Today’s HoS has an excellent piece on workers rights by Matt McCarten
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10546860
They want the Government to immediately allow small businesses to have unfettered right to dismiss any new worker in the first three months of their employment. That means that at any one time, 100,000 New Zealanders would have no legal rights if they are dismissed, no matter the reason.
This is outrageous and would allow exploitation and intimidation for those workers, particularly at the low end of the market.
They say employers are reluctant to take on new employees if they can’t terminate them if it doesn’t work out. Nonsense. The current law has a 90-day trial period for workers.
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That’s just the first step. Here are some of their juicer demands: remove the union’s right to negotiate a collective agreement on behalf of its members; restrict a union’s ability to educate members on their rights; restrict their workers’ representatives from coming on to worksites; allow employers to refuse a worker’s request to have their union fees deducted from their pay.
Despite all of this, if employees do join a union, the employers want the right to pass on all union terms and conditions negotiated to non-union workers.
If there’s a strike or lockout of the union members by an employer they want the right to bring in scabs to break their employees’ resolve.
If the workers still don’t bend, it’s proposed that the employer can just divide up the union wage agreement and pass it on to each worker separately. This action would effectively end a dispute on an employer’s terms.
The power in any employment relationship is always with the employer and that’s why every civilised country has laws to protect workers from exploitation. Business NZ is demanding the unbridled right to control their workers. We used to call this relationship slavery.
It is really worthwhile reading the full article an insightful but also scary piece of potential reality
