NZ POLITICS DAILY: Labour's industrial relations policy widely panned

The Labour Party’s newly-released industrial relations policy has been widely panned – at least by newspaper editorial writers and bloggers.

See, for example, the Herald’s Labour wage policy revives bad old days, the Dom Post’s Labour's worker-pay policy out of touch, the Press’ Not a good sign, and the ODT’s Wages and the real world.

Regardless of who’s right, Labour or the newspapers, there appears to be a huge chasm between these forces, which is very interesting. It’s not that often that the Labour Party strays so far from what it might expect the media and commentators to approve of. In this case, there appears to be a few factors at play.

Labour has definitely moved to the left in recent years.

After decades of being a relatively centrist, liberal, middle-class oriented, neoliberal political party, it now has a much more social democratic political character. There is no doubt that the party has been re-positioning itself as a more traditional pro-worker and pro-union party. Of course this shift has been a very inconsistent and partial one.

Much of the shift relates to the changing global economic and political environment. Quite simply, neoliberalism is ill at the moment, and its intellectual and political hegemony has weakened drastically.

The decline of the world economy, and now the ongoing slump in capitalism, means that the formally robust shibboleths and certainties of the old framework are up for challenge. The actual economic policies of the governments in west are all over the place – some of the biggest economic bailouts and nationalisations have happened in the last couple of years. The reality is that many of the neoliberal reforms and mechanisms have been reformed, replaced, dismantled, or at least strongly challenged.

This has meant that there’s been a resurgence in leftwing politics globally, most recently expressed in the ‘Occupy Wall St’ movement. It should be no surprise that the main party of the left in New Zealand would be affected by these changes. Hence we hear much more from the Labour Party – and sometimes National, too – about economic interventionism, regulation, and ‘corporatist’ governance. The latest proposals for centralized wage-setting involving employers and unions is exactly that. It might seem ‘absurd’ to many, but such proposals represent the crumbling status of the post-1984 neoliberal settings.

Labour’s left-turn also involves, no doubt, a very strong element of strategic positioning. Often when major parties are facing strong election defeats, they shift away from an orientation towards centrist, swing-voters, and instead attempt to shore up their core constituencies. In this sense, Labour appears to be in a battle to retain it’s 30+ percent of the vote. The party has given up on winning 40+ percent, which would involve a strong appeal to soft National voters, and is instead in electoral retreat to prevent a catastrophic wipeout.

For more on Labour’s new policy, see Derek Cheng’s Labour vows to repeal Hobbit law and Danya Levy’s Labour: A 'decent' wage for all Kiwis.

Other important recent items include the following: Dylan Moran’s Voters swing from National after Rena disaster, Patrick Gower’ It's a moratorium, but 'not a moratorium' – Goff, the Taranaki Daily News’ Confidence in government rocked, Gordon Campbell’s Shockwaves from the Rena disaster, Grant Duncan’s The Rena as a public-policy case study, Joe Fleetwood’s Rena disaster: How did it come to this?, Gordon Campbell’s Why MMP Is Still The Best Option, Jim Chipp’s MMP: Is it time for a change?, Amelia Romanos’s English in trouble over school ad, David Farrar’s Is this the right direction?, Danya Levy’s Labour targets homelessness, Adam Bennett’s Press Council blasts party's suggestion of statutory control, Tim Watkin’s two items, Campaign 2011 begins: Ta da, the big issues are here and Why Epsom matters so much.

Note to subscribers: Apologies for the absence of a NZ Politics Daily yesterday. Technical issues prevented it being sent out. As a result, today’s NZPD is much larger in size.

Bryce Edwards

NZPD Editor (bryce.edwards@otago.ac.nz)

Today’s content:

Industrial relations debate

NZH: Editorial - Labour wage policy revives bad old days

Dom Post: Editorial - Labour's worker-pay policy out of touch

Press: Editorial - Not a good sign

ODT: Editorial - Wages and the real world

Derek Cheng (NZH): Labour vows to repeal Hobbit law

TVNZ: Work policy criticism scaremongering, says Labour

Danya Levy (Stuff): Labour defends employment overhaul

Danya Levy (Dom Post): Labour: A 'decent' wage for all Kiwis