Union Organising in New Zealand: The Near Death Experience

Having endured and survived almost a decade of one of the harshest industrial relations climate amongst the Anglo-Saxon nations, primarily in the shape of the Employment Contracts Act 1991, New Zealand’s labour unions have now had an almost similar period of time under a re-regulated regime, providing for some interesting comparisons. Since the Labour government enacted the Employment Relations Act 2000 in October of that year, union membership has climbed slowly and steadily, reversing a decade of long decline. Whilst membership numbers are at similar levels to those of the early 1990s, density remains stubbornly at all time low levels because of strong labour market growth over the last decade. The New Zealand Council of Labour Unions (NZCTU), having learnt the hard way that reliance on the state for union fortunes was no longer a responsible strategy, has, since the late 1990s, vigorously pursued an ‘organising’ agenda and affiliates are currently working together with unheard of levels of cooperation. A small number of affiliates have been keen proponents of the ‘organising model’ since the 1980s (Oxenbridge 1998). Nonetheless, the impact of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 has been long-lasting, however, and not just because the current government has accepted this as the status quo and the platform for its changes, rather than returning to what went before the 1991 Act.