The year of the strike
We haven’t seen a year quite like it since the 1980s. The reawakening of union militance has propelled 2018 into the Year of the Strike, after several decades of stable industrial relations.
The surge in protracted industrial action has affected almost every sector of the labour market, with publicly-funded workers leading the charge.
In the past 12 months, the pickets and placards have been brandished by Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment workers, nurses, Inland Revenue workers, midwives, bus drivers, ACC workers, rail workers, Burger King staff, nurses, council staff, Silver Fern Farms workers, Premier Bacon workers, Lyttelton Port workers, teachers and Justice Ministry staff.
The ongoing unrest among teacher unions is likely to blight the start of 2019 as well, with 17,500 secondary teachers set to join forces with the 30,000 primary teachers and their ongoing strike action.
Last week’s rolling strike action by the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) looked particularly churlish.
They opted to down tools and dress up in protest tinsel before union members had even considered the Government’s latest pay offer, which would boost most primary teachers’ and principals’ pay packets by nearly $10,000.
The $698 million settlement offer is an astonishingly benevolent proposition, creating a new top pay bracket and the partial removal of a cap on some qualifications for some teachers from 2020. (Even though those teachers who don’t have a bachelor’s degree were given the opportunity to upgrade their old education diplomas to degreestatus some years ago.)
It is noteworthy that under urgent facilitation, the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) strongly recommended the union accept the ministry’s package, tellingly adding that the Government had ‘‘clearly gone as far as it will go’’.
Straight out of the union playbook, now that massive pay offers are on the table, the NZEI would have you that their employment dispute actually has more to do with class sizes, non-contact time and workloads.
When have teachers not had a good old whinge about their workload?
Education Minister Chris Hipkins is absolutely right to argue that easing the workload requires boosting teacher supply, which the Government is progressively doing.
Despite casting their daily work conditions as so dire, it certainly hasn’t stopped thousands of overseas applicants clamouring to sign up to the Education Ministry’s international recruitment drive, to help address the teacher shortage.
Hipkins hasn’t disguised his growing frustration with the union tactics – nor should he.
The NZEI’s unwieldy expectations, which increasingly look divorced from reality, also run the risk of profoundly fracturing parental goodwill and patience.
But Labour is partly responsible for this zeitgeist of rabid industrial unrest. It emboldened this climate of renewed union muscle-flexing, pandering to its base in the lead-up to last year’s election.
Unlike the headline-grabbing tactics of the teachers, one of the most maddening outpourings of industrial action pertains to the Ministry of Justice.
Christchurch court proceedings have been severely hampered since September, as 2000 Public Service Association (PSA) court staff members deploy an arsenal of tactical disruptions, nationwide.
P... one of the most maddening outpourings of industrial action pertains to the Ministry of Justice.
artial strike action commenced with a union ban on working overtime and working to rule by taking common tea breaks. Work-to-rule measures are being added to almost daily, like the ban on allowing defendants in custody to attend court via audiovisual link.
That ban triggered a gang-related brawl in Christchurch on Friday, when the defendant appeared in person.
Lightning strikes, staged with just 30 minutes’ notice, have followed. At some courts, union members are undertaking a ban on serving, checking and signing sentencing documents.
In Christchurch, many sentencings are being deferred until March.
The New Zealand Law Society is increasingly concerned that public safety is being jeopardised, as the gang brawl demonstrated.
Canterbury Westland President Grant Tyrrell says ‘‘the industrial action has had a massive impact here, without any sign of it being resolved’’, despite court staff being offered a 6 per cent pay increase over two years.
I note that the police pay settlement was resolved with little fuss.
Like the cops, court staff represent a critical arm of the law.
Should they really be allowed to stage such sustained and directionless industrial action, when it punctures the wheels of justice? Justice delayed is indeed justice denied.