, they have systems where there are
national standards. We need to bring ourselves that way. The
trouble is the Contracts Act. The Contracts Act was a
disaster. The Employment Relations Act was supposed to
promote collective bargaining. It was supposed to address
the inherent imbalance between employees and
employers.
CORIN But
there’s nothing stopping people joining unions, is
there?
RICHARD There’s
a lot stopping people joining
unions.
CORIN What?
RICHARD Well,
it’s not—What we find is that one person will
go—It’s their environment. If they go into a workplace
where the employer is welcoming of unions, where other
people are in unions, they’ll join. People are joining
unions by the thousands all the time. The problem is that
very same person with the same attitudes and values will go
into another workplace. They might be on a 90-day trial.
There is no union there. They’re hardly going to put up
their hand and say, ‘Hey, I want to form a union here.’
It’s just not an environment that’s conducive to people
exercising
those--
CORIN So is
that why unions--? Because union membership is very low and
it hasn’t really recovered. We heard Jim Bolger talking
about it this week, saying it was too low. I mean, why
aren’t you attracting more
people?
RICHARD Because
the Employment Relations Act framework doesn’t allow us to
offer our presence in workplaces where there’s no
union.
CORIN So you
would--? That’s another change. You want that changed so
you could be in workplaces promoting your
cause?
RICHARD Absolutely,
and it’s not just our view. It’s not just Jim
Bolger’s, either, which was a bit ironic given the
Contracts Act. But the OECD, the World Bank, the IMF –
they’re saying that we need more collective bargaining. We
need a greater union presence. Not just for wages, Corin. I
mean, we’re talking about a fundamental change in
workplace culture in New Zealand where there is more voice
for working people, where there is more respect, where they
can have a say in the way things are done, and I know
unions. I know working people. They want a positive
relationship at work, and there’s too many people—I
think there’s too many employers with these old-fashioned
attitudes that are from back in the
70s.
CORIN Sure. Have you had any
indication from Labour that they would adopt particularly
this idea of industry-wide pay standards? Because that would
be—I’m sure that would be strongly opposed by business
groups.
RICHARD Well,
it may be opposed by business groups. I think a lot of good
employers who want to pay their staff well would welcome the
fact that they can’t be undercut by employers who can
always undercut them. We have talked to Labour. We’ve
talked to the Greens. We’ve talked to Opposition parties
and we think we’ve had a good reception, and they want a
better deal for working people
too.
CORIN But
we’re seeing a Labour Party that is being pretty cautious.
They’ve signed up to a fiscal responsibility effectively
with the Greens. They won’t blow the budget – nothing
like that. I mean, you’re seeing a pretty cautious Labour
Party. I don’t even think—I spoke to Grant Robertson
about this issue, actually, a couple of weeks ago. I’d be
surprised if he would go that far. Would
he?
RICHARD Well,
we’ll certainly be doing our best to get them over the
line. I mean, on that fiscal responsibility envelope, you
heard us come out about that. We think the problems facing
New Zealand – the housing problems—You know, I think
we’re about $2 billion short on the health budget this
year. The R&D shortages, the issues around Corrections and
so on, the environment – those things can’t just be
magicked out of a policy statement. We need real money. We
need real resources, and the current policy of the
government of a low tax, low wage economy isn’t going to
do that. It’s not going to fix those problems. We need a
fundamental
shift.
CORIN Is
there anything you can do besides changing the act to get
union membership back up? I mean, attracting younger people.
It just seems odd that you haven’t been able to push them
back up, and I’m wondering, maybe it’s because people
don’t want to be in
unions.
RICHARD Well, as I said, in fact,
when we look at workplaces where there are unions, people
will join, and in fact, young people will join. Where
there’s a union presence, the demographic isn’t that
it’s just old people in the union. Young people will join
a union if there’s a union there, but for too many people,
they turn up in a workplace and there is no union there. The
employer is hostile to a union being there or if not hostile
there just isn’t really a presence, and so they can’t
really engage in a union and take up the issues. We think
that our values are very positive and when we are enabled
– if we remove the barriers of the Employment Relations
Act to get out there and do our job – just like those care
and support workers. I think we’re riding pretty high and
people want to see a stronger union
presence.
CORIN All
right. Richard Wagstaff, thank you very much for your time
from CTU.
RICHARD
Thanks.
CORIN Back
to you,
Greg.