Air New Zealand threatens to sue union

Air New Zealand has threatened to sue the EPMU, and national secretary Andrew Little personally, over the inclusion in the submission to Parliament of a 2005 memo between Air NZ’s management and its board.

The memo said the company would use the threat of outsourcing to seek changes to the collective agreement in such a way that workers could not take legal strike action.

Currently the EPMU has been served papers but the national secretary has not.

Over the last two years Air NZ has engaged in some of the worst employer militancy in the country, and the EPMU is proud of the stand we have made to protect our members’ jobs and conditions and hold Air NZ management to account for their dodgy employment practices.

We believe this legal action, apart from trying to tie up the union’s resources, is vindictive and is an attempt to intimidate the union and its officials in order to discourage us from continuing to fight for our members’ rights at Air NZ. This is not acceptable and it is not productive.

We’ll be talking to the airline over the next day or so to see if we can get this situation sorted out. If we can’t we will be responding appropriately, including making a complaint to Parliament about Air NZ trying to put undue pressure on the union not to let MPs know what the airline is doing.

We will update members as the situation develops.