Thousands join Fairness at Work rallies

Thousands of workers joined union-wide Fairness at Work rallies in four of the main centres on the weekend, highlighting growing opposition to the Government's proposed employment law changes.

The turnout of thousands on the weekend is just the beginning of the union-wide campaign against the Government's proposed unfair law changes, according to EPMU national secretary Andrew Little, who spoke at the Wellington rally in Civic Square.

"The CTU has announced that the next major event in the campaign will be a nationwide day of action on 20 October. Unions will be organising members' attendance under the current stopwork provisions of the Employment Relations Act," he said.

"The Government's proposed changes aren't about making working life fairer or even making business performance better. They're just a crude appeal to the nasty side of bad employers and they've got to be stopped."

"The proposal to allow employers to refuse union access to workplaces is a denial of the freedom of choice to belong to a union."

"Allowing employers to go behind the back of the union during bargaining is something that was not even allowed under the hated Employment Contracts Act during the 1990s."

"The Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, says if you take away work rights, employers will employ more people. But the extension of this flawed argument is to take away all work rights."

"This is just an attack on work rights and on unions. It's nasty, miserable, mean, pettifogging old-fashioned Tory-ism and it's why we will not stop until we've defeated these unjust law changes."

The Fairness at Work rallies took place in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch on 21 August, and in Dunedin on 22 August.

+ video of Andrew Little speaking in Wellington

+ photos of the rallies