5 July, 2002
Labour's employment relations policy should sound alarm bells for right-thinking voters considering voting for Labour
to keep the Greens out. They need to think carefully about what they are signing up to.
A Labour government will amend the Employment Relations Act to comply with the ILO conditions allowing general strikes
for social and economic reasons. That will make the CTU far more powerful than current membership and laws allow.
A Labour government will introduce compulsory redundancy payments when businesses are sold or transferred.
A Labour government will establish a huge wage-fixing bureaucracy under the guise of equal pay for work of equal value.
The body could for example determine that a carpenter does equal work to a car park attendant and fix wages accordingly.
A Labour government will set compulsory redundancy provisions by a formula of x years times y weeks for a payout when a
worker terminates employment.
Voting Labour to keep the greens out is a nonsense. They will be there anyway.
Voters choosing to vote against their instincts could be responsible for setting this country back a generation.
Industrial law like this will not see New Zealand grow past the 2 percent economy we currently seem stalled on.
The message has to be clear: if you vote for what you don't want, you'll get what you don't want.
How dumb is that?
Ends