Just over two years
ago when Business New Zealand and the Employers and Manufacturers Association
were using the bully-boy and standover tactics more associated with the trade
unions of old in an attempt to browbeat Government support partners at the time
to oppose a piece of legislation from the Labour Opposition to protect
vulnerable workers, I wrote the following piece in this column: “For most New
Zealander’s under about forty, the stories of industrial disruption in the
1970s and early 1980s seem like fantasy. The thought that a small group of
members of the Boilermakers’ Union was able to hold up the construction of
Wellington’s BNZ Tower or Auckland’s MÄngere Bridge for years seems too
far-fetched to be true. Yet it was, as was the regularity that the Cooks’ and
Stewards’ Union or the Seamen’s Union were able to find an excuse to go on
strike at various holiday periods, tying up the Cook Strait ferries and
disrupting travel plans. And who would have ever thought a union secretary
would be brazen enough to go on national television during such a strike to
spit out “the travelling public can go to hell” as did the National Union of
Railwaymen Secretary Don Goodfellow. Strange as it may seem now, this was all
very much the way of the world then.”
The incredulous
reaction of many to the threatened three day strike by Air New Zealand
engineers just before Christmas confirms many New Zealanders have no
recollection of the days when this type of disruption was the norm. The
decision to lift the strike notice means that their incredulity will remain for
a little while longer, although there is no doubt that the engineers made the
wrong call in threatening industrial action on the eve of the Christmas
holidays.
This year has seen
more industrial action than in any year of the previous quarter century, and
principally in the public sector. How much of this is because of pent-up
pressures from the term of the previous government, and how much of it arises
from a sense that this government is a soft touch is not certain, although
there is no doubt the government’s dithering response to both the nurses and
now the teachers, to whom so much was at implicitly promised during the
election campaign and has yet to be delivered, is a factor.
The nurses were
fortunate in being at last able to reach a settlement while public support was
on their side. The teachers still enjoy public support, although that will
begin to wane if threatened combined strikes across the primary and secondary
sectors early next school year become prolonged, and teachers become perceived as
turning down not unreasonable settlement offers.
The key point in
such disputes is timing. When does the inconvenience to the public go beyond
what is reasonable? In the case of nurses and teachers there is a general view
that they deserve a better deal, hence a greater level of tolerance for their
endeavours to achieve that. However, in the case of the Air New Zealand
engineers, some of whom apparently already earn as much as $150,000 a year, it
was difficult to see the same level of public support ever applying, especially
given the level of public inconvenience threatened.
The feeling that the
travelling public was potentially being used deliberately and callously as a
negotiating pawn, was never likely to be a winning one, and the reaction of
recent days showed there was little sympathy for the engineers‘ position.
Unlike the nurses and the teachers, they were unable to make the case they were
undervalued and overworked to the extent the nation‘s health and the education
of its children were being compromised.
It was telling that
the Prime Minister, who seemed almost studiously to avoid getting publicly
involved in the nurses‘ and teachers‘ disputes because of the public support
both enjoyed, was quick to step into the Air New Zealand dispute. She well
recognised that even though the government had nothing to do with this dispute,
it would bear the brunt of visceral public outrage if the engineers’ strike
proceeded and people's holiday plans disrupted.
The mounting
industrial action of the last year is already becoming a awkward matter for the
government, especially since the Prime Minister appeared during the election
campaign to give assurances there would be no strikes on her watch. She will be
very keen to calm things down, should the message being pedalled by the
National Party that the country is on the verge of returning to the bad old
days of the 1970s and 1980s start to gain public traction.
Although a waning
memory, the spectre of Don Goodfellow’s infamous response of all those years
ago still looms. No-one wants those times to come to pass again. Goodfellow's despicable
sentiments should stay buried with him.
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