Plans to punish workers for working to rule will lead to more full strike action, says the CTU. File photo. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
The government's plans to dock employee's pay if they work to rule as part of industrial action will cause more full strikes and lead to greater divisions between workers and employers, says the Council of Trade Unions (CTU).
Workplace Relations Minister and ACT Party MP Brooke van Velden yesterday announced plans to reintroduce pay deductions for partial strikes.
A partial strike is where the employee is still doing some form of their work. Employers have been banned from reducing the worker's pay since the previous Labour-led government removed that power in 2018.
Van Velden said she the move was necessary as disruption caused by partial strikes "should not continue without consequence".
She said recent examples of partial strikes causing disruption included hospital-based MRI technicians limiting the number of scans per day in August; teacher strikes disrupting student learning last year; non-uniformed Defence personnel working to rule and taking coordinated breaks; and train drivers in Wellington working to rule in September.
But CTU acting president Rachel Mackintosh said people who worked to rule were still actually at work and completing work that was required of them.
"So allowing an employer to deduct pay for that is allowing employers to fail to pay people who are working. So that's part of the reason, but the other reason is that partial strike action is a more limited way of trying to achieve a deal.
"People only take strike action if they unable to reach a deal purely by negotiating for decent terms and conditions, so people don't do it lightly. And partial strike action is a way that is not as extreme as full strike action, and is a perfectly legitimate tool in collective bargaining."
Govt plans to dock peoples pay if they strike - unions
While van Velden said the government's moves would deescalate situations, Mackintosh said the opposite would happen.
"In fact it will escalate and it will be much more likely that people will do full stoppages if they have the risk of losing pay for partial strike action."
She said the minister's comments highlighted just how much employers relied on peoples' voluntary and unpaid labour to meet the productivity goals that they had.
"And the point is that people are still working, they're still doing required work for the required hours. They're still doing the work that they should be paid to do."
Mackintosh said it was another example of the current coalition government's pattern of reducing workers' rights.
"The reason that workers have the ability to take industrial action is because of the recognition of the lack of power that workers have. It's not like a commercial negotiation, so when workers are negotiating for decent terms and conditions, they have this right, at the moment, that is recognised internationally, and to remove that is outrageous, it shouldn't happen.
"It escalates industrial relations, it creates more division, it creates a situation where if people can't reach a deal around the table, and they can't take partial strike action for fear of this kind of retribution and unreasonable reaction, then what's left to people is full strike action and far more disruption."
Mackintosh said she hoped that political parties would vote this Bill down.
"They should stop it and our government should honour their obligations internationally and to workers to have full rights to organise and collectively bargain.
"We are urging all political parties to put a stop to it."
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