A majority vote – not a conspiracy

By Robin Duff

The blog from Charles has a familiar ring, it was the sort of comment that was repeated in most paid meetings by some members. Despite the fact that the thoughts were aired, members voted by 4 to 1 to accept the settlement on offer.

In the same proportions they had voted to accept the original claim (developed under the Ministerial Taskforce pathway), which they had also endorsed.

Some members never did like the alternative approach to negotiations, they didn’t like the original claim and they didn’t like the settlement. That is fair enough, it is a legitimate opinion to hold. But it is silly to start attributing an outcome which such a large majority of people voted for to some sort of conspiracy and it is sad to see that the facts of what happened take second place to individual revisionism.

Plan A and Plan B were prepared months before the claim was lodged and the negotiations began. Members took part in designing claim A and claim B. The plan for progressing them was put to members in the first PUM and accepted. There was no rush and the Executive anticipated the possibility that the government would fail to meet its commitment to the Ministerial taskforce processes. We were prepared.

What did happen in this round of course was that the government reneged on the industrial arrangements which the Ministerial Taskforce in 2003 established. They did so because the costs of the objective salary mechanism and conditions improvements were higher than they were prepared to continue with. We explained to members at the second PUM that we would table claim B and that one likely outcome of this was that it might push the government into meeting claim A. That’s what happened.

At the next PUM we put the new offer to members. There was a plan B sitting there as well – it was for members to reject the offer on the table and go back to the claim for a one year settlement at 7.5%. Most members voted against this. They voted against it even after hearing arguments like those raised by Charles from the floor of the meeting. They will have done so for reasons which were valid to them and we have to respect the will and the reasons of the 80% of the members who did so.

It is not a real position to adopt to suggest that anything less than significant industrial action would have raised the offer. Whatever government is in power the Association uses its connections, its contacts with the minsters, its discussions with officials, a range of information sources and its knowledge of the government’s position and people in power to determine whether negotiations have reached the point where new money will require more pressure or actual industrial action.

The government just didn’t want to pay more than 3, 3, 3. After months of negotiation the threat of extended industrial action, not just a one-day strike, raised offer eventually to 12.5% over three years, plus significant improvements to a range of conditions. After that, and to win improvements in staffing, we were looking at serious industrial pressure.

Maybe more money would have been generated by just one day. The evidence we had at hand was that it would need more than that and we had to advise the members that that was our honest assessment of the situation. Members could have chosen to take that pathway – but in the large majority they didn’t. They had the right to make that decision, even if it was a frustration to those who would have liked to test the government out. (Note though that they’ve shown no willingness to give junior doctors more money even after 3 days of very public strikes).

There is still a lot of resentment in the government that it was pushed into the settlement that was reached. It cites the 1.4 billion dollars it cost (remember that the flow-on to primary of our settlements is automatic because of the agreement between NZEI and government that they get the same pay rates we do). There is no sense in Wellington that the Government got off lightly. That may be a perception from people who think that because the settlement wasn’t to their liking it must have been to the liking of the government. The reality is much less simplistic than that.

So, in the next round (in 18 months time we start consultation again with members over the new claim) there is no objective mechanism to work with. Members will establish the level of the salary claim as they did prior to 2003 and we’ll go out and fight for it. I look forward to hearing the debate about what rates are going to be appropriate, what we need to adequately reward teachers and meet our recruitment and retention goals. I also want to hear the debate about what action we are prepared to take to achieve them – because the reality is that whatever government is in power they aren’t going to want to pay it and they will have to be made to put in a lot more money than they will want to even come close.

I am wild with delight at the thought that some of those who gave fiery speeches at PUMs and elsewhere then or since will stand for positions on the national executive so that they can be part of the process of developing membership consensus around the next claim and be part of the central decision making processes in that round and see for themselves how it really works, rather than bask in the comfort of their own ill-informed delusions.

And I am sure that whatever we settle at then will still be criticised by some of those who vote against what the majority accept then too. I just hope it is fair criticism.