Last week we saw Don Brash provide a flashback to the 1990s with the 2025 taskforce recommendations. Most of us would find recycled advice on preparing for the Y2k disaster more helpful and relevant now than Brash’s horror set of recommendations.

But Don’s not the only one living in the past. We still see the same old tactics wheeled out in negotiations. A favourite of the 90s under the ECA was to make small offers at the bargaining table and in parallel make the offer to non-members and anyone else wanting to opt out of bargaining. The idea being that collective bargaining can be weakened by cash offers to workers to abandon the collective effort. That is exactly what MOJ  is  hoping to do currently by going out to non-union members with the offer rejected by the union.

Another was for an employer who finds themselves under immense pressure in bargaining, to respond by suddenly announcing a change in policy to apply to all staff thereby trying to deny any gain to the collective bargaining process.  IRD famously did it a decade ago with redundancy improvements and now Parliamentary Services are suddenly reviewing their performance pay policy and announcing pay improvements for everyone, when everyone knows the gains were achieved in collective bargaining.

Has nothing been learned since the 90s? PSA members want to move on and do not want to relive what will go down in history as a dreadful decade for labour relations and workers’ interests. Those stuck in the time warp need to wake up to the fact that there is no future in the past.