National's court case won't stop EPMU campaign

27 May, 2008

The EPMU will continue to campaign for the rights of its members this year despite an attempt by the National Party to gag the union from speaking up on work rights and wages this election.

The High Court ruled on Wednesday that the EPMU is a legal person under the Electoral Finance Act following a legal challenge from National.

This means the Electoral Commission will now have to consider whether the union is a person involved in the administration of the affairs of a political party before deciding on whether to allow it to register under the act.

However, the EPMU's national secretary Andrew Little says the High Court's ruling and any subsequent decision from the Commission will not greatly alter the union's plans for its 2008 WorkRights campaign.

"This legal action from the National Party was all about trying to stop us from campaigning on issues affecting workers, but then it's the Party's heritage to try to shut down unions, from 1951 when they made it a criminal offence to support waterside workers to 1991 when they took the word "union" out of every piece of legislation on the statute books apart from the Coroners Act.

"We will be campaigning on the issue of work rights and higher wages this year because that's what our membership have told us they want and these are major issues facing New Zealand today.

"Our plans for this year were always to focus on the issue of work rights and higher wages and we will be announcing the details of our 2008 WorkRights campaign within the next few weeks."

In 2006 the EPMU led the campaign to reject National's 90 Day No-Rights Bill which was designed to take all work rights from workers in the first 90 days of a new job - this is still National Party policy.