The NZ model

Daniel Boreham

Daniel Boreham, MUA member and former Kiwi seafarer, didn't get much work back home.

Like one in eight New Zealand workers he came to Australia to make a living.

"Shipping is decimated and the wharves virtually all privatised," said Daniel. "Things are very, very crook and Labor just hasn't put things right."

That's why workers saw the government's real intentions when it conceded the IR reforms were inspired by New Zealand and announced "that's what's needed here."

The vast pool of New Zealanders employed in Australia shows such changes have failed workers, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The New Zealand government moved to force workers off collective agreements and restrict unions when it came to power in 1991. Since then 415,000 New Zealanders - more than 10 per cent of the country's population, have moved to Australia.

Ten years ago, a few months before Howard took power in Australia, the Maritime Union had two visitors from across the Tasman, come to warn us of what was to come.

"I guess by now most of you are well and truly sick of hearing about the New Zealand experience," Trevor Hanson, general secretary of the NZ waterside workers union told National Conference.

"However, it is a message that needs to be brought home to all Australian workers. The changes that occur with the type of industrial legislation that exists in New Zealand are dramatic."

New Zealand seafarer Bob Tuffnell spelt it out: "They pit worker against worker. Contracts have everyone competing against each other. They divide towns. They even divide families."

When Muldoon came to power workers were savaged. Most private sector unions lost half of their membership. Strikes were illegal, individual contracts the norm.. Non-union labour was brought in and there were violent clashes with police on the wharves, the ships and the streets.

But both John Howard and Industry Minister Ian McFarlane sing the praises of the NZ experiment.

"We've got to ensure industrial relations reform continues so we have the labour prices of New Zealand... We're already a decade behind the New Zealanders," said MacFarlane."

When NZ introduced similar legislations in 1991 real wages fell between 11 and 44 per cent in five years - with wages now nearly half of what Australian workers earn in some industries.

In other developments:

• The Australian Council of Trade Unions takes the government to the High Court in a bid to stop them using $20 million of public funds to promote their reforms in the media; two sceptical judges say the reforms seem to be more about politics than productivity.

• Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews attempts to stop his own employees at the Department accessing the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) to resolve workplace disputes, while forcing any new employees to sign an individual contract.

• A new report shows that the purported wage rises under the Howard Government have all been at the top end of town.

• The Catholic and Anglican archbishops of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell and Dr Peter Jensen, announce they are worried the government IR changes may hurt family life and the working poor, with the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations also speaking out against the reforms.

• 60 women's groups announce they fear the industrial regime will disadvantage women.

• The federal government refuses to adopt the parental leave rights decision of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission awarding workers up to two years unpaid leave after the birth of a child and the right to request part time work on their return to work.

• Workers at a Sydney factory are deprived of sick leave under a federal government approved AWA promoted on a government website.

• Nurses complain loudly that penalty rates are to be excluded from the government's minimum work conditions.

• Assistant National Secretary Mick Doleman, who is coordinating the union's IR campaign nationally, has told branches to report all their activities with the state labour councils. A phone hook up will be held in coming weeks.

• The ACTU national stoppage is set for November 15.