As red ink increases its presence on balance sheets around the country, some businesses feel isolated and wary of the future. Andrew Little discusses some of the challenges facing the industry, and argues that problems can be overcome collectively
Andrew Little is the national secretary, Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union
The impact of the worldwide economic crisis is rightly front and centre of thinking and planning by businesses and governments around the world. It’s a great pity that the real economy, businesses and individuals who produce goods and services that people use, will be so much affected by events beyond our control, but this is not a time for finger pointing and blaming.We all need to be part of the solutions, short term and long term. The efforts of the Reserve Bank to drive down interest rates, apart from signalling how deep-seated the issues are, might help. And we eagerly await the government announcements on early stimulus measures, as well as the jobs summit due at the end of this month.
But we shouldn’t kid ourselves. The current market circumstances are because worldwide consumer and business demand has rapidly shrunk, and it is a lift in demand, especially in the big consumer economies of North America and Europe, that will start moving the rest of the world economy along. You only have to see the strenuous efforts of the Federal Reserve and Treasury in the United States and the hundreds of billions of dollars they have injected over the last several months to realise that even this hasn’t been enough to jump-start that mammoth economy into life.
The challenge for us, and the rest of the developed world, is to make sure the cure that we all need to be part of doesn’t kill the patient, or even cripple it for life.
The contribution that workers and their unions make during the downturn will be important. If demand is falling then output needs to be adjusted downwards, and in many businesses we will need to work with employers on hours of work, rosters and scheduling. The circumstances may be an opportunity to take a serious look, if it hasn’t happened already, at workplace organisation and productivity issues.
The EPMU works closely with PrintNZ and the printing industry training organisation on innovations to help lift productivity in the workplace, and we know more can always be done in this respect.
But when we think about how we get through difficult times like this, we have to also think about what state we want to be in when we climb out of it, even if this seems a distant prospect when all our mental energy is going into how we get through the next month.
We need to maintain good quality workplace relationships. This is the very time to keep workforces well informed about the state of the business and the challenges that are on the horizon. Good communication is essential. Workers, who like their managers will be feeling nervous about the future, need to know the good news as well as the bad. They need to have confidence in the accuracy of the information they are getting about the state of the business they work for. The worst thing is if workers have only rumour and gossip to go on. This will destroy morale and confidence very quickly.
Communication needs to be two-way. Given the opportunity, plenty of workers have good suggestions about how to make efficiencies and help the business.
And then there’s the issue about wages. I’ve yet to come across a business that survived after cutting rates of pay. Cutting overtime, reducing shifts and other changes to the working week, which are about cutting output, often already reduce take-home pay. Asking workers to do the same or more for less is a recipe for disaster. Workers on average incomes simply don’t have the means to absorb reductions in pay.
And the call for zero pay rises highlights one of the real problems fully deregulated labour markets face in times like this. We abandoned centralised wage fixing long ago. We have a completely disaggregated wage fixing system with the small proportion of collective bargaining across the national workforce influencing the pay adjustments for many more than those represented by unions.
Unions are capable of providing a collective response at times like this, and it is mainly a collective response enterprise by enterprise. The exception is where there are industry-wide collective agreements, but these have been unfashionable for a long time.
Nevertheless, this is a time for working closely together and getting through a difficult time by agreement. Our members expect us to look after their short and long term interests, and we are naturally committed to doing so.
But they also expect relationships developed and strengthened during the hard times to endure. I’m confident we are up for it. I look forward to employers embracing the needs of this new age as well.
