Be careful what you strike for

Strikes are not new to New Zealand but one would have to go back a long way — decades — to find a time when industrial action was as widespread as it is now.

Nurses, teachers and various other state-sector workers have gone on strike this year. Now midwives have announced they too will strike, while secondary school teachers  appear likely to strike next year.

Every strike is run alongside a public relations campaign that seeks to explain to the general public just how calamitous the workers’ situation is. The goal is to create public pressure on paymasters to accept union demands.  The rhetoric also placates those striking. New Zealanders are a conscientious people who prefer to work than complain. At some level striking goes against that ethos — unless of course striking can be explained as a public service, a chance for employees to share their intimate knowledge of an industry’s failings. This casts strikers as not only victims but torch bearers, risking their reputations in an altruistic drive towards the greater good.

But with repetition comes familiarity, and with familiarity comes numbness. Sometimes these public relations campaigns are entirely reasonable but little in life is simple, and employment disputes are often as complicated as it gets. Few would suggest those striking were altogether wrong about their motives or underlying messages, but nor is it likely all union messages are being unquestioningly believed, either.

The constant refrain that workers are on their knees, starvation wages are being paid, industries are about to collapse and the only solution is for unions to win significant pay rises runs the risk of becoming stale. Numbness may soon set in.

There is no question unions do a lot of good in New Zealand. They offer workers support and expertise in employment disputes and legal matters; they offer simplified salary structures; and they help workers lobby their employers as a unified voice. Much of that lobbying never makes it to the public domain, with health, safety and wellbeing concerns raised and dealt with quietly.But that is not all unions do or stand for. They are also unapologetically political, backing — with their money, manpower and communications arms — left-of-centre political parties. In the current government members of their alumni fill several ministerial roles.

While they support only one side of the political divide, this year’s mass strikes are affecting everyone: the roles of midwives; teachers; nurses and more exist to serve and are paid for by all of society — regardless of political stripes.

These are people and roles the whole country wants to see well paid and content. Yet the industrial approach being taking is one which, it could easily be argued, only half the country fundamentally agrees with.

The problem with this, from the union’s perspective, is that politics has long been known to have a pendulum-style rhythm to it. Voters are often slow to anger, but once they’ve had enough of something their disgruntlement can remain for a long time.

Unions and their members run the risk of setting that pendulum effect in motion with the current level of industrial action.

The public knows unions are highly political organisations. They know many in the current government are former union employees. They know the unions campaigned, donated and lobbied for a Labour-led government. They know, therefore, the unions already have the ear of this government — with or without strike action.  The public know the people most affected by these strikes are themselves — taxpayers and the users of taxpayer-funded services. They may suspect the rhetoric that these strikes are a last resort, a final pleading to an un-listening government, may not always be entirely honest.  And they may well decide a future election is the time to ensure such a season of strikes is not repeated.