We caught bits of this interview on Breakfast this morning as we were readying ourselves to leave for work. Paul Henry spoke with Helen Kelly from the CTU over the union movement's plans to name and shame "bad employers" who are abusing 90-day work trials.
Henry had the bit between his teeth on this issue, and Helen Kelly didn't get the soft interview she had undoubtably been hoping for when the CTU hawked her to TVNZ. Henry gave her a right good grilling, and in the end, we reckon that it was Helen Kelly who was "named and shamed"!
Go to about the 5m 20s mark, which is where the fun starts, where Paul Henry asks "Would you support employers putting advertisements on about bad employees?" After several goes at obfuscation from Helen Kelly, Paul Henry demands a yes/no answer, and the double standards of the union movement are there for all to see.
We're employers. Up until now, we haven't been eligible to offer 90-day trials, because we employ more than 20 staff. Even if we could, we don't know that we would, but it would be helpful to know that we were able to if we so desired. We're sure that many other employers think likewise.
But the CTU needs to get real; not all employer/employee relationship breakdowns are due to bad employers, and we are grateful to Paul Henry for getting that point across this morning.
UPDATE: Thanks to Motella Blog, here's the video in the TVNZ link, without the annoying adverts first!
5 comments:
and the double standards of the union movement are there for all to see.
I watched the video. I think you're understating - she is trying to paint small, mum & dad employers as big corporates.
She also effectively called 40% of those surveyed (who hired who would not otherwise have done) liars.
It concerns me that someone was fired after working somewhere for 3 years under this law - that seems wrong. But I don't accept that the person in question is being labeled as a bad employee - in a small business, there could be any number of reasons she was let go.
This is addressed to those of an adversarial mindset in the 90 day debate, the likes of which are demonstrated in the Paul Henry interview. It’s also in a few pieces, because it’s long. The use of the word you is a third person corruption. It doesn’t mean you (author and owner of Keeping Stock) specifically. I also point out that I’m not pro-union. My opinion is there is no need for them at all.
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This is what the 90 day bill encourages:
The law allows the employer to ask new candidates to carry the blame for historical relationship mismanagement, or the acts of an earlier employee. No one can do that, even if they say they will. And from there the unrealistic expectations and dysfunction begin.
Only one man said he could absolve another for past and future wrongs and he was nailed to tree by his detractors 2000 years ago.
The law encourages employers to expect another person to carry responsibility for their hiring decision in the present and if it doesn't work out, the employer isn't to blame. It was all someone else's doing. Why is this wrong?
Because there is an idea that we all make our own decisions and must take full responsibility for them. Unless that is a euphemism for something else then how can anyone who believes in personal responsibility use the 90 day trial law without demonstrating gross hypocrisy? Neither employers nor employees should be considered as stereotypes. Employees aren’t the bogey man, waiting to spring out and destroy businesses. If one employee was so powerful that they could single handedly overpower all the other staff and management and destroy a business, imagine how prosperous a handful of good employees would be! But alas, like all stereotypes, it’s just an illusion.
The 90 day trial encourages dysfunctional relationships. Whatever unpleasantness happened in the past has to be faced by those involved, the lessons learned and changes in behaviour applied. This is what is expected of an employee in recruitment processes. The common question is asked: What happened? What did you learn? How did you change? By giving an employer a legal excuse to eliminate the process of examining events, their actions and the emotions that made them wary of new employees, the law actively encourages them to make the same mistakes again and again. It’s not a crime to be unaware of how one’s emotions colour decisions and the influence they hold on people’s lives. But life rules without favour on unintentional ignorance. There is no learning without reflection. Plain, simple and unavoidable. In a relationship, both parties are interrelated. An employer who attracts a thief has as much to learn about themselves as an employee who steals. Perhaps the argument is there is no time to stop and think? I say you can’t afford not to, unless you enjoy repeating the past. You say you played by the rules, rose to the rank of employer and now the world owes you? (but you don’t say it as crudely as that) Unfortunate isn’t it, how life never lets up. Maybe you just need a rest? Then take a holiday. Now the argument becomes that you can’t afford to or the business will collapse. I sympathise with your plight. But how is it the fault of a new candidate that has never worked for you? How are they responsible for your management decisions up to this time? Do you honestly believe that being able to decide whether another person eats that week will end your stresses? How many will you fire before you understand?
The disputes one employee has had with another employer – those which you now rate as high risk behaviour – will not be the exact same ones you encounter. Because you are good. You’re better, aren’t you? And if the employee has learned, those behaviours may never surface again. At least not in inappropriate ways. (I don’t much like the idea of employing whimpering slaves. The idea of lording it over simple minds brings no thrilling anticipation of power to me. Others may [and history proves it] disagree.)
cont...
By using a 90 day trial, the employer stops looking for constructive ways to build and maintain a relationship (and by relationship, I don’t mean barbeques for everyone at his house on Saturday). The risk never was in hiring. Hiring is necessary for any industry of scale. It’s good a thing. The risk was always in the relationship management afterwards. Just because the risk is now ignored and denied it hasn’t gone way. It’s potential to negatively influence an outcome has doubled.
There is no easy way to build relationships. Communication must maintained even through the uncomfortable bits of firing someone. This need not be the drawn out process that the new law pre-empts, but reasons must be presented and examined or destructive cycles will continue. The problems are many, the methods fluid, the outcome unsure and hope left Pandora’s Box a long time ago. But holding fast to the belief that noting will work is cowardice. Respect and cowardice don’t often go hand in hand.
There is no secret that the 90 day trial law is to alter the balance in favour of employers. It came straight from the minister's mouth. But it doesn’t favour anyone; it helps to compound errors. It does the same for employees, leaving them in the dark as to reasons. No isolated review is as good as that between two parties.
I don’t expect anyone will consider this point of view. I read the comments of people online and it appears that employers are owed because they’re of a higher status. They’re super-people. They don’t get angry any more, or frustrated, or disillusioned. Their decisions are completely rational. They needn’t examine the source of their stresses. Learning and growth has stopped, they’ve made it. Now all that’s necessary is keeping the apple cart level till retirement. Feeling is for poofs. Emotions aren’t important. It’s all the employees doing it to them. Employees are scum; less than human filth.
The arguments to accept the trial law as useful are endless: Why fight the status quo? Why should I..? Why should they..? But they did this to me... and now I must... Revenge fantasies: If you want that, just admit it and hire an Arnold Schwarzenegger film.
How any business can operate efficiently under the weight of so much misdirected animosity is a mystery to me. My suggestion to employers would be not to use any tools developed by politicians who daily display no knowledge of relationships. The choice is simple: Use the trial period and have nothing change, most likely getting worse. Or use your own smarts and an alternative method and find an opportunity for the kind of prosperous change that employers are always seeking.
using the example of the persons fried after 3 years id disengenious to say the least. The Business was sold. It is hardly uncommon for new employers to review existing staff. She clearly did not measure up to the new owners standards. Harsh but a fact of life.
@ CC - I think you're being overly cynical in your view of the emplyer/employee relationship, and towards employers in general. Mrs Inventory and I certainly don't regard ourselves as "super-people". We've built a brand which we are proud of, and through a combination of hard work, good decisions, good fortune and help from above have developed a business which has grown in size by around 600% in four years. Not all our decisions have been good, and some have been costly.
We put a lot of time and thought into recruitment, as we want to hire staff who will grow old with us. Hiring staff is a minefield, and even with processes which have become more and more robust, not every hire has worled out. Some of it may be that our checking systems have not been good enough; in other cases applicants have been very convincing on paper and at interview, but have proved anything but once employed. The bottom line is, IMHO (having been on both sides of the fence) that the employer has a lot more to lose than the employee has. At the end of the day, it's us who have invested every dollar we have and then some in our business.
Thanks though for taking the time to make such a considered contribution to the debate. That I disagree with much of it does not take away from my appreciation of it.
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