Out of the Goodness of the Employers’ Big, Generous Hearts.

Doing Us All A Favour: Since the 1990s, a conviction has taken hold in the minds of New Zealand employers that they are the country’s biggest philanthropists. Far from acknowledging their role in the processes of ruthless commercial exchange, these employers speak of themselves as the selfless creators of jobs for their fellow citizens. Not for profit, you understand, but out of the goodness of their big, generous hearts.

A FEW YEARS AGO, Helen Kelly delivered one of the best speeches I had ever heard at a Labour Party Conference. It was on the subject of employers. The gist of her address was that, since the 1990s, a conviction had taken hold in the minds of New Zealand employers that they were the country’s biggest philanthropists. Far from acknowledging their role in the processes of ruthless commercial exchange, these employers spoke of themselves as the selfless creators of jobs for their fellow citizens. Not for profit, you understand, but out of the goodness of their big, generous hearts.

Trade unions, in the opinion of these unsung social heroes, were doing everything possible to thwart the employers unbounded philanthropy. These subversive organisations were determined to prevent the employing class from carrying on their good works. Somehow, these miscreant socialists had got it into their heads that capitalism was about exploitation. Such complete nonsense! As if all that unstinting effort could be expended in the name of something as vulgar as making money!

It was a great speech.

I was reminded of Helen’s insights only this morning as I read an opinion piece penned by Leicester Gouwland (NZ Herald, Business Section, 5/3/18) a partner in the accounting and financial services firm, Crowe Horwarth. Gouwland’s bugbear du jour was the Labour-NZF-Green government’s legislation abolishing the 90-day trial period in businesses employing more than 20 people.

He began his argument by citing the less-than-supportive responses to the government’s legislation from both the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Treasury. Why did the government ignore their advice? And why did it give them so little time to prepare it?

To anyone not already sold on neoliberalism, the answers to those questions are blindingly obvious. Gouwland’s indignation is, however, a useful pointer to just how much reliance employers now place on the agencies of the state to defend the “reforms” of the 1980s and 90s from any attempt to roll them back.

These comments were only the hors d’oeuvres to Gouwland’s feast, however. The main course was delivered in his response to the revelation (from no less a source than the 2014/15 National Survey of Employers) that 24 percent of workers taken on under the 90-day rule were dismissed during the period of the trial.

Just think about that. One worker in four was dismissed from their job arbitrarily and without the opportunity for legal redress.

Now read Gouwland’s interpretation of his astonishing statistic.

“This high percentage suggests the trial period is working and highlights the risk that employers take. It also suggests limiting its use will cost employers significant time and money to terminate these employees.”

Seldom have I encountered a more damning illustration of the employers’ mindset in relation to the rights of their employees. Workers are not there to be trained, assisted, counselled and, where all of the foregoing interventions have proved fruitless, warned that any further refusals to amend their behaviour will put their continued employment at risk. No, they are simply there to be “terminated”.

That the Employment Court has ruled over and over again that it is unlawful for employers to arbitrarily or constructively dismiss their workers, makes not the slightest difference to the employers who, as Helen Kelly so wryly pointed out, genuinely believe they are doing their workers a favour by “giving” them a job.

Logically-speaking, to “give” someone a job implies that the normal contractual relationship between “master” and “servant” has been by-passed. Someone who has been “given” a job is, presumably, not required to perform the labour that the job entails. Instead, the worker will be paid regardless of whether or not she fulfils her half of the bargain.

Now, this may happen when former politicians are installed on the boards of state-owned enterprises; or, when the clueless son of the boss is given a well-remunerated title without responsibility; but it almost never happens when someone applies to do a job of work essential to the efficient operation of the business – and its profits.

People are not “given” jobs, they are hired: and if the contract is one of service, then they cannot be dismissed without reasonable cause. The 90-day trial period was nothing more nor less than a legislative device for excusing the employers from their obligation to uphold and honour the contractual relationship with their employees.

Gouwland’s unwitting exposure of the employer mindset continues.

“An argument supporting the removal of the 90-day trial period is that it provides employee protection. It is hard to understand this argument as any non-performing employees will now need to go through a performance process. So where is the protection. Termination of employment is only delayed.”

Did Gouwland really just suggest that the purpose of the “performance process” is to facilitate the “termination of employment”?

Clearly, Mr Gouwland did not receive the memo about employers being the country’s biggest philanthropists. We miscreant socialists should, however, be grateful to the author of this extraordinary opinion piece. Seldom have workers been presented with a more compelling argument for joining a trade union!

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 6 March 2018.

The Right To Say - "No."

ALL OUR HUMAN RIGHTS derive from the power to say just one word: “No.” If we cannot speak that one word – and be heeded – then we have no rights.

 

This right to refuse does not give us licence to do exactly as we please; but those to whom we entrust the authority to limit the citizen’s right to refuse must always be able to justify its use.

 

Jami-Lee Ross, the National Party MP for Botany, will soon introduce a bill to Parliament limiting the right of workers to say “No” to their bosses. His innocuous-sounding Employment Relations  (Continuity of Labour) Amendment bill, by authorising employers to recruit temporary staff to perform the duties of striking or locked-out employees, undermines, fundamentally, the latter’s right to refuse to work for the pay offered and under the conditions proposed.

 

Withdrawing their labour, as a means of inducing their employer to make a better offer on wages and conditions, is the only truly effective negotiating tactic available to employees.

 

Not that “going on strike” is an easy decision to make. Obviously, while a strike is in progress the workers involved will not be paid. The impact on the strikers’ families is readily imagined.

 

Nor are strikes easy on employers. While its workforce refuses to perform their normal duties, no business can function effectively.

 

This is, of course, the point. By imposing a financial penalty on both sides, the strike provides a strong incentive for the contending parties to resume their seats at the negotiating table.

 

One’s opinion on the rights and wrongs of going on strike is one of the great differentiators of politics. This is because it goes to the heart of how Left and Right define the legitimate limits of the individual’s rights. More simply: in which circumstances are we entitled – both individually and collectively – to say “No.”

 

It’s a paradoxical question. In order for the individual employee’s right of refusal to have any practical effect, it must first be joined with every other employee’s right to say “No.”

 

One worker, alone, is seldom able to negotiate with his or her employer from a position of strength. “If you don’t like the wages and conditions on offer here,” the boss will say, “there’s the door!” You may, of course, be lucky and possess a skill in short supply and which the business cannot do without. If so, then the boss will do all he or she can to persuade you to say “Yes.”

 

But, if the work on offer is easily mastered, the individual applicant’s position is hopeless. Take the job, or remain unemployed, becomes the choice. And if that is your choice, then be ready for the Ministry of Social Development to withdraw any assistance you may have been receiving as a “Jobseeker”.

 

Now the choice becomes: take the job, or starve. And that is no choice at all.

 

It is only through a union that the individual employee’s power to say “No.” can be realised. In the words of Ralph Chaplin’s celebrated union anthem, Solidarity Forever:

 

When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run

There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;

Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one?

But the union makes us strong.

 

To conservative politicians like Jami-Lee Ross, however, this strategy of preserving the individual’s rights by aggregating them into a single unit of advocacy and assertion is anathema. Rather than interpret the union’s collective voice positively – as a way of amplifying each member’s individual “No!” – the Right hears only a collective roar drowning out the minority’s refusal to be aggregated.

 

But that is not all the Right hears. In the collective voicing of workers’ demands, the conservative detects a baleful bass note of systemic danger. The winning of individual rights by means of aggregation may begin in the workplace, but what guarantee do the defenders of private enterprise have that it will stay there? Once individual citizens work out that they’re much more likely to secure the good things of life by working together, than they are by struggling alone, the foundations of capitalism itself begin to crack and crumble.

 

And so, Jami-Lee Ross proposes a measure that will render every union in the country powerless. Even if 100 percent of the employees on a worksite vote to strike, their employer will, nevertheless, be empowered to over-rule their unanimous shout of “No!” – by hiring temporary replacement workers.

 

If Mr Ross’s private member’s bill becomes law, then the only recourse available to those workers who still insist upon their right to say “No!” will be to physically prevent these replacement workers; these strike-breakers; these scabs – from entering the workplace.

 

Then, the only justification for Mr Ross’s newly minted authority will be the justification of force.

 

“No.”

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 25 June 2013.