Dan Bidois this week in Parliament confirmed what we have always known, that National want there to be no unions around. From Hansard:
We need a flexible employment framework for New Zealand’s future. We need unions that really—quite frankly, the New Zealand public have voted with their feet overwhelmingly in favour of no unions, and the employment framework that we want to see, on this side of the House, is a place where no unions are around, where in fact the power is given to the workers of New Zealand rather than to the unions.
National’s obsession with unions is difficult to understand. The good old days when the Engineers union or the Boilermakers Union could shut down a site at will and did so regularly are long gone. Things have changed that dramatically that the middle class unions like the various Teachers unions and the PSA are now among the strongest.
But National would prefer a union movement that was that weak it could then discard it.
Their crocodile tears about workers rights and being empowered are so transparent. They are not interested in the rights of workers. If they were they would not have led the wholesale attack on wages and conditions that they have engaged in since 1990.
Bidois’s honesty was refreshing. But his willingness to engage in Trump like rhetoric against the Union movement is of deep concern.
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