Not Smiling Now: The carrying of a resolution in support of the Resident Doctor's Association over the strong objections of the CTU President, Richard Wagstaff (above) represents a rare assertion of the interests of private sector workers within the CTU – as well as an important breaking-of-ranks within the usually dominant “Big Four” public sector unions. Together, Wagstaff’s opponents have delivered a stunning blow to his presidential mana, greatly reducing his chances of being re-elected to a second term as leader of the CTU.
MUCH HAS BEEN MADE of the upsurge in
strike action across New Zealand since the Coalition Government assumed office.
The National Party and its allies are insisting that this can only mean a
return to the bad old days of the 1970s when, as National’s Workplace Relations
spokesperson, Scott Simpson, told RNZ, unions would go on strike “at the drop
of a hat”. What Simpson and his right-wing colleagues probably don’t know is
how much worse things might have been had the Coalition Government not been
able to rely on the moderating influence of the President of the NZ Council of
Trade Unions (CTU) Richard Wagstaff.
The CTU President, it is important
to note, won his spurs as a senior official in the Public Service Association
(PSA). Important, because the PSA has wielded a decisive influence over the CTU
for more than 30 years. Crucially, that influence has been used to promote
moderation, not radicalism. Both the PSA and the CTU have been consistent
advocates of “partnership”, through “constructive engagement” with both the
state and the private sector.
This is the jargon of the Wellington
bureaucracy. The PSA is driven by the interests and priorities of the thousands
of state-employed professionals and managers who make up its membership. These
workers are deeply embedded in the governmental apparatus and their jobs very
often entail monitoring, servicing and, in some cases, “sanctioning” the
nation’s poorest and most marginalised citizens.
Work of this kind tends to encourage
a high degree of identification with the administrative and political
authorities on whose behalf public servants are required to act. It is,
therefore, unsurprising that the PSA (with 70,000 members, New Zealand’s
largest union) has, since the CTU’s inception in 1987, exerted a powerful
restraining influence over the whole trade union movement.
Its influence has only grown
stronger as the percentage of the private sector workforce belonging to a trade
union has declined to the point where, today, fewer than 10 percent of private
sector workers are unionised. Accordingly, for close to thirty years, trade
unionism in New Zealand has largely been defined by the state sector unions:
the PSA, the Post-Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) the NZ Educational Institute
(NZEI) and the NZ Nurses Organisation. Well-supplied with both members and
money, these state unions have been willing to take a stand in defence of their
own workers. Tragically, however, they have consistently declined to campaign
for the rebuilding of trade unionism in the private sector.
The election of Helen Kelly to the
presidency of the CTU changed its tone dramatically. She was much more willing
to take a stand on behalf of workers in the private sector – winning
significant moral victories against the logging industry and the Ports of
Auckland. Her stand against Peter Jackson, while unsuccessful, was
inspirational in its steadfast refusal to bend the knee to either Hollywood or
the Beehive. The loss of Kelly, to lung cancer, robbed the CTU of its most
inspirational leader ever. The New Zealand working class lost a true friend and
champion.
Wagstaff, Kelly’s successor, has
taken a very different leadership path. Not at all a street-fighting man, he
prefers to work behind the scenes, taking full advantage of the capital city’s
myriad power networks to neutralise enemies and cultivate friends. What
Wagstaff lacks in charisma and rhetorical inspiration, he more than makes up
for by his intimate knowledge of exactly which people are attached to what
strings – and when they should be pulled.
The most recent example of
Wagstaff’s leadership style was his handling of the prolonged and bitter
dispute between the country’s District Health Boards (DHBs) and the Resident
Doctors’ Association (RDA). One school of thought has it that Wagstaff, well
aware of both the DHB’s and the Coalition Government’s desire to be rid of the
Resident Doctors’ highly successful advocate, Deborah Powell, encouraged his
old union, the PSA, to facilitate the formation of a rival union, which the
DHBs could use to undermine the bargaining power of the RDA. Certainly, the
almost total silence of the CTU on the increasingly vulnerable position of the
RDA, vis-à-vis the DHBs, did little to encourage alternative explanations for Wagstaff’s
unwillingness to become involved in the dispute. His explanation? The RDA were
not affiliated to the CTU. What happened to the junior doctors and their troublesome advocate was not, according to its President, the CTU’s business.
Other affiliates, most particularly
the two unions most closely associated with the RDA: the Association of
Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) and the NZNO; begged to differ. Urged on by
private sector unions anxious for the CTU to express its solidarity with the
junior doctors, the ASMS and the NZNO took a resolution to the National
Affiliate Council (NAC) of the CTU held in Wellington on Thursday, 28 February.
It read:
That
the CTU expresses concern in the strongest possible terms to the district
health boards for the collective bargaining strategy adopted in their MECA
negotiations with the Resident Doctors’ Association which includes (a) the
undermining of a union that is in bargaining with the potential effect of
‘union busting’ and (b) taking advantage of the vulnerability of resident
doctors due to their dependence on changing DHB employment for their
training. Further, the CTU urges the Government to urgently require DHBs
to discontinue this strategy forthwith and to communicate this resolution to
the DHBs and Government.
The resolution was carried 9 votes to 4, with 2
abstentions.
Sources close to the NAC have stressed the importance
of this vote. They have noted Wagstaff’s implacable opposition to its passage
and the vehemence with which he argued against its adoption. They have also
pointed out that while the PSA and its usual allies, the PPTA and the NZEI,
stood with Wagstaff, at least two of his normally reliable allies, the E Tu
union, servicing workers in the manufacturing and service industries, along
with the Dairy Workers, chose to abstain.
Wagstaff is reported to have pressured the nurses
into withdrawing their support for the junior doctors, but the latter, strongly
supported by the “senior doctors” of the ASMS, held firm. Joining them in the
vote were the First Union, covering transport, warehousing and retail workers,
Unite, covering casino workers, security guards and fast-food workers, and the
unions covering the maritime and railway industries.
The carrying of the resolution thus represented a
rare assertion of the interests of private sector workers within the CTU – as
well as an important breaking-of-ranks within the usually dominant “Big Four”
public sector unions. Together, Wagstaff’s opponents have delivered a stunning
blow to his presidential mana, greatly reducing his chances of being
re-elected to a second term as leader of the CTU.
Wagstaff’s defeat is also a defeat for the Minister
of Health, David Clark, as well as Labour’s ministers in the Coalition
Government. The National Party may decry the upsurge in industrial action of
the past 12 months, but if they’d realised how assertive the trade unions might
become if the CTU is led by someone less steeped in the machinations of
Wellington, they might have held their tongues. If Wagstaff and the PSA
continue to be outvoted, both the Government and the Opposition should get
ready for “trouble at mill”.
As Al Jolson puts in The Jazz Singer, the
world’s first ‘talking picture’:
“You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
This
essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Monday, 4 February 2019.
The CTU has lost its way.
ReplyDeleteThe leadership is shown to have lost its way forward even with a Labour led Government.
Mumbles and grumbles is not leadership.
Being grossly overpaid for doing little is their flag.
Pity that the PPTA wouldn't take a stand. But then it's hampered by members who work for the posher schools, and of course the correspondence school, which has the largest membership – many of whom used to be at least, the wives of those PSA Mandarins. I was once saddened by an old Unionist who claimed they were the most effective union in the country. Because if that's so, Unionism is in a sad state. Which it is as we know.
ReplyDeleteAnd Chris you forgot the policeman's union which IMO is the most effective one in the country, given that we always seem to be in the middle of a crime wave when they need more policeman or more money.
Funny, there seems to be some sort of correlation between the percentage of workers with union membership in a country and wages. This is no doubt why employers want to keep membership low.
Illuminating. It is disappointing that the teaching profession cannot find its way to support the resident doctors. They both come under high expectations and regular criticism from many and work hard in their roles and are expected to do super-human hours to meet demanding targets for a middling pay.
ReplyDeleteThis is expected by governments whose target is to keep their jobs by fudging every issue. The demands of civil servants and their private operatives, who actually run the country show many as petty dictators. They administer their roles to their own satisfaction, with a show of consultation and very little concern of the needs of small business, and enterprise, and the public in general and how to serve them best.
So the workers, both public and private, need to watch each other's back.
Has there been any analysis done of private sector vs. public sector wages over the last forty years, covering the period before and after Rogernomics?
ReplyDeleteI ask because it seems to me that the folk who have slipped behind the most have been the very people - teachers, public nurses and public doctors - who have slipped the most. The ones represented by "public" unions.
In terms of Public Choice Theory that would not be surprising as such unions would, over time, place political objectives such as Wagstaff's machinations, above old-fashioned economic ones like getting wage increases and improved work conditions.
Perhaps having a much higher proportion of education and healthcare in the private sector would be an improvement. :)
Tom Hunter
ReplyDeleteYou have read your textbooks. I too have read some, and you seem to be quoting the line predicted by those wishing to retain public provision of education and health. They predicted that the RWs would run down government services as much as possible when in power, and then point to how slow or unreliable it was and could obviously do better under private provision.
It is a cliche'. And you are the perfect person to present it. That is rather like a business practice, the opposition is undermined by claims of a better product at a cheaper price from a bigger business or one with deep pockets, until the undercut business becomes insolvent. Then the major business has a nice open 'level playing field' for its games.