Cabinet should come clean now on employment law decision

The Government should come clean now on its plans for the Employment Relations Bill following Cabinet’s discussions on the legislation today, Opposition Employment spokesperson Bob Simcock said.

“Businesses, employers and workers are facing huge uncertainty over the law change. They have a right to know exactly what the Government is changing.

“What we know so far is that the Employment Relations Bill will fundamentally change the relationship between employers and employees throughout New Zealand.

“If this Bill follows stated Labour Party policy it will put tremendous power in the hands of union officials, torun businesses into the ground as they did in the past.

“Employers and employees should be able to negotiate their relationship as they see fit, enterprise by enterprise,” said Mr Simcock. “If they choose to involve a union in those negotiations that’s fine, but this Government is about to remove their right to do that.

“Labour’s repeated claim that its Bill will allow individual contracts and retain voluntary union membership is disingenuous in the extreme.

“So far what Labour has presented as a balancing of employer-employee power relationships is in fact a power grab by unions. Under the Government’s policies unions will once more have the power to decide which businesses survive and which employees keep their jobs.

“This approach failed us terribly in the past and it will do so again in the future.”

ENDS

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