Supersize My Pay

international | housing | other press Saturday February 18, 2006 05:30 by Dominion Post (NZ) - corporate media solidarityjoe at yahoo dot com Auckland, Aotearoa 00 64 27 445 4959

It describes itself as a campaigning and militant union crusading for young and low-paid workers. Sue Allen finds out more about New Zealand's fastest growing union, Unite.

IT IS billed as a David-and-Goliath struggle – the young and poorly paid pitched against wealthy multi-nationals – and new union Unite is there, making sure the slingshot is fully loaded.

fast food rebellion

In the past few weeks, Unite and its members have grabbed headlines with strikes at Starbucks, KFC, Pizza Hut and McDonald's. There have been rallies and meetings in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
And Unite is promising more. After fast food outlets, Unite is training its sights on hotels. Petrol stations, call centres, commercial cleaners and car park companies are all in view. Unite's frontman – former Alliance Party leader Matt McCarten – believes Unite is one of the fIrst to successfully try to unionise low-paid casual workers.
"The public are quite supportive of the working poor. It's not like they are a bunch of airline pilots on $150,000. There are full-timers on $380 a week."
He argues that the fulltime wage for food industry workers has, in effect, halved in 20 years because wages have failed to rise and overtime and allowances have been removed.
Meanwhile, multi-nationals increase profits and pour money into expansion to grab market share. "Who, but only the greedy, would say someone earning $9.50 an hour shouldn't organise themselves to get a better deal?" he says.
Unite was set up three years ago in Auckland and has grown from 200 to 5000 members. It now has union organisers in Wellington and Christchurch and is recruiting for Hamilton, Palmerston North, Whangarei, Dunedin and Rotorua. Unite will take members from any sector and members can join for life and carry membership through different jobs.
Mr McCarten says Unite's success has come because traditional Unions have not fully adapted to the reality of the new marketplace and the casual workforce, where people change jobs for an extra 50 cents an hour.
By targeting low-paid, casual workplaces, Unite has tapped into young workers and a new generation of union members. It communicates with members by text and e-mail. Its rallies combine unionism with music, comedians and youth culture.
Even its flagship campaign SuperSizeMyPay.Com is a reference to American cult film Supersize Me, where film-maker Morgan Spurlock charts his progress eating nothing but McDonald's for a month.
The campaign has three main aims: increase the minimum wage to $12 an hour, abolish youth rates and get secure working hours.

STATISTICS New Zealand estimates there are 67,800 people in the 18-plus age group earning the adult minimum wage of $9.50 or less and about 10,000 16- and 17 year-olds on or under the youth minimum wage of $7.60.
Last year, McDonald's reported global profits of US$2.6 billion (NZ$3.85 billion). Burger King does not report exact sales fIgures, but one US company estimated its sales were US$7.7 billion (NZ$11.4 billion).
Many of New Zealand's low-wage earners are women, Maori, PacifIc Islanders, students, young people, new migrants and the disabled, Unite says.
Whatever Unite is doing, it seems to be working. In the past year, it has entered formal negotiations with BurgerKing, Wendy's and Restaurant Brands, which operates KFC, Starbucks and Pizza Hut.
On Wednesday, McDonald's came to the negotiating table for the fIrst time. "If we were going to make an impact, we had to make it an industry-wide coordinated campaign and one that reached out to the public for support," says Unite's senior organiser Mike Treen.
The fact that Unite is targeting big brands such as KFC and Starbucks is not lost on Restaurant Brands chief executive Vicki Salmon. She believes by hitting high-profIle outlets, Unite is gaining publicity and carrying out a form of political lobbying. It is a way of keeping pressure on the Government to pass Green Party MP Sue Bradford's private member's bill to dump youth rates and on Labour to honour its pledge to lift the minimum wage to $12 an hour, economic conditions permitting.
Ms Bradford's bill is expected to pass its first reading on Wednesday after Labour, United Future and the Maori Party agreed to support it to select committee stage.
But far from being an industry awash with cash, as it is portrayed, Ms Salmon says Restaurant Brands made a profIt of $11.5 million last year in New Zealand on $315 million turnover.
"It's a very tough, low-margin business and labour as a cost is a signifIcant part of what we do." Higher wages would mean lower profits, she says. Lower profits would mean cutting back expansion plans, fewer new jobs, shorter opening hours and higher prices.
Unite says that is why it is negotiating with all four major fast food companies at once, to put them all on an equal footing on pay rates.
Ms Salmon defends Restaurant Brands as a good employer with relatively low staff turnover for the industry; a commitment to training, flexible hours for parents and students and as a provider of fIrst-job experience for many who wouldn't be employed elsewhere.
Though Restaurant Brands has a relatively good relationship with Unite, she believes there is an "unruly bunch" within the union who are being disruptive to get publicity. "They are enthusiastic and passionate, but not always practical about what the outcome might be."

McDONALD'S would not discuss Unite or the strike action, saying it would be inappropriate as it was now in good-faith negotiations. However, a McDonald's spokeswoman denied reports that it was taking legal action against workers after a strike on February 10, which it says was illegal because it took place before negotiations started.
Burger King did not return calls. Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly says he has no issues with Unite, but he is concerned that the abolition of youth rates might backfire.
He says the lower rate aims to encourage employers to take on 16 and 17-year-olds with no work experience or skills. Without it, he says, young workers could end up being squeezed out of employment.
As a general rule, however, Mr O'Reilly says he does not believe strikes work. "I guess the danger is you encourage militancy instead of encouraging dialogue. It's probably not a great experience for young people to have."
According to Victoria University's Industrial Relations Centre, union membership grew by 3.6 per cent last year to 354,058. Since 1999, union membership has grown by 17 per cent.
However, union coverage dropped slightly last year from 2003 because recruitment failed to keep pace with a growing labour force.
Whatever growth there is, it will take a long time to recover the 41 per cent union membership loss between 1991 and 1999 after the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act, which decimated union membership.
Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson thinks the SuperSizeMyPay campaign is fantastic. "It's young people actually taking charge of their own issue. I find it inspiring and impressive. "
He also agrees with Unite that there is broad public concern about low wages and youth rates. "A lot of young people are employed by large multi-nationals making big profIts. These are our young people being discriminated against," he says.