Unrest breeds uncertainty

The whole country benefits when our businesses have the confidence to grow, employ more staff and boost wages. Businesses are right to be worried right now about Labour’s plans to wind back the clock on industrial relations, straining workplace relationships, strengthening the unions and pitting employers against employees.

These planned reforms will mean fewer jobs for New Zealanders and less competitive businesses, and it’s no wonder businesses recently took out a fullpage newspaper ad to voice their concerns, and encouraged others to do the same.

Already, in only nine months under this government, we’ve seen thousands of workers across New Zealand go on strike or announce their intentions to.

The unions are clearly feeling much bolder by having their mates in government, and the increase in strike action should come as a serious worry to New Zealanders.

Escalating strike action will make it tougher to do business and harder for Kiwis to access the critical public services they need. Our economy will slow, and that’s going to have an impact on New Zealanders’ quality of life.

All this will only worsen when Labour passes its changes to employment law.

Ending the starting-out wage, removing 90-day trials for businesses with more than 20 staff, consecutive unsustainable leaps in the minimum wage, reducing flexibility and 1970s-style standardised wages bargaining will all mean increased risks and costs for small and mediumsized businesses. And its these enterprises that are the backbone of this region’s business economy. They need the confidence to grow, and employ more staff on better wages.

But as I travel around the electorate I am being told that this government’s policies are doing exactly the opposite, and will just slow the economy down.

Already its policies are costing Kiwi families more than $100 a week, with the biggest hit coming from the double whammy of new petrol taxes, which together will add around $15 a week to the cost of living, on top of already record petrol prices.

And with slowing GDP growth leaving families around $10 a week worse off, falling business confidence and fewer jobs being created as a result of this government’s low-growth policies, there will be fewer opportunities for New Zealanders to get ahead.

It’s well past time for Labour to start putting the needs of the public and the economy first, not the needs of its union mates.

"The unions are clearly feeling much bolder by having their mates in government, and the increase in strike action should come as a serious worry to New Zealanders. "