National has a new face but no new policy

The National Party’s new leader, John Key, has recently returned from a visit to Australia and discussions with Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, confirming that the National Party plans (should it be elected to power in 2008) to stick with its current policy and change New Zealand’s industrial relations laws once again.

He is quoted as saying that ‘National had no plans to make major changes to laws‘

But he then goes onto say that National’s current policy remains in place. This policy would create a new Act merging the disastrous Employment Contracts Act of the 1990’s with the Employment Relations Act we have now.

It would remove the current emphasis on collective bargaining as a way of addressing the power imbalance between workers and employers. it would establish a 90 day no personal grievance period for anyone in a new job, change the legal processes for grievance resolution and limit union access to workplaces.

Key appears to want the public to believe what Bill Birch (Minister of Labour during the 1990s) wanted us to believe then – that none of these changes will harm us. Unfortunately workers found out to their severe disadvantage how untrue this was. So returning to 2006, John Key is telling the media that he has no plans to make (major) changes to our employment law, but he also has no plans to change National’s existing employment law policy which does propose major changes to our current employment law.

As CTU President, Ross Wilson said of Mr Key’s comments, the “devil will be in detail in the Nats’ new industrial relations approach“.   (There are also comments on this issue here by Jordan Carter and Spanblather.)

(thanks to Johnathan Ah Kit for the photo)