National’s Employment Contracts Act offended conventional wisdom about union-employer relations sufficiently to unite unions, the Labour Party, social activists, church leaders and even some employers in fierce opposition to what was seen as recipe for industrial chaos. The legislation was steered through the select committee process by Max Bradford, without losing too many of its teeth. It would still stop centralised, national bargaining by unions, allow employees to choose their own bargaining agents, give industrial agreements the status of binding contracts – and reintroduce voluntary unionism, scrapped by Labour in 1984. The result, to many people’s surprise, was dramatic reduction in industrial stoppages, greater productivity, steady increases in job numbers and in average weekly earnings. By mid-1992 90 percent of contracts were being negotiated at the enterprise level.
Tom Scott, Evening Post, 24 April 1991
From the NZ Cartoon Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library, P O Box 12349, Wellington, Tel/fax 04-474 3154
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