Unions on the comeback trail

Union action in 2005 bears no resemblance to the bitter disputes of the 70s and 80s. Picture / Richard Robinson

After spending the 1990s in free-fall, latest figures appear to show union numbers are making a comeback - welcome news to the Council of Trade Unions on the opening day of its biennial conference in Wellington today.

However, delegates at the conference will need to discuss strategies for further increasing the membership drive as a closer examination of the data reveals that membership as a percentage of the workforce is barely keeping pace with the burgeoning job market.

A survey of trade union membership by the Industrial Relations Centre at Victoria University shows union membership increased by 17 per cent in the five years to 2004.

During that time more than 50,000 workers signed up to join a union, with paid-up membership last year alone surging by 12,427.

However, the statistics show that membership is only just keeping up with the growing job market.

The percentage of working New Zealanders who belong to a union has remained relatively static at between 21 and 22 per cent since 1998.

Of the estimated 1.68 million workers in New Zealand last year, 358,058 were union members.

Victoria University Professor George Lafferty told the Herald that before the introduction of the now-defunct Employment Contracts Act in the early 1990s, union membership in New Zealand ran at 43 per cent of the workforce.

The act clearly had an influence in reducing the numbers, but so too did a change in the structure of the workforce and the changing lifestyles of New Zealanders.

The casualisation of hours in the workforce had a large influence on declining union membership, as did the proliferation of part-time, temporary and seasonal jobs - "called jump-jobs, such as pizza delivery", Professor Lafferty said.

Low-skilled, low-paid jobs such as these came about because of changing lifestyles and increasing consumption.

He said there was a strong correlation between the type of Government and the strength of unions.

In the 1990s unions had little influence on policy development. Now campaigns for higher wages had a good profile because of more receptive legislation and a different political climate.

"In addition, unions have been organising better and making themselves more attractive in the workplace. The highly successful Fair Pay campaign by the New Zealand Nurses Organisation is an excellent example of this," Professor Lafferty said.

The high-profile 5 per cent in 2005 campaign by the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union had also made employees more inclined to join up.

The EPMU and CTU had changed the face of union membership by becoming less aggressive. The strikes of 2005 bore no resemblance to the highly controversial and drawn out ones of the 1970s and 1980s.

One of the biggest issues unions still faced was the problem of "free-riding".

Unions often negotiated pay and condition settlements that flowed on to non-union members, and this often went unnoticed by a large number of workers across different industries.

CTU secretary Carol Beaumont said the 200 or so people at the conference this week would need to consider how more in-roads could be made into large private sector industries, particularly in areas like tourism, hospitality and accommodation.

Good progress had been made in the supermarket, movie theatre, and casino industries.

"Certainly our approach is to move away from [individual] enterprises to looking at industries as a whole."

The CTU wanted to convince decision-makers that a low-wage economy was not going to attract skilled workers and produce a more productive workplace.

"I think there are people in the business community who are still stuck in the conflict model of the 1990s, which was a cost-minimisation approach to employment."

Although there was a free transtasman job market, New Zealand's average wage remained 25 per cent below that of Australia's.

Managers needed to understand that investing in people, not driving down wages, was the key to the high-performing economies of other firms, industries and countries, Ms Beaumont said.