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Andrew Dickens: Helen Kelly doc a reminder that unions aren't all bad

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Sun, 4 Aug 2019, 10:44AM
A screenshot from the Helen Kelly documentary. (Photo / Supplied)

Andrew Dickens: Helen Kelly doc a reminder that unions aren't all bad

Author
Andrew Dickens,
Publish Date
Sun, 4 Aug 2019, 10:44AM

On Friday I went to a documentary at the International Film Festival about the late unionist Helen Kelly called Together.

It's an amazing film not just because Helen was an amazing person but also because of the history and the issues it shows.

So when Helen was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2015, she stood down as president of the Council of Trade Unions, but stayed involved in issues close to her heart, which was principally that workers should be safe at work.

The film shows her fighting for Maryanne Butler-Findlay, a forestry worker widow. Her husband went to work and didn't come back. Worksafe and the foresters said it was his fault., but with Helen's help Maryanne fights back to make conditions better for workers.

Helen also went to the Coast to help Pike River families. And she was also dragged into the medicinal cancer debate. For the last year of her life, filmmaker Tony Sutorius was granted amazing access to Helen. Her treatment, her travelling, her kindness, her calling to fight for the welfare of workers even while her own welfare was ebbing away.

It's a great movie about a great New Zealander and I challenge you not to weeping by the end.

But it made me think about unions. The audience was full of dyed in the wool unionists and socialists and activists and me. For some reason, I've always been a bit leery about unions. And here's why.

I've never been in one. I was asked once in 1984. I joined the BCNZ as a grade A1 radio announcer assigned to Wanganui. A1. That was the pay grade assigned to people with under a years’ experience, then you worked your way up. So the longer you served the more you were paid.

Now I was 21 and ambitious and, no offence to Whanganui, I was keen to move to a bigger town and a bigger show and a bigger wage. So to be told that what announcers were paid nationwide depended not on how good you were and how you rated and how much money you brought into the station, but how old you were, seemed a bit weird.

I asked my boss who came up with this scheme. He said it was negotiated between the BCNZ and the union. The PSA. The Public Sevice Association. Then he said, by the way do you want to sign up for the PSA? Nope, I said. Not if they're the same blokes you negotiated that pile of crap.

So a few months later, I was phoned by the big announcer boss and told he was sending me to Greymouth for two months. When? I asked. Next week. Not bloody likely I said. Go or be let go he said. Righto. I went. Who negotiated that deal? Of course it was the PSA.

Two months later I came back to Wanganui and told my boss to take this job and stick it. A faceless radio bureaucrat in Wellington had moved me without asking and a faceless union bureaucrat in Wellington had decided I wasn't going to be paid according to my ability.

But if he wanted me, he could employ me directly and cut out the Wellington control freaks, which is what he did. I became a community broadcaster and I negotiated my conditions eye to eye with my employer.

And that's the way it's been ever since.

Many New Zealanders don't like unions because how does some guy in an office in another town know what I'm worth. Many New Zealanders hate unions because they seem to reject performance pay and they believe that everyone does the job the same, which they don't. Many New Zealanders hate unions because they see them as wreckers of enterprise, shouting slogans of power to people and up the collective in English accents. Many New Zealanders hate unions because they believe them to be agents of political agendas rather than trying to make businesses better for both employee and employers.

But watching the Helen Kelly documentary, where in her last year she was fighting for workplaces to be safe and for employers not to cut corners, you saw unionism at its finest. At its heart, it's about fairness and shared equity. And that shouldn't be a bad thing if employers and employees embraced it.

There's a great quote from Helen in the film: "I want people just to be kind. It would make a hell of a difference."

 

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