The stoush between Ports of Auckland and the Maritime union appears to be heating up. Len Brown has at last showed up and planted himself down firmly on the side of PoAL, which is as it should be. It would have been utterly bizarre for the Mayor to side with the union against a business [...]

Apologies to Matt Harding whose body I have stolen (because only Matt can dance like Matt… ) Add a Comment

The Myth of the Evil Employer Last Sunday Helen Kelly launched into a revealing diatribe about employee/employer relationships: Council of Trade Unions head Helen Kelly has accused the National government of trying to instil an attitude in which employers should be treated with deference and workers simply grateful to have jobs. Speaking to the Labour [...]

It really was a bumper day for left-wing whining today. The 90-day probation was extended to all businesses, the minimum wage went up to $13.00 ph and ACC re-introduced experience rating. All favorite left-wing bug-bears. The Herald shamelessly published a horribly slanted article on the 90-day trail with Helen Kelly in full cry, accusing National of [...]

The furor around Sir Peter Jackson’s e-mails about the Hobbit saga provides an interesting insight into the mind-set of left-wing bloggers. Unanimously, they all denigrate Jackson as a liar and some sort of evil corporate smurf because of the apparent discrepancy in two emails that he sent during the hobbit saga. On the 1st of [...]

I see Helen “Hobbit Killer” Kelly has released another couple of videos of people dismissed under the 90-day trial provisions. First there is the chef who used too much sauce: David Farrar points out that the employer in this case has no signed 90-day trial contract and therefore this is not a 90-day trial dismissal. [...]

The Boards of 225 schools have said they will refuse to implement the achievement targets of the New National Standards next year. This is hardly a great shock. It has been quite obvious that the problem with the new standards from the teacher’s union perspective is not the standards themselves, but the achievement targets that [...]

The “Hobbit” law. What a laugh. We should really call it the “Helen Kelly Failure” law. She’s still at it. “In this case you could be a clerical worker at South Pacific Films, for example, or at Wingnut Studios, and be deemed an independent contractor, denied all your employment rights and not be able to [...]

Congratulations to Helen Kelly, Actor’s Equity and MEAA for managing to seriously damage the NZ film industry and scare away the financiers of the Hobbit with their ham-fisted, bully-boy union tactics. Nicely done. I particularly like the way you ignored the “collective” part of collective bargaining by failing to consult your members and the “bargaining” [...]

Martin Johnson at the Herald writes: The resident doctors’ dispute is a re-run of arguments on hours of work, who decides how many doctors must be on duty and, although the union denies this, how much they are paid. The headline “Rosters at heart of hospital argument” is completely wrong. Every year the RDA in [...]