The government last week made two announcements that sent two completely different messages about workers’ rights.
Their first announcement was a pay freeze across the public service. It was an announcement that most would expect to come from a conservative government. The only sign that it wasn’t from a conservative government is that they are shutting the gate long after the horses have bolted.
To contain the out of control costs of the horses (the public service) they need to cull the herd, which has ballooned in size under Labour. Instead, they are just limiting the amount of grass they can eat.
Even though this action is ineffective and half-arsed, it still sends a message to the public that the government is fiscally conservative. Perhaps not by my or your standards but judging by the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Left, they feel betrayed by it.
The second announcement last week was a new ‘fair pay’ agreement that is anything but fair. The message sent by this announcement was one of complete support for workers’ rights and a crushing blow to employers. It is a return to compulsory unionism and the bad old days that we all thought were behind us.
The Government has released its decisions on how unions and employers would interact to set fair pay agreements, which would represent the biggest shift in industrial relations since the early 1990s.
NZ Herald
I don’t think that it is a coincidence that both of these announcements were made last week. The government is walking a tightrope, hoping that the two opposite policies will balance each other out.
Some commentators think that Labour is hoping to keep ex-National voters onside on the one hand and on the other please their working-class supporters by returning the unions to the well-funded powerful position they had before compulsory unionism was abolished.
Heather du Plessis-Allan has another view:
“they’re hoping to convince us voters that they are good financial managers: that they’re prepared to rein in spending. But they have misjudged this badly, because it is sending completely the opposite message. Reining in spending is a good thing, but if you don’t have enough money for something as important as lifting the wages of our hardest working public servants to decent levels, if you’re run out of money that badly, then you’ve just sent a message to voters that actually you are having trouble balancing the books. Because where’s the money gone?”
Heather du Plessis-Allan