Tag: Industrial Relations

 KEITH LOCKE (Green) to the Minister of Labour: Why is the Government introducing legislation to restrict union access to workplaces when the Department of Labour advises that there is no “widespread evidence” of union representatives misusing the current system?

The National Party announced at its Annual Conference what Russel Norman described as “setting employment relations in New Zealand back two decades”.  If passed the changes will take away workers' rights, remove protections, cut pay, reduce holidays and diminish access to sick leave.  The NZ Council of Trade Unions is leading a fightback against these proposals, and has the full support of the Green Party.  There will be lots to do - submissions to write, rallies and marches to attend, and industrial action to support – if we are to defeat these attacks on workers’ rights 

The Green Party will be strongly supporting this bill, the Employment Relations (Statutory Minimum Redundancy Entitlements) Amendment Bill. If it passes, and I hope that it does, it will correct a major injustice for workers in this country: being laid off without any redundancy.

The Green Party opposes this bill because rest and meal breaks are important, not only to prevent injuries and death, but also so that people can just have a rest, be human, and not be slaves to a clock, working hour after hour without proper rest.

Proposed changes to four weeks annual leave will see New Zealanders' family life suffer for little or no productivity gains, Green Party Industrial Relations spokesperson Keith Locke said today.

Green MPs today joined union actions across the country against the wage freeze in the public sector.

KEITH LOCKE (Green): It is somewhat disappointing, after my colleague Sue Bradford put this bill in, and after it got though the first reading and went on to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee, that the bill has been rather gutted at that committee. It is very much a fifty-fifty sort of bill, a half-hearted bill, in the way it has come back from the select committee.