Labour Day 2025 - Stormy Times
Was the universe trying to tell us something this week? Wild storms across the country falling on the same day as the public sector mega-strike. You don’t need to be a master of metaphor to draw some parallels between the conditions outside and those of our public service employment relations.
An estimated 100,000 frontline public service employees took strike action on 23 October, just ahead of Labour Weekend. Just like the storms, the strikes didn’t come out of a clear blue sky. It’s been brewing for years.
Cast your mind back to the pandemic, just for a moment. Our frontline public services carried a heavy load in the midst of that crisis and seems not to have yet recovered. Since then, we’ve heard reports of climbing and intensifying workloads alongside inadequate staffing. The aftermath of the pandemic left the world with spiralling inflation that failed to follow through into wages. The cost of living pressures have mounted and compounded over the last few years, leaving people struggling with affordability.
Given this backdrop, it’s reasonable to expect that employers and unions would readily find a shared interest in reversing these trends. Yet, from what I’ve seen reported, that hasn’t been the dominant spirit of negotiations.
Having studied and worked in employment relations for a few years, one baseline I’m mindful of is that unions exist, in part, to redress an inherent power imbalance in the employment relationship. One lone employee has little sway over their employer. Through unionising, these individual employees seek a stronger voice and influence over their work and conditions. This is especially acute in workforces that have one main employer with few alternative options, such as teachers, doctors and nurses. If they aren’t working in our public system they can either compete for fewer options in the private sector or head overseas.
Another truth in these same workforces: they typically care deeply about the work they do and the people they serve. My daughter’s teacher is a prime example of someone with a vocation, not a job. He regularly goes beyond what I can reasonably expect from a primary teacher. The same can be said for our health system. I spoke to a senior doctor at a public hospital this week and she explained:
“We are extremely worried about the state of the health system. Talking to the powers above has had no effect. I think it’s the only way we can be seen and heard. If we do nothing, nothing will change and we have a responsibility to do the best for our patients.”
Add to this post-pandemic story the fact that there is a growing division between our frontline and desk-based workforces. The desk-based workforce has experienced much of the same cost of living pressures but they have experienced positive changes through a dramatic and popular shift to hybrid work. While 30-40% of the workforce has enjoyed this change, the frontline has been left facing the tough challenges yet no countering upside.
This Labour Day is darker and more divided than most I’ve known. We can look beyond the storm and find opportunities to create unity and shared interests where division currently reigns. Alongside the obvious question of funding, there are other ideas to explore to retain the committed people we still have in our frontline public services. By giving our frontline workforces a thoughtfully designed wider variety of jobs alongside more choices over their work schedules, we can start offering the entire New Zealand workforce more upside and reasons to stay doing the work they love.
The storms will pass, but it is up to us in every organisation, industry and sector to decide if we want to see more turbulence through division, or instead move towards unity through shared interests and brighter conditions, no more so than at the frontline.