NZ Labour News, January 2020

New Zealand currently has a quarter of a million workers on temporary work visas, so it is no surprise that a group of approximately 50 construction workers from China were recent victims of a scam that promised them visas and jobs in New Zealand in exchange for $50,000.

While the workers, represented by Unite Union, were successful in their court case against National Personnel Limited, the settlement for each does not compare to the amount the workers lost, and now some are still being deported.

Four of the Chinese workers, who cooperated fully with Immigration New Zealand (INZ) when the agency sought their assistance in the fraud investigation, have now been told to leave the country -- despite having an employer willing to keep them on.

Mike Treen, National Director for Unite Union, said the workers were promised fair treatment by the Immigration Minister, who said he would ensure they could change their employer and get new visas. 

"We don't think that's fair. I think there's a moral responsibility to facilitate every one of that group to be able to stay - at least three years, to give them a chance to recoup the money...We need a special agency, independent of Immigration NZ, which is dedicated to enforcing their rights, rather than just prosecuting the occasional really bad employer."

The government agency actually responsible for enforcing minimum standards is The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise (MBIE). But Immigration NZ is part of MBIE and, according to Treen, "seems to have different priorities." 

The Office to Advance Women Apprentices (OAWA), which has successfully found work for 1,300 women in Newfoundland, is assisting others to set up offices in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the rest of Atlantic Canada.

While the national average of women in under-represented trades is three to four per cent, in Newfoundland that number is between 13 to 14 per cent - up about 10 per cent since the OAWA was founded a decade ago.

Along with the building trades, under-represented trades include such fields as auto-body/auto repair and food preparation. Since its founding, OAWA has helped 174 of its women achieve Red Seal Certifications, with more in line to receive their certifications in the next year or two.

One of the ways women break the myth that their gender doesn't belong in the industry is by proving "over and over again" on the jobsite that they can do the same work as the men, said Karen Walsh, Executive Director of the OAWA. Women are still an untapped resource in the province.

While mentorship is a key to its success, Walsh said the office reaches out to medium-sized companies and contractors and unions to help them with inclusion plans, and hold networking sessions and roundtables to help the women they employ stay in the trade of their choice.

OAWA has partnered with the Canadian Building Trades Union to develop offices in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia this year. In Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, it has partnered with the Atlantic Canada Regional Council of Carpenters, Millwrights and Allied Workers. Funding is provided by the federal government under the Union Innovation Training Fund.

Social unrest has rocked Chile for months, with civil protests in response to a raise in the Metro's subway fare, the increased cost of living, privatisation and social and economic inequality throughout the country.

Representatives of the Social Unity Board, a collective of social and labour groups who were behind many of the calls to protest, met with members of President Sebastian Pinera's conservative government in late November.

Among the collective's members is the Workers' United Center of Chile, the most powerful union in the country, the teacher's union and the "NO+AFP" group, which calls for an end to Chile's private pension system. They have pushed for, among other things, an improved and public healthcare system.

Despite the push by labour, most workers in Chile have no union. More than 40 per cent of jobs are not covered under any labour legislation and collective bargaining agreements cover just 20 per cent of workers.

Pinera's government has announced a raft of reforms to end the crisis, including an agreement to call a national referendum in April 2020 regarding the creation of a new constitution. 

The latest Global Slavery Index shows that there are over 40.3 million people living or working under conditions of slavery -- a population larger than Canada.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Asia and the Pacific region is home to the second largest number of people working in these situations, at a rate of 6.1 per 1000 people, behind Africa.

The force driving modern slavery is hugely lucrative business - behind only arms smuggling and drug trafficking - which the IOM values at 150 billion dollars per year.

These figures do not account for those people suffering similar conditions in conflict zones, on migration routes or in remote areas that are difficult to access.

Given this landscape, achieving the sustainable development goal of eradicating modern slavery by 2030 would seem close to impossible. "There has to be a shift in attitude and culture. As long as human beings continue to exploit their neighbors, it will be very difficult," said Luiz Antonio Machada of the ILO.

As debates around drug prices heat up on the presidential campaign trail, the US House of Representatives voted in December to pass Speaker Nancy Pelosi's drug bill, which contains key provisions allowing the government to negotiate lower prices on at least 50 drugs each year.

This would come as a welcome relief to Americans who pay more per capita for prescription drugs than their wealthy global peers. Many, however, believe the Republican-controlled Senate is likely to bury the bill in deference to pharmaceutical industry lobbyists that argue prices must be kept high in order for firms to invest in new drugs through expanded research and development programs.

According to economists who research how drug companies allocate money, this is far from the truth. One study shows that from 2010 to 2016, National Institute of Health (NIH) funding contributed to published research associated with every single one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration during those years. Yet in return for this largesse, American taxpayers still see drug prices climb each year.

The idea that the public must choose between innovation and high drug prices is a false one. The status quo is unhealthy for anyone except pharmaceutical company executives. Drug companies need a new business model that gets them back into the business of making the drugs Americans need at prices they can all afford to pay.

 

Groundbreaking state laws aimed at improving worker conditions have been blocked by courts, just as they were set to take effect early this year.

In New York, a judge temporarily blocked parts of a law that provides new protections for agricultural workers; in California, the trucking industry successfully fended off enforcement of a new test for determining when a worker is a contractor; and a separate California law that would limit mandatory arbitration agreements was similarly halted.

In the labour and employment realm, state and local laws have been passed at a rapid clip, particularly in progressive states like New York, California, and Massachusetts, to supplement long-dormant federal laws that govern the workplace. A slew of new measures are set to take effect this year, including laws to reclassify thousands of gig workers as employees, raise minimum wages in half the states, and increase salary thresholds for white-collar overtime pay exemptions.

Major industry groups have filed lawsuits to limit enforcement of some of these statutes, arguing they are preempted by federal law, or are trying to carve out certain industries from compliance mandates.

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