Since the cultural polarisation concocted within university humanities departments spilled out into day to day society, use of the term ‘trigger’ or ‘triggering’ was usually a mockery of hyper-sensitive social justice activists. The context is one of actions previously given no thought at all, such as how one sits when using public transport, now deemed micro-aggressions. Another example could be to show your appreciation by clapping, which some neo-Marxists have replaced with ‘jazz hands’, and the subsequent offense would be deemed ‘triggering.’
If the government’s regressive employment agreement legislation is successfully implemented, triggering will cease to be a fun internet meme. Rather it will herald the start of an entirely different way to negotiate your employment agreement, involving more people and organisations, irrespective of your desire to participate. It may even be done without you entirely, aside from your signature at the end. A Fair Pay Agreement (FPA) process, is fresh to anyone born after me. Most of everyone else will feel the backward step, returning to the days of powerful unions, nationwide conditions with industrial scraps the new normal.
The Fair Pay Working group made recommendations to the Government in December 2018 remaining dormant much of this year, no doubt reprioritised by multiple clean-up operations. The industrial Sitzkrieg is coming to an end, with MBIE issuing a discussion document on Designing a Fair Pay Agreements system for submission until November 27.
FPA agreements may become a five step process
- Initiation
- Determining Coverage
- Bargaining
- Resolving Disputes
- Concluding
There is also the potential to segue on a parallel review processing ensuring no anti-competitive behaviour such as turning a particular FPA into a means to cut wages and conditions. Currently that behaviour is virtually non-existent anyway; New Zealand’s minimum wage is the fourth highest globally, yet food retail is experiencing deflationary price pressures.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.” The workplace is a forum where employers and employees interdependently grow financially. The workplace isn’t a democracy, though FPAs threaten to alter that despite decades of sluggish productivity growth.
Included in the recommendations currently available for consultation is the question of whether FPAs should apply to industrial sectors, occupations, particular regions or the limits of your imagination. The potential for litigious nationwide chaos may take multiple forms. Let’s use a fairly common job title that exists in multiple sectors such as ‘receptionist’. The internet is yet to replace the need for bricks and mortar avenues for logistics, warehousing, retail, administration and call-centres, and it is rare that any will have ceased paying a real human being at the entrance for visitors. Currently 22,000 earn their paycheque as a receptionist and should they trigger an occupational FPA, the potential exists for each of them to be covered by the same collective agreement whoever employs them. That scenario alone promises unjustifiable complexity as the system begins to work.
As more FPAs take shape, whether they be regional, sectoral or industrial in nature, what would this mean for the receptionists already working under the conditions of their occupational agreement, signed with dozens of employers? Does triggering a cleaning industry FPA void the conditions won by receptionists in cleaning company buildings? Is a choice offered to receptionists who may want to swap to the cleaning industry agreement? Does this turn the predictable contract negotiation period into an environment of unpredictable fluidity, and given some individuals will arbitrarily exercise choices off-limits to others, what is the actual point of wide-scale collective agreements?
Two possible means of triggering an FPA process have been suggested by MBIE, though a union lawyer making six figures could invent reasons to campaign for law changes creating others, I’m sure. The consultative document available asks submitters to describe the merits and drawbacks of triggers based on public interest or representation.
Triggering FPAs via the representation test requires a number or proportion of workers in an occupation or industry to prove there is demand for this employment agreement equal to or higher than the minimum required. Suggestions include 1000 people or 10% of relevant workers or potentially both based on the size of the sector. Whichever way you look at it, more than 90% of their colleagues may be relegated to spectatorship in this scenario. In the case of receptionists, 1000 applications represents 95.4% of workers having no say in starting this negotiation. A 10% threshold is hardly better.
Industrial chaos spawned by the actions of a tiny minority (less than those currently belonging to a union) isn’t my only concern. The nuts and bolts are even more important if that amount of power can be wielded by a fraction of participants.
Despite my personal aversion to trade unions, I once found myself sitting in a union meeting for new employees, most of whom were of high school age. I had accidentally wandered in, and a representative naively invited me to stay as she explained what the union offers members. At the conclusion she produced several chocolate fish from her bag, a prize for those in the room who handed back their membership applications fastest.
We cannot risk job stability being disrupted by small-time bribery of children, so the best way to protect individual workers is the construction of indecipherable traps of red tape administered by additional public servants employed to personally manage each minute detail, every step of the way. If representation is the trigger written into law, I demand multiple IDs visually inspected and cross-inspected by two case workers for each application. Interviews of those signing to support negotiations verifying 100% of participants understand their actions. Then a meeting of all applicants at a two-day talk-fest in which every signatory has exercised their right to speak, hear objections, respond, compromise and compose a 2000 word publication on feelings and kindness in the form of haiku.
The discussion paper also asks whether employers should possess the ability to trigger FPA via representation test. Can you imagine the bloodbath if that were written into the law using the same process as for employees? We very well might see the first one-term government of a living Prime Minister since the Second Labour Government’s tax increase on cigs and booze cost them the 1960 election.
The alternative test is one of public interests. I can’t fathom the concept of public interest. Individuals are incredibly diverse, which guarantees most will have personal interests others don’t share. I’m yet to comprehend how that changes when these very different individuals are all forced into one large group called the public. Fortunately the Ministry has provided examples of how they define the public interest and how that may justify triggering an FPA under the ‘Public Interest Test’.
Potentially problematic worker outcomes in the sector
Wages are not matching the value of worker productivity: although there has been increased output quantity or quality, it is not due to investment by employers (in technology, training, real estate etc).
Value is determined by the agreement of consenting parties, not a delegated committee. The rapid increases to minimum wage levels by this Government, resulting in the farcical living wage becoming the default minimum, risk the reverse conditions wiping out some employers.
Considering politicians have few clues how to lift productivity, they have no business setting the criteria by which others should achieve it.
Workers experience poor returns on qualifications and training or uncompensated skill development over the duration of their employment
What is uncompensated skill development? If you acquire new knowledge and skills while being paid, you have greater value in that sector. If your employer doesn’t recognise it, find a competitor who does. Having dropped out of high school and never attended university, qualifications appear over-rated to me. All qualifications aren’t the same, of course. STEM field Masters are obviously superior to a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Gender Studies. Many industries provide the opportunity to employees to obtain qualifications paid for by the employer, but when everyone has a National Certificate in Retail it holds as much worth as 10 billion marks in the Weimar Republic.
Either way, I’m unconvinced making everyone in that industry be paid according to the same pay scale is an improvement on competing with your colleagues to achieve better results and getting promoted.
There is un or under-compensated risk transfer from employers to employees (e.g. insecure shifts, insufficient equipment) OR there is a high incidence of insecure (casual, seasonal, labour hire and fixed-term) employment agreements OR there is a high incidence of non-standard, irregular or uncertain working hours, and limited worker flexibility or voice in these areas
Looks like orchards will be one of the first employers dragged into FPAs. They’re already desperately understaffed and dependant on sluggish Ministers to authorise overseas recruitment which never arrives in time to prevent significant crop loss. How is implementing unsustainable pay levels nationwide, which still won’t encourage New Zealanders, going to help? This looks like a plan to bankrupt growers, sending all their liquidity overseas in the form of migrant wages as liquidators clear the rotten fruit.
There are high rates of exploitation and non-compliance with minimum standards in the occupation or sector There is a high incidence of health and safety violations or reports of job strain (stress, fatigue, depression) amongst workers, indicating distinct deficits in the quality of work environments in the sector
There is already tough health and safety legislation to address these issues and it does get used when employers fail to comply. Next…
There is generally an insufficient provision of training for workers to adequately perform required tasks, particularly where the health and safety of workers or the public is at stake
If you don’t train staff properly it hurts your business and you close. If it results in unsafe working environments, that’s already been covered.
Evidence of low coordination, or barriers to successful coordination, at a sectoral level such as low collective agreement coverage
When compulsory union membership came to an end, membership numbers dived. They’re only higher in the public sector monopolies where tax money pays the wages. Membership is low because they benefit the unco-operative and the lazy. If you’re smart, motivated, flexible and hard working the rewards are greater than a union can offer. Of course some occupations will never pay well; you’re responsible for improving and getting a better job. Paying the bills working two cleaning jobs is tough, so spend your working life finding something better. Getting a better job is also tough but pricing your workmates into unemployment won’t make that better.
This is just a peek at what Labour’s plans to suffocate innovation, decimate dreams and mandate misery are. This week’s article only covered the beginning of the decay; next week I’ll detail who leaps, how far and what direction.