Last week in its report on Wayne Mapp's Employment Relations (Probationary Employment) Amendment Bill, the Justice and Electoral Committee raised concerns about the spread of "no win, no fee" employment lawyers and their effects on personal grievance claims. Today, EPMU secretary Andrew Little echoed those concerns, and supported a ban on such advocates. His reason?
“That’s what unions are for,” he said. “Members with a genuine case against their employers get top-quality legal representation, and they don’t have to pay for it.”
Unfortunately, not everyone belongs to a union. And while I'd like to see more people joining, banning the easiest way for non-union members to enforce their rights under employment law is not a fair way of encouraging them. Neither is it likely to advance the cause of worker's rights. Instead, it will be an outright regressive move, ensuring that the employment rights of the majority of New Zealand workers are unenforceable, and therefore in practice nonexistent.
If unions think they offer a better outcome than "no win, no fee" advocates, then maybe they should advertise the fact, rather than trying to nobble their opposition and harm the interests of non-union workers.
13 comments:
Yes, if one wants to say that X method of achieving a result is bad, one should attempt to point out a real alternative.
Since I was "made redundant" from a job I'd held for 7 years in the dark days of the employment law "reform" ('96), I belonged to the EPMU at the time and their wonderful lawyers did not pursue my claim for unfair dismissal, I think they need to look at casting out the beam in their own eyes.
Perhaps the EPMU've gotten better now that unions have more clout, but I'm not going to waste 7 years of subs on them again. For people who are casually employed, paying union subs is barely an option anyway.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/01/2006 06:46:00 PM
Unions have been professionalised for at least a generation now. There'd be barely any blue-collar union officials left who've actually worked at the occupation their union supposedly represents. Andrew Little's attitude is typical of the insular and self-serving mindset of an out of touch and increasingly irrelevant elite.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/01/2006 07:45:00 PM
woppo, I am an EPMU delegate and unlike you I have concrete experience of what clearly you hate in the abstract. I can state with some certainty that the only out of touc, self serving and irrelevant elite is your fine self and the bosses.
trix, one of the biggest issues facing unions is resourcing. In my workplace, explaining to newly unionised workers that the union is not some Soviet financed monolith but actually an underfunded organisation with over-worked reps fighting multiple battles against well funded corporates is like seeing revelations dawning in the eyes of babes. The hysterical opposition to unions on the right is largely to blame for this IMHO. I am sorry that your case wasn't pursued, but I am sure it wasn't through lack of diligence but rather lack of resources from a movement that seven years ago was at the very nadir of its fortunes.
The EPMU is amongst the most modernised and progressive of the unions. For buck, you now get a real bang and I've personally got a real kick out of seeing the dawning of confidence and empowerment that increasing numbers of people get when they join the union and the union helps them for the first time in an issue with the employer. Make no mistake, the unions are getting on a roll and thats why more and more secret cash is sloshing into National's coffers from big business desperate to preserve their big profits.
I understand where Andrew Little is coming from. For the Union movement, solidarity in the face of the money, power and resources of the bosses is everything. Every individual who goes it alone is a loss to the collective strength of the movement. Solidarity is EVERYTHING in the union movement.
Posted by Sanctuary : 11/01/2006 08:56:00 PM
Sanctuary:
Well, that works both ways. Of course, Mr. Little could (whisper it) make half his salary performance based - with those criteria determined by the membership? "50% of my salary depends on 5% more in your pay packets" sound snappy enough? Then again, I think there's several hundred EPMU members at Air New Zealand who would be quite happy to still have jobs come the new year...
Oh, and before you try and mutter "well, you're a rightie you'd say that"... I've chosen to belong to a union for most of my working life.
Posted by Craig Ranapia : 11/01/2006 09:23:00 PM
Sanctuary, you may be an exemplary and hardworking unionist, but you're certainly no psychic. Ever been in the situation where your only comeback is a no-win-no-fee lawyer? Obviously not. Ever worked in a two-employee workplace, the sort of establishment where joining a union such as yours is a total waste of time, and been unfairly dismissed? Of course you haven't. Ever had a real job, apart from a bit of holiday work experience while learning about solidarity-in-the-abstract while attending union school? Unlikely.
I know from years of paid-up membership that unions are effective in big workplaces. It's the thousands of hole-in-the-wall enterprises so prevalent in present day NZ that unions such as yours have dumped into the too-hard basket. Attempting to rob people you're incapable of effectively representing of an effective means of redress is cynical and self-serving.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/01/2006 11:13:00 PM
The UNITE union is quite good at supporting the smaller worksites. I am a lifelong union supporter and have no time for whingers who are old enough to know better and make petty complaints about unions. (The union is YOU and your fellow members not the paid officials, get organised, unions should not be some work place equivalent ot the Automobile association).
However for younger people the backwash of rogernomics and the Bolger/Shipley years has delivered a generation that is barely aware of what unions are about and it may take a generation to fix that which is what the EPMU and NDU are tring to do.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/02/2006 09:45:00 AM
"the backwash of rogernomics and the Bolger/Shipley years has delivered a generation that is barely aware of what unions are about . . ."
When a self-proclaimed unionist resorts to this sort of sneering condescenscion towards the people they're supposed to represent, is it any wonder that many workers have turned to more effective forms of redress.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/02/2006 06:32:00 PM
"...It's the thousands of hole-in-the-wall enterprises so prevalent in present day NZ that unions such as yours have dumped into the too-hard basket..."
woppo, stop feeling so freaking sorry for yourself. Have you ever bothered to stop for five minutes and work out what the EPMU achieves for your $6.50 a fortnight? They don't have squillions of corporate dollars. They don't have the resources of big business. Don't sit at the back of the room whinging that the union has done nothing for you. Get off your ass and make it happen at your worksite.
Posted by Sanctuary : 11/02/2006 08:11:00 PM
"Have you ever bothered to stop for five minutes and work out what the EPMU achieves for your $6.50 a fortnight?"
Buys an empty sermon from a drone such as yourself.
Took me all of five seconds.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/02/2006 10:52:00 PM
The point you're missing is that the "no win, no fee" advocates are not about workplace justice or even getting the best outcome for the people they represent. They are about making a buck off people at a difficult and vulnerable time for them, i.e. when they've just lost their job. The only outcome these advocates want is money (half for them, half for the punter), so reinstatement is never pursued. And if that's impractical for someone sacked in a small workplace, then getting the boss to front up and make amends in other ways (all equally humiliating) are never pursued. Only cash will do, and ideally quickly because these advocates have a lifestyle to maintain! Those who seek to defend the right of "no win, no fee" advocates are defending the ultimate in commodification of personal distress - everything really is for sale, even my loss of dignity and my humiliation. What great left principles these are!
Posted by Anonymous : 11/03/2006 08:06:00 AM
Woppo: I wouldn't say its contempt - simply a statement of fact. Just as people have grown up now never really knowing or only knowing in the abstract that (say) tertiary education was once free, or that homosexuality once illegal, the much lower presence of unions means that people are less aware that they exist, what they do, and how to join one.
This is a tremendous challenge for the union movement, and it isn't one which is going to disappear overnight. Which means that Little's solution of "let them join a union" is rather akin to Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake".
Posted by Idiot/Savant : 11/03/2006 09:00:00 AM
Tane: I agree, it is a problem. But leaving people with no means of enforcing their rights whatsoever is a bigger one. And that's the outcome I want to avoid.
The naked fact here is that the focus on monetary settlements means that "no win, no fee" advocates are (as an institution) failing to represent their clients adequately. The problem again is that those clients tend not to have the resources to pursue existing avenues of complaint. There are solutions - I understand the government is looking at a licensing system - but I think really the government needs to make a free mediation service widely available for those who don't belong to unions but need the help.
As for unions, I think they provide an excellent service in this area. They provide free advice, and even if they can't organise a strike in your workplace for a 5% payrise, they'll help you out if you get in trouble. Rather than demanding that non-union workers be stripped of the means of enforcing their rights, they should sell those facts, and start selling themselves as effectively an employment law insurance scheme in addition to their other roles.
Posted by Idiot/Savant : 11/03/2006 09:10:00 AM
So why not just bump up government funding mediation services and community organisations such as the Workers' Rights Service? Then we can get rid of the scumbag "no-win no-fee" advocates without removing the means for exploited workers to seek redress.
Because I assure you that disempowering exploited workers is the last thing unions want!
Posted by Anonymous : 11/03/2006 09:26:00 AM
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