Read news releases and research updates from the February 2017 newsletter.
Research update: union membership density continues to decline
Report on CLEW's latest Union Membership Survey by Sue Ryall and Dr Stephen Blumenfeld.
In the aftermath of the 2007/08 global economic crisis nearly a decade ago the share of the global workforce covered by collective agreements has fallen precipitously at a pace unprecedented since the Second World War. New Zealand workplaces have witnessed a gradual decline in union membership and union density in that time. This suggests that, while the global economic crisis may have posed as much peril as promise for organised labour, given their already weakened position and lack of a political ally in government, trade unions in New Zealand, as well as in most other countries, were unable to exploit the crisis to their advantage.
So, where is this decline happening, and is it likely to be redressed? Our full report includes discussion of the changes in union membership across industries, sectors, and composition of unions.
Research update: partners and parental leave—what do people do?
Guest Contributors: Kirsten Windelov and PSA Policy Team.
Last year the parental leave legislation was changed to extend eligibility to parental leave but made no change to partners’ entitlements. Did these changes catch the legislation up enough to meet current social need and parents’ expectations?
We wanted to understand more about what partners do in practice on the birth of children and for childcare purposes. In the December 2016 email newsletter to PSA members we asked those who are partners of someone who has had a child to share with us their experience of taking leave when their children were born and for childcare purposes.
Modern office design: friend or foe—reviewing the research
Dr Geoff Plimmer and Esme Cleave.
Much has been written about the benefits of open-plan office design and its more tech-savvy offspring, hot-desking. Open-plan design has been around since at least the 1960s with its adoption taking hold in New Zealand as organisations seek to benefit from the promise of reduced overheads and greater collaboration.
But does open-plan, and more recently hot-desking, fulfil these promises?
In the YouTube footage above, interviewer Hillary Barry asks whether unions are still meaningful in the modern workplace, given that far fewer workers in New Zealand are members of trade unions than was the case 50 or 100 years ago.
Dr Blumenfeld says that numbers have remained static since the removal of compulsory union membership, covering about one in five workers. He also comments about union activities that are both supporting and attracting new members amongst New Zealand youth.
