Joyce slams workplace policy
MOOD OF THE BOARDROOM Finance Minister say employers are very concerned
Labour’s industrial relations policy would take New Zealand back to the “bad old days of the 1970s” when a job’s value was decided in Wellington, says Steven Joyce.
The Finance Minister took aim at Labour’s Fair Pay Agreements (FPA) policy during yesterday’s Herald Mood of Boardroom debate, saying employers were “very, very concerned” about it.
FPAs, Labour says, would set “fair, basic employment conditions” including allowances, weekend/night rates and leave entitlements that are agreed to by businesses and workers’ unions.
These would be applied across whole industries as opposed to in- dividual workplaces, according to Labour’s website.
Joyce quizzed his opposition counterpart Grant Robertson on the implications the policy would have for employers.
“Take manufacturers. We now have a very diverse range of manufacturers in New Zealand most of them operating in all very different markets around the world; they’re all in their own niches. It’s not like the old days where they were general engineers for their own townships and so they have very, very different arrangements with all their employees,” Joyce said.
“You and I were in Christchurch recently at the NZMEA [New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association] and the employers there were very, very concerned at the idea that they would have to go to Well- ington and sit down with the CTU [Council of Trade Unions] and the government and hammer out some minimum wage rates for their sector,” he told Robertson. “Is that what you’re talking about?”
Robertson said companies like Air New Zealand and Fonterra were already collaborating with employees to work out fair pay deals.
“If you look at ... labour’s share of the economy it has declined significantly over a number of governments. So we want to do more to see the value of that grow, but it has to be done in a collaborative way,” he said. “This won’t happen across a huge range of industries — we’re probably talking about two or three a year — and so I don’t imagine that in the manufacturing area that that would be a likely place to start this.” Joyce challenged Robertson to tell the room full of business leaders which industries would be first up. “I’m not going to negotiate that in the room now, Steven, for goodness sake,” Robertson said. “It’s all about working cooperatively across sectors. That will be decided by the people in this room and the people that work for them.” Joyce said the policy did not take into account the reality of the environment in which today’s businesses operated. “The idea that you’d pay the same in Gore that you’d pay in Auckland for an engineer is, frankly, crazy and that’s going back to the bad old days of the 1970s where the government decided what was the appropriate pay rate for individuals.”
The policy was met with scepticism by employers and their advocates, but embraced by the Council of Trade Unions.
Mainfreight managing director Don Braid said Labour needed to be really careful with the policy.
“We don’t need to go back to the 70s for labour negotiations and to suggest there might be two or three industries that they want to target in the first three years is somewhat scary. We should leave that to business to get on with their relationships with their people,” he said.
Port of Tauranga chief executive Mark Cairns said the topic had not seen much sunlight and he did not think Robertson answered questions on it well when pressed for details.
“I think productivity is critical for
the port sector, we’ve had enormous productivity improvements since the 70s when we’ve come from an environment where we had workplace bargaining. I’m concerned the ports are in there and they need to be upfront on what’s in and out.”
BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope said Labour needed to provide more clarity on the policy and how it would work.
CTU president Richard Wagstaff, on the other hand, said workers were celebrating the policy and accused Joyce of scaremongering.
He pointed out that the agreement reached earlier this year between the National Government and some 55,000 rest home workers was, itself, an example of an FPA.
“I think Steven Joyce is really desperate to try and invent things and try to scaremonger, I really do,” he said.
“No one’s thinking about an FPA as big as the Terra Nova one again, and that’s what he did, and he said it was a really good thing. So how is it now they’re saying they don’t like their own equal pay settlement?”
The reality in the workplace was that people’s wages were being driven down by “cowboys and bottom feeders”.
“Meanwhile good employers who are trying to build workforces and attract people to work with good conditions are in some conditions being undercut,” Wagstaff said.
Both parties have said they will extend paid parental leave and increase the minimum wage.
National is proposing an extension to 22 weeks, Labour to 26 weeks.
Labour will immediately increase the minimum wage to $16.50, while National will lift it “at a sustainable rate” up from the current rate of $15.75.
Labour has also vowed to abolish 90-day trial periods within the first 100 days of Government and replace them with a new system where disputes over dismissals can be lodged and heard by a referee.