Ross Wilson, DomPost Column, 11 Sept 2006

The dispute between 600 distribution workers in Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch and Progressive Enterprises highlights the inequality of power which organisations like the Business Roundtable deny exists in the employment relationship.

These members of the National Distribution Union and the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union have been locked out for more than two weeks by the largest private employer in Australia and New Zealand, Woolworths Australia, because of quite modest collective bargaining claims, including parity of remuneration in Auckland and Christchurch with their fellow Palmerston North workers for doing the same job.

This is a company that recently announced a 24.3 per cent increase in its profit to A$1.01 billion and pays its chief executive a salary of $8.5 million. The distribution workers' claim would cost only a fraction of that.

The company has locked these workers out of their jobs and said they cannot return to work till they give up their claims for parity.

This heavy-handed approach raises serious questions about the adequacy of New Zealand's employment law framework, particularly for vulnerable workers such as these, who have merely chosen to exercise their internationally guaranteed human right to negotiate collectively with their employer.

That vulnerable workers who use the proper legal processes to improve their wages and conditions of employment can simply be starved into submission by huge corporate power points to a fundamental weakness in the wage bargaining processes.

As the Wednesday editorial in this newspaper noted, these workers are on marginal wages with families, mortgages and other responsibilities. Many are Maori and Pacific Islanders. The purpose of the lockout power is to put economic pressure on those families, and that is why it is no exaggeration to say that the company's strategy is to starve them into submission.

The silence of those business and political interests, including Don Brash, who express concern about the 30 per cent low-wage differential between New Zealand's wages and Australia's, speaks volumes.

Business Roundtable chairman Rob McLeod and I share a commitment to improve the position of Maori workers. Maori unemployment is still unacceptably high.

The Employment Contracts Act era hit Maori workers hard. Maori unemployment was 18.2 per cent in June 1999. It is now 8.2 per cent. Maori youth unemployment is 26 per cent, which is still worrying, but it was more than 40 per cent at times in the 1990s.

There is an entrenched low-wage culture in New Zealand after the Employment Contracts Act experience of the 1990s. The Progressive dispute is just one example of workers on "marginal wages" exercising their legal rights to try to improve their incomes collectively.

If the response of big overseas-owned corporates is going to be to lock out their workers while they cream off huge profits to their shareholders, then it is time to explore some interventions that can produce a fair settlement.

As New Zealanders we should not accept this invest-and-plunder approach that some Australian companies are taking. We are left with the social consequences.

And that is why there is such strong public support for the locked-out distribution workers. Money is pouring in from workplaces all round the country as the 350,000 Council of Trade Unions affiliated union members organise to provide financial and moral support. And a special thanks to Cabinet minister Steve Maharey for personally contributing to help his local constituents and for copping unfair political criticism for it.

Progressive have claimed that their distribution centres are unique and "very different beasts by location". That sort of claim belongs on a Tui billboard with a big "Yeah right" next to it.

The work that employees are doing in Christchurch, Palmerston North and Auckland is substantially similar work, and they should reasonably expect the same pay. It should certainly not be less in Auckland and Christchurch, as it is now.

Isn't it time for the business community to speak up on this dispute? I for one will be interested to see whether they just fall in line with the big corporate hitter from Australia.

The CTU has been working hard to lead unions into constructive engagement with business and government on the economic and social development issues which are so important to provide decent work and incomes for working New Zealanders and for their children and grandchildren.

If we are going to commit to the changes we need to make as a country to build skills and knowledge, to transform industry sectors so they can compete against the world, there has to be some evidence that business will not stand aside while big corporates use their overwhelming economic power to deny workers on marginal wages a fair share of their huge profits.

And it may be time for the Government to take further steps to ensure fairness for vulnerable workers in the employment law framework.

Ends.  This column appeared in the Dominion Post on Monday September 11 2006.