An experienced advocate will always be suspicious of very round numbers. And so it is with bargaining at the Ministry of Justice where MOJ are publicly saying – the PSA is claiming $100 million to settle the current pay dispute.

In fact the PSA has not sought any such figure. We know from experience that anything as round as $100 million is almost certainly an exaggeration one way of another and so is this. The PSA has simply stated that there is a very significant gap between what MOJ staff are being paid and what they should be paid according to MOJ’s own analysis using the Public Service median survey data. 1200 staff are paid 9.3 % less than they should be.

Our negotiating team is seeking solutions to this unsustainable problem and not getting any buy-in from the employer.  Amongst other things we have identified the need to eliminate wasteful systems and better manage resources.

Now the Government has made it clear that increases in pay mean fewer services. That equation has inevitably thrown up in members’  minds the question ‘does this mean we are subsidising the current Justice system to the tune of $100 million by accepting the wages we are getting?’.

PSA members are tired of being taken for granted, especially in light of the large bonuses being paid to senior staff in the state sector.

The public must be mystified that an organisation like ACC with more than $10 billion in reserves is in such financial strife that the Government is forced to reduce pay-outs and put up levies. And why, they may wonder, if ACC is such a financial liability, are private insurers lining up to get a slice of the action?

The truth appears to be that this ACC crisis has been manufactured to prepare the public for its privatisation. For years, ACC worked perfectly well as ‘a pay as you go’ scheme. It was- and still is- the envy of the world, a no-fault accident compensation scheme that provides security for workers and employers alike.

Now it’s deemed to be $4.8 billion in the red because it is required to “pre-fund” future obligations. However, as Tim Hazledine, Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland, pointed out in the NZ Herald, this is a bit like asking parents to pay upfront to meet the future obligations to their children. Since that sum would be several hundred thousand dollars, most parents could be deemed to be “broke; busted; bankrupt”.

Interestingly, employers are not so enamoured with the idea of handing over ACC to private insurers. “Having a full private insurance market won’t provide stability in the premium setting market, and it would make more forecasting and budgeting work for employers,” says Paul Jarvie, Occupational Health and Safety Manager for the Northern Employers and Manufacturers Association.

The only winners from privatising ACC are the same as those who benefit from the expensive and dysfunctional US health system – multinational insurance companies and the lawyers.

It’s not so much that public sector CE’s have had another pay rise that irks PSA members. After all they have enormous responsibility in their jobs and should be paid fairly. What is annoying is that senior public servants and politicians are telling everyone else that they are undeserving and that it would be irresponsible to increase pay for those who work in the engine room and the front line of the public service.

The SSC is trying to argue that these pay rises are only for the period that went from July 08 to June 09 and from here on restraint will apply. That is all very well if you have just received a five-figure increase on top of your six-figure salary. I suspect our members at Parliamentary Service, at Ministry of Justice(MOJ) and the clerical staff working in the South Island DHBs would accept some restraint if they enjoyed these sort of increases in the last year.

But, of course, nothing could be further from reality. The clerical staff have had a pay freeze for years, the Parliamentary Service staff are being offered a reduction in collective agreement and MOJ staff have been told that they will continue to slip even further behind the public sector median as they have been for the last few years.

What’s lacking is any sense of fairness. The pay systems are completely lacking credibility already and now parliamentarians and senior public servants are getting rises while reminding everyone else of the tough times we’re in. Nobody is fooled by the double standards.

Anyone with any real knowledge of events reading the large ‘We Apologise’ advertisements in the NZ Herald today and in recent days will see it for what it is – just spin. The ads are about the lockout of bus drivers but the word ‘lockout’ doesn’t appear of course.

Instead we get an explanation full of threatened industrial activity by unions, strike notices and suspensions that could not be helped. The apology portrays the company as having no choice in the matter because of the unions’ strike action, which has one way or another caused the disruption to the public on the week schools start back from holidays.

But, of course, it’s the employer who has stopped the services – not the union. The union has said the workers will keep working for what they are contracted for, but in view of the inadequate response from employers in bargaining, they will not be going the extra mile at the moment and they will do no extras. That’s what ‘working to rule’ is.

In fact the workers have even offered to take kids to school without pay and while they are being locked out if the employer is willing to allow them to.

The employer’s apology is hollow and once again goes to show that some employers cannot be relied upon to communicate fairly to the public or the workforce during bargaining and especially during disputes.

The stop work meetings being held by staff who work for Parliamentary Services last Thursday and today are a reflection of just how difficult things have become in collective bargaining. Somehow the employer expects these members to collectively agree to reduce their conditions of employment. The reduction comes in the form of reducing redundancy entitlements, especially for new workers. The idea of reducing conditions for new staff is morally repugnant, and certainly takes us back to the bad old days of the 90s and the Employment Contracts Act. To make matters worse pay is frozen and the employer is still maintaining that pay is not a matter for negotiation.

While parliamentarians have enjoyed over the years regular increases to their six figure salaries and generous living allowances, the employer somehow thinks that the lowest paid people who keep parliament working will be happy to settle for less than they already have. These people might be paid less than everyone else but that doesn’t mean they should be treated worse than everybody else. A simple reality check would help by asking the following question. Who in their right minds would settle for less than they have now in exchange for a zero improvement?