Peters holds keys to further union wins
In his 40-year career in politics, including stints in both National and Labour governments, Winston Peters had never made a keynote address to the biggest union conference in the calendar. That changed yesterday when he addressed the Council of Trade Unions conference for the first time.
This shows both the remarkable trajectory of Peters’ storied career, but also the fact that NZ First is trying to carefully balance its core supporter base: rural Kiwis on lower wages, and the more conservative part of the electorate that can be suspicious of unions at best.
So he upbraided the unions for doing nothing during nine years of National government, before striking when Labour and NZ First came to office. But at the same time, he rather quaintly attacked National for being ‘‘captured by the political interests of capital’’, denouncing neoliberalism and fat cats taking home the rewards.
And he took credit for minimum wage hikes that he says NZ First was responsible for in both the current and previous Labour governments.
But he spent much of an entertaining speech slamming what he called the ‘‘disaster’’ of the reforms instituted by Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
For someone often portrayed as a political chameleon, Peters has been consistent on this theme for decades – something he is quick to point out. He is a fan of a more managed, protected economy closer to New Zealand before the liberalising reforms of the 1980s that unshackled the economy from the torpor of Muldoonism.
While not suggesting Peters wants a return to that, he is keen for the Government to place itself more centrally in the economy, and act as what he called ‘‘a responsible arbitrator’’ that can make sensible (read political, not market) determinations between the interests of capital and labour.
This is interesting because his speech takes place in the context of fair pay agreements: industry-wide workplace deals that the Government promised leading into the last election. The unions have made this a central campaign issue over the past two years. Questions to Peters from union delegates mostly revolved around NZ First support for this deal, which would be the biggest fundamental change to workplace laws since the 1991 Employment Contracts Act.
The final shape of the deal depends on NZ First, and Peters himself pointed out why he’s been cagey. The problem with industry-wide employment agreements is that the nation isn’t really made up of one jobs market, but many. Wages in Waimate are different to those in Wellington, for good reason.
NZ First is clearly sensitive to both sides of this argument: it wants the lowest-paid to be paid more, and is comfortable with an effective floor under wages. But it is also rightly concerned about the effect a blunt wages instrument could have on the rural economy where companies are smaller, the ability to pay is less, and wages are lower.
This is something of a repeat of the battle that happened last year over Labour’s first round of industrial relations reform. NZ First won the ability for small employers to keep a 90-day trial and some other smaller changes to the industrial law framework – but after direct pressure from the unions still allowed the bill to pass.
NZ First has never gained 5 per cent of the vote after a term in government, but at 4 per cent in the last published poll it is positioned quite well for an election-year surge. Getting the balance right on this issue – and the final Zero Carbon Bill – will be crucial to its election prospects.