________________________________________ From: Portside Labor [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 8:30 PM To: [email protected] Subject: New Union Approach in New Zealand
Together at last! http://newunionism.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/together/ Here's one to watch. Down in New Zealand, a country with an unusually cohesive (though struggling) union movement, affiliates of the national union federation have launched an innovative thing called "Together". We're calling it a thing because it doesn't really fit into any of the usual drawers. It's not a union, not an NGO, not an organisation, not a network, not an association, club, sect, faction, fraction, tendency or movement. What it is, above all else, is a potential solution to several of the quandaries that unions have been trying to solve for at least 10 years. In the NZ Council of Trade Union's own words: "Together aims to connect workers in un-unionised work places with the union movement and the union experience." In order to do this, it provides "...help with issues like workplace bullying, sick leave, holiday pay, employment agreements and sexual harassment". Together is a national service that is being developed for the "precariat" -- that rapidly growing cohort of workers who do not fit into the standard labourist model of industrial capitalism. Because it is being developed at the national level, with affiliates' buy-in, it cuts across regional, sectoral and strategic lines. In particular, it aims to bring together: * People on casual contracts; * Those in industries like IT, tourism or in small shops, or driving taxis; * Contractors and workers in remote areas and small towns who don't currently have access to a union; * The families of current union members. Membership costs just $NZ 1 per week, which is roughly 20% of typical union fees in New Zealand. (One kiwi dollar is equivalent to about $US0.87 or #UK0.53 or 68). Family membership is also on offer, bringing a still larger audience back into unionism's traditional orbit. In fact, the word they use here is "whnau", which is a Maori word suggesting something more like "extended family". So, for instance, if mum or dad is a union member, they can also arrange union support for their children, uncles and aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces and grandchildren. As affiliated unions sign up to support and promote the system, they sign a "Memorandum of Commitment" (click to download). This is they key document to read, if you want to understand how Together works. Needless to say, there are all kinds of potential conflicts and pitfalls and fishhooks in a project like this. It is a credit to the kiwis that they've managed to negotiate such concerns and get Together off the ground. Will this be "the missing link "- a clear route between the precariat and the mainstream of the labour movement? If not, will it become the first step of something that evolves further? It is far too early to make any meaningful assessment of the project, but, as the great Anon once said: "The best map in the world will not get you anywhere. Only going will get you there." TOGETHER New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, 2011 http://www.together.org.nz/ Tradition For over 100 years NZ unions have organised successfully in a number of traditional NZ industries - meat, dairy, large food retail, large manufacturing, trains, planes and boats, health, education, public services, mining, postal services, etc. We still organise in mainly those traditional industries and in traditional ways - using delegates' structures, formal workplace meetings, membership forms, payroll deductions etc. Despite a massive change in the economy and in how people associate with organisations, very little has changed in our practice or coverage. Apart from not stretching to new NZ industries we have also reduced our presence in some of the traditional ones - construction, telecommunications, road transport. New Zealand Union Change The analysis of union performance including the membership gaps reveals a number of flaws in our current system which as a movement we are now working to change. These include: 1. The law The current arrangements for bargaining in the New Zealand (Employment Relations Act - ERA) do not match the requirements of the modern labour market and the system of bargaining is structured in such a way that it effectively remove the rights of many workers to a collective agreement. It strongly favours enterprise-based collective bargaining and while multi employer bargaining is permissible, employers can easily defeat attempts to multi-party bargaining by obstructing settlement. There are only 1 or 2 multi-employer agreements in existence outside of the State Sector. Workers outside the formal employment relationship are not covered by the law. The result is that only workers where unions are established, work is stable, unions are competent, bargaining power is rebalanced, and a formal employment relationship exists, are able to exercise the rights of Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining. A new legal framework is needed that will extend union coverage and collective bargaining to the widest possible group of workers. Collective bargaining is a human right for all workers- for human rights to be effective they need to be easily accessible. It is time for a new framework - based on rights! Current labour law is based in a market context. The narrative goes something like this. Ideally the market would perform without interference including in the establishment of wages. In this context, labour law is portrayed as an unfortunate but necessary interference in the market. Interferences in the market should be as minimal as possible and simply work to make the market efficient. All "improvements" to labour law are analysed in this light and seen as regrettable. Using a "rights based" framework rather than a "market based" approach to industrial law would allow for better outcomes. In a rights based legal framework, all workers would be able to walk into a workplace and receive terms and conditions negotiated by a union operating in their industry as a right. Workers would also have easy access to participation in unions and workers would have a voice in their workplace and industry about the way work is organised and their place in it. At the moment - the reality for many workers is that almost all their terms and conditions are set unilaterally by their employer! The CTU has developed a new legal approach to this challenge and is lobbying political parties to adopt it. It includes a two-tier model with a form of industry codes/industry standards setting mechanism, and enterprise (including multi-enterprise) level bargaining. We are also seeking new provisions for contract workers to access the right to Collective Bargaining (which is not restricted to those covered by an employment relationship in ILO Convention 98 and extends to all workers). This idea is based on overseas models and is a variation of the extension model used in parts of Europe, Africa and Canada that provide for the extension at an industry level of terms and conditions negotiated in collective agreements at the enterprise or multi-enterprise level. Unions that negotiate at an enterprise level in an industry and reach a sufficient threshold of coverage that enables "standards" to be identified, would be able to seek access to an industry standard setting mechanism that would identify industry standards from the enterprise agreements and "extend" them to the all those other employers and workers in the industry not covered by a collective agreement. 2. Union change Changing the law won't change union culture, performance and influence. The second major piece of work we are undertaking is how we change as unions to build a modern union movement capable of offering easy, low threshold membership to any worker that wants to participate, including having plans and capacity to support unions to change and organise in new sectors. This involves a two part development programme. a. Together On 3 May 2011 the unions of the CTU launched a new union called Together. Together is a union run by all the unions of the CTU - it is a recognition that if we are to "crack the nut" we need to work as a movement and do new things collectively to move forward. Together builds on the strong family narrative that runs through the union movement. Many union members will tell you stories of union families - that their mums and dads were union members, that they remember uncles and aunts on picket lines, that they attended union meetings as children. Our surveys of members also show that many union members are very concerned that their children and other family members, are not getting the union experience - this is not surprising given 9 out of 10 workers in the private sector are not unionised. Together is an organisation that offers union membership to union families and to those excluded from easy access to current unions. Union members can join their family to Together by paying another $1 per week on top of their current union fees to their union, who then transfer this money to Together. Whole families can join for this single fee provided those that are in unionised workplaces also join the union at the workplace. Together is a values based organisation - by its nature and by the nature of the workplaces of its members, bargaining is not an option at this stage for most members but participation and organisation is. Together members will be offered support via a website and call centre for individual work problems and we hope to have a regional network of trained delegates who are able to represent workers in mediations etc at some later point. But at this stage Together members will get the benefit of the values proposition that unions offer. In the same way as the thousands that join Amnesty International each year don't do so because they might need a candle lit for them at some point - we want people to join Together in order to participate in the union experience. Union members have been very receptive to this idea - they want their kids to be in unions, to receive union information and to identify with the movement, to participate in union activities and they see this as a safe way for that to happen. Union members that join their families to Together will be expected to include them in union activities organised by their union. Affiliated unions will invite families to events - rallies, meetings, memorial services etc. We will also have activities (online campaigns etc) for members to participate in. If Together recruits 50,000 union families - the movement will not only have approx 200,000 more people that are associating with its values - but also over two million dollars per year for new organising projects - in those areas - retail, construction and the new economy where to date there is no strategy to break through. Many of the union members that join their families to Together will be members of unions in the public sector - it enables public sector members to assist in the unionisation of the private sector where many of their family members work. How Together develops and what it does is still an open question. Where we identify members within similar industries we will enable them to talk to each other and organise further - we will look for opportunities for campaigns and for supporting groups of organised members to move into affiliated unions, with resources for further more traditional organising. b. Union Change part two Together is simply the first part of the union change agenda. The second part involves both maximising the benefits of Together across the union movement but also assisting affiliated unions to organise in new ways in new sectors. Affiliates and Together have entered into a Memorandum of Commitment. This Memorandum commits the parties to a number of things. Most importantly affiliates will promote Together membership to their members and invite union families to events and activities, and Together has committed to spend 60% of its income on supporting affiliates in new organising projects. Unions will build Together and Together will build unions. The affiliates have begun to plan this new organising as a movement - we have started to identify how we would select, plan and implement new projects. One of the primary criteria is that a union tasked with a new project should be funded by the movement to do so and should be competent to be successful. Old demarcations for coverage will not drive new projects. If a sector is identified as a priority for organising as a movement but there is not a union competent to be successful (including a union that may claim coverage in that industry but clearly does not have sufficient capacity to be successful with a new project), then the movement will need to determine how and who to assist to become competent as the first part of the programme. This of course has required us to define what makes a competent organising union - something controversial and which we continue to develop. The third and fourth projects of the NZ union change programme are the development of a union leadership framework - how do we as a movement ensure we are developing new leaders to lead the movement in the future, and a group considering union resource rationalisation - beginning its work looking at membership systems. Conclusion This union change programme is developmental and affiliates are involved in each stage of development including rigorous reporting to the CTU National Affiliates Council and a process of endorsement for each stage. There is a general recognition that for things to change - things need to change, and that the success of the movement is in the interests of all unions and is also reliant on all unions playing a part. The NZCTU is also beginning the discussion on union values and how others see us and will have a session on this at its next biennial conference in August. We do not have the answers to the challenges posed above and it is unclear if the current structure of unionism in New Zealand allows us to develop them. ____________________________________________ PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it. 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