EPMU wins Epic appeal

The EPMU has won its appeal to overturn the Epic decision made by the Employment Court in 2006.

That decision meant that workers who wanted to sign into a Multi Employer Collective Agreement such as the Metals were unable to bargain with their employers to get them to become a party.

EPMU general counsel Tony Wilton says the Court of Appeal decision brings the law back into line with the spirit of the Employment Relations Act. “In our opinion the act’s intention was always to allow workers the right to bargain with their employers to sign into MECAs as secondary parties and this appeal decision shows that interpretation to be correct.

“MECAs are the key element of industry bargaining,” says Wilton, “and it makes practical sense for them to be negotiated first with a small number of representative employers and then taken out to other sites. But in the time between the initial decision and this appeal that’s been made very difficult.”

During the last round of Metals bargaining the EPMU was forced to nominate 57 original parties to the negotiating table in order to ensure members who wished to be covered by the Metals could be.