Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Work smarter with a Pro licence Learn More

Gordon Campbell | Parliament TV | Parliament Today | News Video | Crime | Employers | Housing | Immigration | Legal | Local Govt. | Maori | Welfare | Unions | Youth | Search

 

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.

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TVNZ 1 and one hour later on TVNZ 1 + 1. Repeated Sunday evening at 11:35pm. Streamed live atwww.tvnz.co.nz

Thanks to the support from NZ On Air.

Q+A is on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/NZQandA#!/NZQandA and on Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/NZQandA

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading

Are you getting our free newsletter?

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.

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.



© Scoop Media

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading
 
 
 
Parliament Headlines | Politics Headlines | Regional Headlines



Gordon Campbell: On Dune 2, And Images Of Islam


Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture tends to be hostile to Islam when we’re sitting in the dark, with popcorn.
Any number of movie examples come to mind, beginning with Rudolf Valentino’s role (over a century ago) as the romantic Arab hero in The Sheik...
More


 
 


Government: One-stop Shop Major Projects On The Fast Track

The Coalition Government’s new one-stop-shop fast track consenting regime for regional and national projects of significance will cut red tape and make it easier for New Zealand to build the infrastructure and major projects needed to get the country moving again... More

ALSO:


Government: GPS 2024: Over $20 Billion To Get Transport Back On Track
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has released the draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport, outlining the Coalition Government’s plan to build and maintain a transport system that enables people to get to where they need to go quickly and safely... More

ALSO:

Government: Humanitarian Support For Gaza & West Bank

Winston Peters has announced NZ is providing a further $5M to respond to the extreme humanitarian need in Gaza and the West Bank. “The impact of the Israel-Hamas conflict on civilians is absolutely appalling," he said... More


Government: New High Court Judge Appointed

Judith Collins has announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister Jason Scott McHerron as a High Court Judge. Justice McHerron graduated from the University of Otago with a BA in English Literature in 1994 and an LLB in 1996... More

 
 
 
 
 
 

LATEST HEADLINES

  • PARLIAMENT
  • POLITICS
  • REGIONAL
 
 

InfoPages News Channels


 
 
 
 

Join Our Free Newsletter

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.