E tū slams Business NZ for making 'false claims' on Fair Pay Agreements

Thousands of striking secondary school teachers march down Queen Street in central Auckland protesting for fair pay. Photo / Wayne Drought

The E tū union has shot back at a Business NZ campaign against Fair Pay Agreements, accusing the pro-business lobby group of making "false claims" about the agreements.

E tū assistant national secretary Annie Newman said claims made by Business NZ in the campaign were "false" and "inaccurate".

On Tuesday, Business NZ launched a campaign to get the Government to back down on the agreements.

Business NZ chief executive Kirk Hope said FPAs were "at their heart" about "compulsion and mean New Zealand employees and their employers lose control over the way they work and their right to negotiate their own employment conditions".

Under the Government's proposal, unions can begin an FPA negotiation if they get support from 1000 workers who would be covered by the agreement, 10 per cent of a workforce, or meet a public interest test. People do not need to be union members to count towards those tests, and they do not need to join a union to be covered by an FPA.

The Government disputes the idea that the agreements are compulsory for workers because employees are not required to join a union to have their conditions covered by an agreement. However, the agreements set compulsory settings for employers, who will have to abide by the minimum standards they create.

Hope said that FPAs "will take away control from Kiwi workers and give it to faceless officials in Wellington who will decide how you work, when you work and how much you will get paid – without any idea who you are and without your consent".

Newman disputed this, saying that the agreements were created through negotiation. Bureaucrats would only get involved if negotiations failed.

Newman said the agreements were about both "parties setting conditions", rather than compulsion, and it was not fair to say the agreements would lead to faceless bureaucrats setting conditions.

She said there was "a sense that people are being told what to do" and that "people are going to have things determined for them".

Instead, employers and employees would be able to negotiate the agreements and both had a degree of control over how that negotiation played out, and whether it was successful.