Raymond Harbridge

External legitimacy of unions: Trends in New Zealand

Just 5 years ago, at the pinnacle of their success, New Zealand unions negotiated collective agreements covering over 720,000 employees and were successful in persuading some 603,000 of these employees to join. In May 1991, the Employment Contracts Act, which withdrew totally any state-endorsement or sponsorship of union activity, radically altered their position. Union membership fell by around 40 percent in the four years since the enactment of the Act — from 603,000 to 376,000 members in December 1994; the overall number of unions remaining has declined to around 80; a number of unions have become insolvent and have filed for liquidation; staff retrenchments within unions has been widely reported and, in some cases, this has led to a reduction in services and capacity. Data for 1993 suggest that union decline may have “bottomed out” with unions losing fewer than 20,000 members in that year. However, decline is again apparent in the 1994 data. The removal of external legitimacy has had a significant impact on unionization rates. We review the conditions under which the restoration of legitimacy would bring about a reversal of union decline.

Free Riding: Trends in Collective Bargaining Coverage and Union Membership Levels in New Zealand

Free riding occurs when non-union members receive the benefits of a union-negotiated collective bargain without contributing to the costs of achieving that bargain, whether by paying union mem bership dues or an agency fee. In New Zealand, free riding has been a significant difficulty for unions operating under the Employment Contracts Act 1991. Free riding had been approximately 16 per cent of collective bargaining coverage under previous employment laws. Free riding under the Employment Contracts Act represented some 27 percent of collective bargaining coverage. This paper re views the nature and extent of the differences between industry free riding rates and examines the paradigm shifts occurring in the New Zealand industrial relations system.

Collective Bargaining and New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act: One Year On:

Thefirst year of bargaining under New Zealands Employment Contracts Act brought some very significant changes to the nature and structure of bargaining outcomes. This paper reports a major study of collective bargaining outcomes. Collective bargaining is the preferred option for 80 per cent of employers with fifty or more staff; however, the number of workers covered by collective bargains in New Zealand dropped from 721 000 in 1989-90 to an estimated 440 000 by 1991-92. The collapse of collective bargaining did not occur evenly across industries. Significant collapses happened in agriculture, food and beverage manufacturing, the textile and clothing industry, the paper and printing industry, building and construction, retailing, restaurants and hotels and the transport industry. Collective bargaining retains a strong foothold in the electricity and gas production sector, the public sector, the finance sector, the communication industry and the basic and advanced metal manufacturing sectors. A content analysis of 471 collective employment contracts (covering nearly 130 000 workers) settled in the first year of the new legislation is reported here. The data show a wide dispersion of wage settlements as the comparative wage justice system collapses; about half of the workers in the sample, however, received either a wage decrease or no increase over the preceding settlement. Important changes to working time arrangements have been negotiated and these are reported along with other content changes to working time and leave arrangements.

Labour Market Re-Regulation and Its Effects on Free-Riding in New Zealand

Free-riding occurs where an employee gains a benefit without joining the union that negotiated that benefit. New Zealand unions endured a decade of high levels of free-riding under the Employment Contracts Act. This paper establishes that, in New Zealand, collective bargaining coverage has a positive relationship with free-riding whereas union membership levels have a negative relationship. Free-riding in New Zealand has fallen to pre-1991 levels with the re-regulation of employment relations, indicating environment too may be an important factor. These findings have implications for Australia where unions have sought to coerce membership through applying a fee for service to non-members, while the Commonwealth Government recently passed legislation preventing such coercion.

Restructuring Industrial Relations in New Zealand, 1984–1988

Abstract This paper examines changes to private and public sector wage fixing and industrial relations procedures introduced by the New Zealand Labour Government since 1984. In both sectors the thrust of the change is to introduce a measure of deregulation to the labour market. In the private sector, the major changes come from the repeal of the Industrial Relations Act 1973 and its replacement by the Labour Relations Act 1987. The most significant change in the 1987 Act was the introduction of the principle of a single set of negotiations to apply to each worker which eliminated the practice of ‘second tier’ settlements. The previous system consisted of award bargaining supplemented by above award payments negotiated workplace by workplace where possible. The process of compulsory conciliation and voluntary arbitration has been continued. The more significant changes include the minimum number of members for continued union registration being increased to 1000, and the necessity for the parties to enforc...

Trends in Wage Bargaining in New Zealand: The 1988/9 Wage Round

Abstract Changes to New Zealands labour laws enacted by the Labour Government since 1984 have placed all New Zealand employers and workers, regardless of what sector of the economy they have traditionally operated in, under the bargaining provisions of the Labour Relations Act 1987. The authors analyse bargaining outcomes for the 1988/9 wage round, the second wage round since the implementation of the Act but the first to include freely negotiated settlements covering state employees. Some evidence of changed bargaining structures is cited but the rate of change is slow. However, bargaining outcomes are showing considerable change: wage increments have been kept below the rate of inflation, with settlements compressed around 4 percent; there has been increased flexibility in the types of wage settlement, with many settlements incorporating straight monetary increases compressing internal wage relativities; broad-banding of salaries and performance related pay has been widely introduced in the general pub...

Privacy in the Workplace: The Effects of the Privacy Act 1993 on Employment Practices in New Zealand

Abstract This paper discusses the impact of the Privacy Act 1993 on the workplace, particularly with reference to the obligations relating to the collection, storage and use of information on employees gathered by employers and the policies employers establish to meet these obligations. The paper reviews, in general terms, the nature of the requirements the Act places upon employers and the extent to which employers have met these requirements. The implications for the treatment of particularly sensitive issues in the workplace—testing for recreational drug use by employees, performance reviews and assessments for example—are explored. This is achieved by a review of provisions related to privacy in collective employment contracts and by an analysis of how a number of important New Zealand corporations have dealt with the requirements of the Act. This analysis is conducted in two parts; through interviews with senior human resource management practitioners, and an independent assessment of the policies th...

The Dilemma Of Care: “Partial” Lockouts, Employment Contracts And Community Social Services In New Zealand

Abstract This paper outlines changes that have taken place under New Zealands 1991 employment contracts legislation, focusing on the use of the so-called “partial lockout” provisions by employers in the community social services. Two Employment Court decisions, one affirming the use of “partial lockouts” and the other reversing the first decision, are introduced and discussed. A “dilemma of care” is highlighted about which employers and employees alike will need to be increasingly vigilant in order to maintain the quality of services they produce. In a policy environment that promotes purchase of service contracting for the provision of health and social services, the whole operation can be put at risk if labour relations are ignored.