NZ: May Day victory for Unite workers

Photo: Unite.org.nz

New Zealand's Unite Union, which organises fast food, hospitality and retail workers, announced a big win on May 1 with McDonald's finally agreeing to join Burger King and Restaurant Brands and cease using controversial “zero hour” contracts.

Unite called off strikes across the country planned for May 1. The win came after a sustained campaign by the union against the contracts, which deny workers guaranteed hours each week.

Unite national director, Mike Treen, said: “This is a historic agreement. Now all of the major fast food chains have committed to ending zero hours. This is the culmination of a decade-long campaign for secure hours by Unite Union.

“It will be welcomed by tens of thousands of workers in the fast food industry and hundreds of thousands more who will ultimately benefit in other industries. It represents a fundamental shift in the employment relationship of the most vulnerable workers in the country.”

Unite senior organiser Joe Carolan, based in Auckland, explained the “zero hours” campaign.

"We've been fighting zero hours in fast foods for 10 years, since we started our first campaign called Supersize My Pay. Back then, many fast food workers were on youth rates, NZ$7.35 an hour.

The first thing we did was win the debate on minimum wage. After that campaign it went to $12. It's now $14.75, so we've come a long way in terms of pay.

But the big issue, workers kept telling us, especially during the last McDonald's strike, was that even if we won $1 extra an hour, it doesn't mean anything because they can steal hours from workers, they can take it away in the roster.

We tried using different phrases to highlight this issue. It wasn't until we used the phrase “zero hours” that people started to get it, especially in the media. Zero hours relates to how many hours you are guaranteed per week. If there's no guarantee then you're on a zero hour contract.

It doesn't mean that you work no hours, it is about how many hours you're guaranteed. Once we named the problem like that, people grasped what we were talking about.

It is important for even a small union like us to win the ideological battle and put the government on the defensive. I think there's an onus on us to fight for everything we can get, because we're not just fighting for the 12,000 workers in McDonald's, of whom we organise a plucky minority of about 15%.

The government will probably legislate on what we settle on. This will probably affect tens of thousands of workers on these zero hour contacts.

We are determined to fight for the idea of fixed shifts, so that you're guaranteed a certain number of hours a week. This stops employers from socialising their losses."