Garth George writes that after the Labour years, activists are relishing the chance to take their fight back to the street.
How exciting! The trade unions are stirring. Already wisps of smoke are wafting from their nostrils and sooner rather than later they will be fully awake and breathing fire and brimstone.
After a decade of hibernation during which they poked their heads above the parapet only sporadically, their leaders are
girding their loins.
They're strapping on their armour, sharpening their swords, restringing their bows and fletching new arrows to do battle with a National Government and the nation's employers.
And so they should. They've had it far too easy for far too long under a Labour Government for whom the workers are always right and the bosses invariably wrong.
The Andrew Littles, Matt McCartens, Graham Cooks et al must be rubbing their hands with glee that after all these years they have a target to attack - the John Key Government's determination to change a few things in employment law and practice.
Then there's Sue Bradford. She must be beside herself with joy at having a protest to get stuck into.
Freed from the constraints of parliamentary decorum (such as it is) she showed us at the weekend that she's still up for a bit of stoush.
It was deja vu on Sunday when she led a cohort of 40 protesters in a breach of the security lines outside SkyCity and proudly proclaimed that she had been "belted in the face" by police. "I'm sure I will end up with a few bruises," she enthused.
And how long will it be before another famous name (or notorious, depending which side you're on) in this country's trade unionism will be joining the front ranks - the National Distribution Union's Karl Andersen, son and heir of Bill Andersen who led that union for as long as he was able and died without ever once compromising his socialist principles?
These men and women (with the exception perhaps of Ms Bradford) are, of course, but a pale imitation of their predecessors - the leaders of the old Federation of Labour, the wharfies, the miners, the meatworkers, the seamen, the railwaymen.
These were tough, uncompromising, resolute men who for decades held the nation to ransom at a whim and stymied any chance of real economic growth - until they were blown out of the water by the National Government's Employment Contracts Act in 1991, one of the most significant and far-reaching pieces of legislation ever to be passed by the New Zealand Parliament.
Although for many it did have a downside. As another inveterate stirrer and protester, John Minto, puts it in an internet blog: "The Employment Contracts Act made union organising much more difficult.
"There was a big drop in union membership, national awards disappeared and pay and conditions of employment worsened dramatically ...
"While real wages decreased, households maintained income by both partners getting jobs and working longer hours for less pay.
"Workers and the organised union movement have not recovered and are still on the back foot."
The positive effects on our economy have, of course, been enormous, but the disintegration of family life as a result of both parents having to work to make ends meet in a low-wage economy has been gravely deleterious to our society.
Nevertheless, there's no doubt a shake-up of employment law is long overdue and I'm surprised that the Government has waited this long to address it, particularly the personal grievance dispute procedures which have become dangerously skewed in favour of employees.
As this newspaper observed quite rightly in an editorial this week: "Too often, employers have looked askance at the way Employment Relations Authority processes and decisions have come to the aid of workers who have been dismissed for perfectly valid reasons. A rebalancing is long overdue."
Having so often been astonished at the utter crankiness of many of the ERA's published decisions, I can only applaud National's move to change the test for justified dismissal, to allow the authority to throw out cases with no merit and to pay more attention to the right outcome, rather than "pedantic scrutiny" of its dot every "i" and cross every "t" process.
As for the extension of the 90-day trial for new workers being extended to all employers, quite frankly I can't see the problem.
Sure there will be the odd employer who will, in ignorance or stupidity, misuse this provision but the cloth-cap attitude of unions that all bosses are bastards is just nonsense.
As is their insistence that they should be able to enter any premises at any time to consult a member or members without clearing it with the owner. Have they no manners?
For all that, it's good that the unions are taking the opportunity to try to prove to their members that their membership fees are worth it.
But, whatever happens, it won't rate against my memories of biking furiously before school to the bottom of my street as an 11-year-old in 1951 to wave to the convoy of Army trucks carrying soldiers and airman from their temporary digs in Invercargill to work the wharves at Bluff.
garth.george@hotmail.com
