E Tu reaches agreement with manufacturers in Metals collective deal

Thursday 14th July 2016

E Tu union leaders and manufacturing firms have reached an agreement in a cross-employer deal covering 600 workers at more than 80 firms.

Representatives from the union and nine companies resumed talks this week in their second round of negotiations to renew the Metal and Manufacturing Industries Collective Agreement, which covers manufacturing and engineering firms of all sizes and was first established in 1991 when industrial law was overhauled by the Employment Contracts Act.

A deal has now been reached, and will be explained to delegates and members with ratification meetings next week, an E Tu spokeswoman said in an emailed statement without providing details of the agreement.

E Tu, which was formed through the merger of the of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union and the Service and Food Workers Union, had been pushing for a "fair and reasonable" pay rise and more worker representation when it comes to health and safety.

Workers under the deal received a 2.5 percent pay rise from negotiations in 2014, following increases of 2.1 percent and 2.8 percent covering the 2012 to 2014 period. Government data show ordinary time average wages in manufacturing rose 3.6 percent to $28.18 an hour in the first quarter of 2016 from a year earlier, following annual gains of 2.2 percent, 1.8 percent and 3.3 percent in 2015, 2014, and 2013 respectively.

The collective agreement, known as Metals, has shrunk over the past decade, having covered more than 2,000 staff at 220 companies in 2005, when current Labour leader Andrew Little headed the EPMU and led a series of strikes for higher pay. Since then, the breadth of the deal halved to 1,000 workers at 100 firms in the 2012 deal and has continued to decline.

Multi-employer collective agreements were weakened by the government's changes to employment law in 2014, which allowed firms to opt out of bargaining when a new deal was proposed, a current agreement renegotiated, or where a firm is cited to join an existing agreement.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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