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Archived 2005 Industrial Relations Policy - A sustainable working life

Sue Bradford MP

Note: This was the policy released for the 2005 election. An updated policy for the 2008 election will be released shortly.

Administrative Update 16 May 2007

Read the Industrial Relations Policy Summary.

Contents

Introduction

Vision

Key Principles

Specific Policy Points

  1. Living Wage and Job Security
  2. Work and Life Balance
  3. Promotion of Industrial Democracy
  4. Freedom of Association and the Right to Organise and Bargain Collectively
  5. Pay and Employment Equity
  6. Healthy and Safe Workplaces

Introduction

Industrial relations are about the relationship between workers and employers, individually and collectively. Good industrial relations are essential in order to maintain healthy and sustainable working lives for New Zealanders. New Zealanders should have decent pay and working conditions, a meaningful and secure job, and a safe working environment. They should also have time for leisure and their families.

The Green Party believes that open, democratic, and meaningful negotiations between those who are involved in the labour market need to take place at all levels, in individual and collective bargaining meetings, and in governmental policy development meetings. Equitable and positive industrial relationships will help to minimise industrial disruption and address the inherent power inequalities between employers and employees.

Please see the Green Party's Tertiary Education, Work and Employment, Health, Human Rights, and Women's policies for further detail about these areas.

Vision

The Greens envision a New Zealand in which:

  • People have the opportunity to participate in meaningful work that reflects their individual and cultural needs and preferences.
  • Workplaces are environmentally responsible, family friendly, and safe from discrimination and prejudice.
  • Employers and workers enjoy equitable and beneficial relationships with each other.
  • Workers are paid a living wage in secure, empowering jobs.

Key Principles

  1. In recognition of its commitment to honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Green Party supports equitable access for Maori to secure employment, decent wages and the organisation of Maori into and within trade unions.
  2. The Green Party supports the realisation of a sustainable working life based on the three pillars of economic viability, environmental protection and social responsibility (the triple bottom line).
  3. Workers, employers, and unions should be involved in making decisions about issues in their workplaces, the economy, and the environment.
  4. Workplace democracy and collective organisation are essential to address the inherent potential for inequality of power between employers and employees.
  5. Individual workers need appropriate protection under the law.
  6. Workplaces should be safe, environmentally healthy and free from discrimination.
  7. Workers should be paid a living wage.
  8. Workers have a right to pay and employment equity.

Specific Policy Points

1. Living Wage and Job Security

Economic and productivity growth in the past five years has not translated into wage increases that have kept pace with inflation, or more secure jobs. Large income disparities still characterise the New Zealand economy. All workers have the right to a living wage to enable them to fully participate in our society.

The Green Party will:

  1. Support workers' calls for fair wages, including the campaign for a 5% increase in 2005.
  2. Increase the minimum wage to at least $13.00 an hour, with an annual review with reference to the CPI and the median wage.
  3. Have one minimum wage level apply to all workers from the age of 16, to remove the possibility of exploiting young workers.
  4. Improve employment rights and increase protection for casual, seasonal, fixed term, and temporary workers, and when workers are re-employed, previous service is recognised.
  5. Give contracted workers (those whose jobs are sub-contracted, contracted out or the subject of succession contracting), the right to transfer to the new employer on existing terms and conditions for at least 6 months.
  6. Undertake a review of the existing legislation on the right to transfer with a view to addressing employer avoidance and extending categories of those to whom it applies.
  7. Include caregivers in age-related residential care facilities in the schedule of vulnerable workers covered by the right to transfer provisions.
  8. Develop legislation to implement a 'Responsible Contractor Policy' to ensure that all workers contracted directly or indirectly by government receive fair wages and decent conditions.
  9. Establish a minimum statutory entitlement to redundancy compensation where no fault redundancy termination occurs, e.g. bankruptcy of the company.

2. Work and life balance

The Green Party believes that work should not crowd out the other things that people enjoy in life, such as family, voluntary work, and leisure. Research suggests that people, particularly women with children, are experiencing a 'time squeeze' and that long hours of work are the norm rather than the exception. Fulfillment inside and outside of paid work will bring positive benefits to individuals, families, businesses, and communities.

The Green Party will:

  1. Support legislation that creates flexible workplace opportunities, and assist parents to balance work and family life. Specifically, the Green Party will:
    1. Provide parents who are employees, who have worked for the same employer for more than six months, and who have dependent children under the age of five or severely impaired dependents, the statutory right to request part-time and flexible hours.
    2. Provide a framework in which they can negotiate such working hours with their employers.
    3. Require employers to consider, in good faith, requests for flexible working arrangements from the parents of young children.
  2. Establish a taskforce to:
    1. Investigate the economic and social effects of a 35-hour working week in New Zealand.
    2. Provide advice to the Minister of Labour on how to address barriers to a 35-hour working week, including the issues of over- and under-employment in a transition process, and suggest strategies to move those earning below average wages to a living wage.
  3. Extend leave entitlements to:
    1. Supports a minimum of 4 weeks paid annual leave.
    2. Extend the period of paid parental leave and increase the level of payments to 100% of the average male wage.
    3. Ensure workplaces provide work breaks and areas where mothers can breastfeed as required by ILO convention 183.
    4. Up to five days bereavement leave for each bereavement.
    5. Ten days sick leave.
    6. Establish a separate domestic leave entitlement to provide (over time) up to 10 days leave where employees have to care for dependents who are sick.

3. Promotion of Industrial Democracy

Employment security, adequate remuneration, best employment practice, and safe and healthy working conditions of workers should be promoted.

The Green Party will:

  1. Improve workplace democracy and improve workers' representation and participation in the future of their work. This will include:
    1. Providing adequate funding for workplace training of workers' representatives and providing information resources;
    2. Promoting participation and democracy in workers' and employers' organisations.
  2. Implement international standards, which are set out in United Nations conventions, particularly the International Labour Organisation conventions that deal with the right to strike, worker accident compensation, pay equity, and breastfeeding breaks.
  3. Establish frameworks for cooperation between employers and workers, within workplaces, and across sectors and industries. This will include the development and operation of the multi-employer collective agreement as a mechanism to support the small business sector and larger enterprises.
  4. Support the establishment of a wide range of interventions in workplace disputes, including dispute resolution, problem solving, relationship building, best practice and employment rights education, and collective agreement and bargaining support for both employers and workers.
  5. Support the right to strike for political, environmental, social and work-related industrial issues, as set out in International Labour Organisation Conventions.

4. Freedom of Association and the Right to Organise and Bargain Collectively

Unions and collective bargaining are effective ways of improving working conditions. The Green Party will work towards creating an enabling legislative environment for union organisation and collective bargaining.

The Green Party supports:

  1. Initiatives that encourage and facilitate multi-party bargaining.
  2. Measures to provide independent and dependent contractors with access to a dispute resolution process, the ability to bargain collectively, and legislation for minimum pay and conditions.
  3. The right of workers to prevent freeloading by voting at the commencement of bargaining whether workers under an agreement negotiated by collective bargaining will either join the union or pay the union a one-off bargaining fee.
  4. Third party decision-making, at the request of either employees or employers, on the content of the collective agreement where serious breaches of good faith have occurred.
  5. Legislation to ensure that union delegates cannot be discriminated against, that paid time for union activities is provided, and that there is recognition of the roles of union delegates in the workplace.
  6. Access to designated space for union activities in workplaces with over 50 union members on the site.
  7. Guaranteed union representation in Industry Training Organisations.

5. Pay and Employment Equity

The Green Party believes in pay equity, which means paying the same wage for jobs requiring a similar level of skills, effort, working conditions, training and responsibility. Pay equity is not just about pay differences between men and women. There are also differences based on ethnicity and disability. Employment equity is about removing the barriers to equality for all people in employment.

The Green Party will:

  1. Introduce legislation to progress pay and employment equity. This will work towards a mechanism:
    1. For employers to undertake pay audits.
    2. For employers to report on pay and employment equity in all sectors.
    3. For legislation that makes it a breach of good faith for an employer to refuse to modify or eliminate pay rates or practices that continue an inequity.
  2. Establish a Pay and Employment Equity Commission. This commission will:
    1. Collect, collate and analyse data on pay and employment equity.
    2. Educate and inform employers and employees on pay equity.
    3. Report annual progress on reducing the gender and ethnicity pay gap.
  3. Increase resources to enable young workers, Maori, Pasifika, other ethnic minorities, workers with disabilities, and those in precarious employment to access information on employment rights and unions.
  4. Review legislation to enable vulnerable, independent contractors, such as care workers, to negotiate rights and conditions that are similar to employees in comparable positions.
  5. Amend the Human Rights Act to include a prohibition on discrimination on the grounds of union activities.
  6. Increase workplace access to subsidised early childhood and after school care.
  7. Review the Equal Pay Act to make it consistent with current employment legislation and to ensure it includes the 'principle of equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value' as set out in ILO convention 100 on Equal Remuneration.

6. Healthy and Safe Workplaces

In 2003/2004 OSH investigated 61 fatal work accidents. The Green Party is committed to reducing the number of fatalities and accidents in the workplace. An increasing number of employees are also becoming ill because they are required to work in dangerous and toxic environments. Employers and employees must work together to make workplaces healthier and safer.

The Green Party will:

  1. Support and develop initiatives that will enable workplace participation systems to work effectively, including those that increase resources for union involvement and participation in health and safety training.
  2. Legislate to provide for reasonable work breaks.
  3. Support the development of health and safety obligations and responsibilities for the owner of a workplace who contracts, or sub-contracts, work to be performed at that workplace.
  4. Support the development of regulations and codes of practice to strengthen the legislation in key areas such as:
    1. The control of substances hazardous to health, including control of fumes and particles.
    2. Workplace and the environment (discharge of toxic substances that originate in the workplace).
    3. Harassment in the workplace.
    4. Occupational cancer.
    5. Lone working.
    6. Women's health and safety (including a code of practice for pregnant women).
    7. Men's reproductive health and safety.
    8. Occupation health services.
    9. Stress.
  5. Require OSH to effectively enforce legislation in relation to occupational health issues such as noise, respiratory disease, occupational cancer, musculo-skeletal injuries and gradual process injuries.
  6. Require that, in instances where employers are prosecuted and fined for breaches of Health and Safety in Employment legislation, a portion of the fine is paid by the court to any workers injured as a result of the breach.
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