5. Consultation — Kōkiri

The employment environment described above forms a backdrop to information collected in two separate projects in 2003. The first was a specific outreach project undertaken by the Commission involving 551 participants, and the second was the general public consultation undertaken for the Action Plan.

Both participation exercises were aimed at ‘taking the pulse’ of what New Zealanders felt about the ‘right to work’ from their own experiences. This information was then analysed against the cycle of employment from entry to exit using the following human-rights elements:

• Empowerment: empowers individuals and groups by using their voice in decision-making, allowing them to use rights as leverage for action.
• Accountability: introduces accountability for actions and decisions, which can allow individuals and groups to complain about decisions, policies and practices that affect them adversely.
• Non-discrimination: seeks non-discrimination among individuals and groups through the equal enjoyment of rights and obligations by all individuals.
• Participation: emphasises participation of individuals and groups in decision-making.
• Agreed human rights and norms: links decision-making to the agreed human rights norms as set out in the various human rights covenants and treaties.

Figure 1: Framework for analysis of the employment cycle

Protection from unemployment

A surprising finding of this consultation, given its timing – with the country enjoying record labour market participation – was the emphasis that a broad spectrum of New Zealanders interested in employment issues placed on job creation. Job creation was referred to by employment specialists, local body officers, politicians, industry spokespeople and unionists.

There is an implicit assumption, perhaps, in the notion of the ‘right to work’ that employment should be currently available and universal. However, the right to work comprises several aspects and, while it may fall short of a guarantee of full employment, it includes the idea that New Zealand should strive for full employment, the availability of work for everyone able and willing to work ‘by all reasonable means’ (Van Dooren, 2003). Moving towards full employment is conditional upon economic development and a broad degree of consensus among Government, employers and workers about the role of work. The private sector is crucial to job creation and helps shape national and social policy. Trade unions have acted as a traditional mainstay of tripartite activities with Government and employers, and are vital to workers’ protection and participation.

Major Government strategy documents about employment, such as the Employment Strategy, and policy analysis such as Work Trends acknowledge in a variety of ways that a revolution is occurring in the world of work in relation to the way we work, work-based technologies, and the types of work we do. The challenge is to ensure that, in the rapidly changing labour market, currently disadvantaged groups are not further marginalised in terms of access, participation and pay, in the information society. While there has been progressive improvement in data collection relating to employment, data disaggregated by the various prohibited grounds of discrimination must be available for the measurement and comparison of vulnerable groups.

Consultation, particularly in regions such as Taranaki, Dunedin and Rotorua and in industry sectors such as wood processing in the Bay of Plenty, shows that some New Zealanders feel they have a much greater voice in regional employment strategies – through local government processes and specific, individual job programmes – than they do in influencing nation-wide Government policies. However, the same participants are keenly aware of the influence of job creation on economic sustainability and social cohesion in their communities. Debate about job creation could usefully focus on the interrelationships between national, local and industry sector strategies.

Pathways to work

Free choice of employment is a core element of the right to work, but for certain groups in New Zealand society this choice is greatly hindered because of who they are. For many disadvantaged groups, the decision to participate in work is not enough to gain access to the labour market. New migrants, Maori and Pacific peoples, unskilled youth and mature workers trying to re-enter the workplace and women returning from family responsibilities are groups that systematically struggle to gain employment in comparison with other groups. Disabled people are even more at risk of exclusion. These groups face systemic employment disadvantage, even in a buoyant labour market.

Discussing pathways to work necessarily involves examining achievement in education and training in preparation for work. Significantly, Maori initiatives in education, such as kohanga reo, kura kaupapa and wananga, may be helping to close the gaps in employment outcomes for Maori.

The Action Plan research shows that three factors are critical in accessing good employment for traditionally disadvantaged groups.

They are:

1. overcoming stereotypes
2. job readiness
3. intensive case management.

Stereotypes, which usually involve covert bias against potential job applicants or groups of people who might present for work, exist at societal, employer and employee levels and were freely talked about as a human rights issue. Positive evidence from this study showed that indirect, subconscious discrimination can be overcome when employers give people different from themselves a fair chance.

Employers spoken to emphasised their need, given the fast-paced and competitive nature of industry, for job-ready applicants. This requires both relevant entry skills and education, and an increasing need for on-the-job training throughout working life. Data collected about the importance of job readiness also highlighted motivation, flexibility and an ability to take personal responsibility for work.

Intensive case management emerged from our research, in relation to migrant workers, youth at risk, mature workers and local government initiatives, as an essential element in matching at-risk potential workers with employment at a time when it is increasingly a focus of Government intervention. It involved a number of features such as making connections between job seekers and available opportunities, reducing the risk of failure, providing confidence and support for both employer and employee.

On-the-job issues

The right to rest and leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours was a dominant theme in this study. The tension between an individual’s work responsibilities and those outside of work, known as work-life balance, was for many participants both an individual and organisational concern and, for employers, the subject of their EEO initiatives.

Work-life balance is now part of public thinking and Government and institutional responses are currently aimed at finding realistic solutions in an increasingly demanding work environment. The level of priority placed on work-life balance issues, however, remains patterned along the lines of gender. Working women, still shouldering the majority of the care for dependent family members, find harmonising work and family responsibilities less achievable than do working men. Gender-specific problems sometimes require gender-specific solutions, in spite of the work-life balance struggle being relatively universal.

A prerequisite for providing ‘just and favourable’ work conditions for all workers is to create work environments free from harassment. Despite organisational acknowledgement of sexual harassment, it endures as a problem for many workers. Bullying, which also involves abuse of workplace and societal power, is becoming increasingly recognised by employers as a destructive human resource issue. The good news is that organisations acknowledge these problems. Some fresh approaches are needed to ensure strategies for prevention match their current form.

Participants cited abolition of gender disparities in pay and employment opportunities as fundamental to decent work conditions. There is no shortage of language in the international human rights conventions about the centrality of ‘equal pay for work of equal value’ in realising human rights at work. Most recently, the CEDAW Committee urged greater efforts to eliminate occupational segregation that disadvantages women. But many employers, especially those of casualised workers, are far from ready or able to wrestle with the complexity of the gender pay gap. When a pay scheme has been negotiated within their organisation, as part of a Collective Employment Agreement and with union input, employers are legitimately assured that the scheme is free from gender and race bias. Indirect and even unconscious discrimination in setting women’s pay rates, and historical devaluation of women’s work – factors not typically addressed in an organisation’s pay scheme – are not fully understood by employers as factors contributing to the gender pay gap. A business information campaign would stimulate private sector debate about pay equity and gain impetus from the work of the Pay and Employment Equity Task Force. A Pay and Employment Equity Unit is being created within the Department of Labour to support the implementation of a five-year Government plan of action.

The right to work relies in part on the willingness and ability of not only Governments, but society as a whole to respect and help fulfil these rights. In New Zealand, many medium and large companies tend to be involved in social and community outcomes in addition to traditional financial outcomes. Strong ties to their local people through sponsorships, community-based employment programmes, and the support of local activities weave the organisation into a symbiotic relationship with its region that relies on the strength of both parties. When one strand becomes strained because of the impact of global business, economic hardship, population decline, or social instability, the other is also affected. A better understanding of the interconnections between business and communities may go a long way towards ensuring the well-being of both. The growth of corporate social responsiveness in New Zealand is to be welcomed.

Maori businesses in this study indicated that both ideas and capacity for starting a business grew directly out of whanau, hapu and community needs, an organic process that was reliant on the expertise, goodwill, and close family connections of the Maori locations where the businesses were based. This grassroots-up approach to business development was in contrast to the corporate model of social responsibility observed in larger companies, where businesses were created and sustained alongside, not within, the community.

Transition from the labour market

Transition is likely to increase, not decrease, as a feature of the labour market. Two groups of vulnerable workers are most obviously at risk: women returning to the workforce and older workers. Women returning to the labour market from family responsibilities have benefited from the Government’s paid parental leave – the majority resume employment with the same employer. However, those men and women who exit the labour market for longer periods because of family responsibilities often struggle to re-enter the workplace under the same conditions and with the same status. Some work part-time, even if they want longer hours, as step towards full-time employment.

Older workers are especially vulnerable in times of economic recession and industry change. Economic restructuring in New Zealand in the 1990s saw middle level management, mainly men in their mid 50s, lose their jobs and become mature job-seekers. Mature job-seekers face pervasive societal stereotyping that indirectly discriminates against employment opportunities (McGregor & Gray, 2001).

The rights of older people in relation to work are increasingly a focus of attention (ILO Recommendation 162 (1980)). While age is a prohibited ground of discrimination, there is a need for more active consideration of means for preventing discrimination on the grounds of employment and occupation. Employers, too, would like a rethink about the blunt instrument of performance management in negotiating the transition from the work force of older workers at the end of otherwise valuable working lives. The right to the “enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work” (ICESC, article 7) has particular significance for the health and safety and working conditions of older workers.

What does this mean for the right to work?

International understanding of what benchmarks should be used to assess aspects of the right to work (such as what constitutes ‘full employment’) is still developing. In New Zealand the right to work is expressed in a broad range of international instruments and domestic statutes. In addition, a number of government department strategies impinging on employment are guiding policy, and individual initiatives around decent work and pay equity are influencing practice. At the level of the workplace, though, the significant drop in unionisation, with its accompanying loss of organised employee advancement and protection presents new problems from a right-to-work perspective: how can full understanding of employment rights by employers and employees who are outside of organised coverage be achieved beyond minimal legislative compliance? The promotion of the right to collectively bargain and the right to freedom of association is essential for a strong trade union movement.

New Zealand is obliged to respect, promote, protect and fulfil the right to work. While definition of the right to work and its evaluation may be incomplete, elements such as the free choice of employment, protection against unemployment, anti-discrimination, equal pay, and just and favourable work conditions are widely understood and accepted. New Zealand has some flexibility in how it fulfils these within its social and economic environment. In taking the pulse of New Zealanders about employment issues at a time when the economy was buoyant, the two consultation projects showed that, overall, most people felt New Zealand was positively and progressively realising the right to work. They were equally emphatic, however, about the challenges posed by systemic and structural disadvantages in the labour market, and demonstrated willingness to improve them.

Findings from consultation

"Secondary tax for more than one job discriminates against low income groups who are more likely to have several part time jobs"
Survey respondentTop

New Zealanders involved in the consultation process provided feedback on positive achievements in relation to the right to work and also the areas that needed attention. In some cases, contradictory ideas were expressed, particularly about the role of Government in the employment relationship.

Positive comments were received about:

• minimum wage rates, particularly for youth
• well policed work standards
• occupational safety and health standards
• paid parental leave
• trade union activity
• legislation that ‘enables workers … to be protected from the excesses of the free market’
• the openness of the job market
• Government’s lack of interference in who can get a job.

Identified areas for improvement were:

• lack of employment opportunities
• casualisation
• rates of pay, especially for women
• a work culture of long hours
• poor quality on-the-job training
• protection for unemployed people
• discrimination against older workers and new migrants
• tax disadvantages for single income families
• employers’ attitudes to union membership
• lack of information about, and the complexity of, grievance processes
• legislation impinging on individual freedom of choice and contract.

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