Legislation , mediation and unions :

This paper examines the effectiveness of recent New Zealand legislation in addressing issues of workplace disputes, with a particular focus on the role of unions. One of the most crucial aspects of the Employment Relations Act, introduced by the new Labour government in 2000, was its provision for mediation services to employers and employees. This initiative was explicitly intended to provide a quick, inexpensive method of solving workplace conflicts, in contrast to often costly and lengthy legal proceedings. The main principle was that conflicts are best settled by the parties themselves, with a minimum of third party involvement. In the paper, we provide an overview of current mediation provisions and how they differ from the provisions under the Employment Contracts Act 1991. We then go on to examine the practical outcomes from mediation: to what extent have the Act's stated goals been achieved and how might mediation processes be improved? The paper highlights how cases that are reported as 'individual grievances' may be better understood as collective issues requiring collective solutions. Drawing on concepts of worker voice and silence, we then examine the low rates of reported grievances among the most vulnerable workers, particularly those in small workplaces with low rates of unionisation. We illustrate how this apparent silence might be better understood in terms of the power relations between employer and employee. We conclude by suggesting that, while mediation procedures have been a qualified success, they should be supplemented by greater union involvement and more comprehensive collective agreements that address the power imbalances often fundamental to workplace conflict. 1. Background to the current legislation During the final decade of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, both New Zealand and Australia were at the forefront of social and economic reform internationally. Integral to this reform was the establishment in both countries of centralised conciliation and arbitration, with a guaranteed bargaining role for unions. With respect to New Zealand, the First Labour Government introduced significant further legislation in the 1930s, including the 40-hour week and compulsory unionism. For the following five decades, a tripartite 'historic compromise' between government, business and unions underpinned a highly regulated, centralised industrial relations system. However, during the 1980s the Fourth Labour government initiated the 'New Zealand experiment', which ushered in a process of widespread deregulation, decentralisation and privatisation. It was a National Party government, though, which fully applied this process to the decentralisation and …