21 July 2006

Shedding light on union distortion

Next week Parliament will start hearing the submissions on my Bill to introduce a 90 day probation period for new employees. It will be time to hear the truth, instead of the union distortions.

Over the last two months, the EPMU, a union which is intimately intertwined with the Labour government, has spent $100,000 on blatant misinterpretation of the issue. After all the money they have spent, they barely managed a few hundred people at Parliament – and that was deemed a paid stopwork meeting (The Employment Relations Act allow two paid stopwork meetings a year). To use a stopwork meeting for a blatantly political rally is not exactly resolving contractual negotiations between employer and employees.

The Unions have been guilty of gross distortions. They are completely unaware that every OECD country has probation periods – that is a period whereby personal grievance processes are suspended. The period is just what it says – a trial where employers can see whether an employee can fit into the team. If that doesn’t happen employers should not have to pay thousands of dollars simply to end the employment contract – but that is what happens now.

With youth unemployment at 13% and Maori youth unemployment at 18%, the Bill will provide a real incentive to give more young people their best chance to get into the world of employment.

When the government’s own Small Business Advisory Group says the most vital employment laws change that is needed is a probation period you would think the government would listen. After all they claim they want to catch up to Australian living standards – but they won’t do the things that will actually boost productivity.

Instead of scaremongering, the government and the Union would do New Zealand and business a favour by listening and actually acting to boost our growth and productivity.

Pools making waves in the news again Political correctness continues to beset local authorities. Exposing ridicule has always been the best weapon against political correctness and there have been some gains. But clearly vigilance is required.

Now the issue is parents dressing their young children on the side of public pools.

A Christchurch pool has banned parents from changing their children in public, citing offence taken by some swimmers and concern about paedophiles taking photographs of naked children.

A swimming pool is an environment full of dangers including a potential lack of hygiene, unsupervised children in water and the threat of injury or drowning. Should these dangers be less of a concern than parents who are supervising their children and who choose to change them on the side of the pool for convenience and to save time?

In an effort to protect children from the evils of the world, the rights of parents have been overlooked and New Zealand moves further away from a democracy and closer to a place of political correctness. The country is made to look like a place of backward people rather than a place of innovation and insight in the international community.

New Zealanders should give a clear message to the PC busy bodies and make waves against injustices like the pc-madness shown at the public pool in Christchurch.

ENDS

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