Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The Council of Trade Unions has met with Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden, hot on the heels of pay equity changes passing under urgency last week.
The half-hour meeting from 10.15am was the minister's first with the union since 2023, despite her predecessors typically booking monthly catch-ups.
It also coincided with an event hosted by Labour and the Greens to bring union members to Parliament to hear from them about the effects of the pay equity changes.
Ahead of the meeting, CTU national secretary Melissa Ansell-Bridges told RNZ the minister's approach to the relationship was unprecedented, but they hoped to get straight into the substantive issues.
"This is really an opportunity to, I suppose, begin some of those conversations that we haven't been able to have with her to date. Obviously top of the agenda is going to be pay equity and we're going to be conveying to Brooke how we think the changes that they have made are absolutely heading in the wrong direction."
She said they would be asking for the 33 in-progress claim scrapped last week to be restored, and the changes to the Act reversed.
Other matters they hoped to raise included calls for a ban on engineered stone, the government's policy of banning partial strikes, and other health and safety policies.
Speaking to media afterwards, she said the pay equity request had been rejected.
CTU President Richard Wagstaff said it was "frank".
"Frank, a frank meeting. There weren't any profanities ... we're all professional, but certainly we were demanding answers to the attack on workers that we're seeing."
"We did ask her, for example, is there an equal pay claim that she didn't support and she couldn't give an answer to it. We did ask her, had she read the task force report on health and safety emanating from Pike [River disaster], she couldn't really give an answer. We did ask her, did she agree with holding the minimum wage down under under inflation, she couldn't really give an answer.
"So it was that kind of a meeting, but in many ways, that is true to form in our experience with this minister."
Ansell-Bridges said they asked if the billions of dollars in savings the government expected would come from fewer claims being settled or claims being worth less.
"She said the advice that she had received was that there shouldn't be any fewer claims. Now, that differs from our initial analysis which shows that actually a number of the claims will either be outright prohibited or will struggle to meet those thresholds to initiate.
"The other point is about the value of the settlements and the minister at that point referenced the changes around comparators, and it's clear that she anticipates that the changes to the comparator system will ultimately lead to settlements of a lower value."
Wagstaff noted the 33 claims being set back with no possibility of backpay would also mean significant savings.
"The care and support claim which covers 70,000 workers looks to be cancelled and can't even be taken now, according to ... what they passed in legislation, because it was settled in 2017 - so that's a that's a massive cut in spending just on those alone."
He said they also requested a regular meeting with the minister be set up but this was also rejected.
"She just said it's not what she does. I can't explain that.
"There was a question in the House by the Greens, actually, to the minister saying 'why won't you meet with the CTU?', and she indicated that we haven't asked for it, even though we have asked half a dozen times. And so at that point we decided to put in another request and she agreed, which we're very pleased she did."
He said she had given no indication that any further meetings would take place.
"Previous governments - not just the last government, but in fact, with John Key's government - we had a regular meeting with the prime minister, a regular meeting with the minister of finance, a regular meeting with the minister of workplace relations and safety, and other meetings with other government ministers. This government is quite different.
"We have the odd meeting with different ministers but those key ones - prime minister, finance and workplace relations - we're basically shut out."
Van Velden said the meeting was "quite odd".
"The feedback that I've received since then, it's pretty weird that you have people wanting to have meetings with you and then hold press conferences afterwards," she said.
"A lot of the questions that I received weren't actually things that I could respond to, but look I don't really go around talking about the conversations that I've had in the meetings that I hold and I hope in some ways, this gives a little bit of perspective as to why I don't hold regular meetings with the CTU.
"It's pretty weird and odd that people hold press conferences about the things that I say in my meetings."
She said she would not hold regular meetings with the CTU "if they're just going to have press conferences after each of our meetings".
Pressed on whether the CTU was right in their understanding of her officials' advice, she said it did show the "large majority" of people who brought the 33 claims previously would be able to again in future.
"That may or may not be the case. But also I'm not a crystal ball gazer, I can't actually tell which people are going to potentially, potentially continue to bring a claim, or whether or not they'd like to pre scope those.
"We are intentionally looking to tighten some of the rules from what Labour had so that we can find gender based discrimination, rather than conflation with inflation or other labour market dynamics, and so it could be the case that the comparators that they choose to use may be different in the newer claims.
"You've then got to ask the unions, why is it then that they have intentionally used comparators that may give them different figures than they currently are able to use."
Ansell-Bridges helped facilitate the earlier event for opposition MPs and media to hear from union members about the equity changes, which were passed within a couple of days of being announced.
Labour and Green MPs had planned the event - held in Labour's larger caucus room - last week, inviting a handful of women and their families.
Decrying a newspaper opinion article in Parliament which criticised female MPs for backing the legislation, van Velden quoted from it - using the c-word in Parliament seemingly for the first time in New Zealand's history.
Labour's spokesperson for Women Jan Tinetti addressed that at the start of the meeting on Thursday, saying there had been some "deliberate distractions" from the government over the reaction to its move.
She said she was frustrated and angry about the legislative changes and would continue to fight them.
Speaking to The Detail, at least one academic - Canterbury University senior law lecturer Cassandra Mudgway - also said it was a distraction, and it was a stance Ansell-Bridges also backed.
"It's a distraction from the real issues. And the real issues is that the Equal Pay Act has been gutted, and over 300,000 working women are ultimately going to be worse off as a result of those changes. So it's a very deliberate obfuscation of the issue by the minister and the government."
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