The country’s forest industry needs to provide an environment of steady, safe, well-paid employment in a better regulated environment in order to save workers’ lives, according to NZ Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly. Sources: Stuff NZ, The Nelson Mail
Ms Kelly was in Nelson visiting forest workers to discuss the recent national forest safety review. The review panel’s final report is due out later this year.
She told the Nelson Mail the industry’s regulations have been watered down.
“They don’t have requirements for bad weather, lighting, wet weather gear, anything about fatigue or long hours and these are the things that are killing workers.
“We want to see the forest industry commit to longer term and better paid contracts for contractors so they can invest in machinery and retain and train their staff.
“When log prices rose on the back of demand from China, the industry refused to supply local mills [and] they were shut. Now there is no internal market.
“When the log prices pick up again the industry will bring in newbies and there will be accidents. And all those contractors who mortgaged their homes to buy forest machinery have learnt that when the work stops they lose their equity.”
Ms Kelly said the forestry accident rate had halved since the announcement and start of the industry’s safety review, but the ethos needs to be entrenched in the industry.
Parallel to this was the CTU’s drive to increase community participation in union activities. Union membership is now around 22% of the workforce, or one in four workers.
“The booming industries in New Zealand – construction, forestry, farming – are all de-unionised. They fundamentally like to have a supplicant workforce because they can manipulate their wages.”
In response, the CTU was changing its model to accommodate workers in non-traditional un-unionised sectors.
First Forestry Together was a collaboration between the CTU and First Union, a multi-industry private sector union covering 27,000 workers.
Workers and their families can join for free to talk about safety and receive advice.
The same scenario was being applied to the dairy industry with the formation of Farming Together, which would provide support and advice for farm workers.
“It will change how unions are structured in those economic groups and ease the anti-union rhetoric,” Kelly said. “But from my point of view we speak for all workers regardless, we do not blame workers who are not in unions because for many of them they do not have the opportunity to join.”
Ms Kelly said Labour’s proposed Fair Workplace Commission was “a runner” and would expose what working life is like in New Zealand, what people are being paid and the hours they work.
“New Zealanders do not see the extent of it – 300,000 people earn at, or near, the minimum wage – the minimum wage should be the exception – it has just become ‘The Wage’. And some of the most profitable industries are paying the minimum wage, like farming, food, retail and banking, so there is no correlation with the ability to pay.”
She backed suggestions to increase the minimum wage saying provincial towns were doomed to fail unless residents brought more money into their community’s economies.
“I was in the Wairarapa on Saturday – 50% of the workers earn less than NZ$28,000 – which is like NZ$13 an hour – only 20% earn more than NZ$50,000. That explains why every second shop in those beautiful towns is shut.
“You cannot run a local economy with that sort of income coming in. That whole economy is doomed to fail unless wages rise.”
Kelly said at worst a lift in the minimum wage would improve the lot of 300,000 workers.
