Labour trying jobs for the boys again

The main job of Labour seems to be to try and enhance union power and funding, and the main job of many unions is to get Labour elected. If it involved businesses, it would be called corrupt.  The latest example is on the obscure Advanced Technology Institute Bill. Look at the select committee report and the minority report from Labour:

In particular, it points to the recognition in that Act of the interest of unions as representatives of employees, both in industries directly engaged in the economic development that NZTE assists, and in the wider economy. The submitter asked that these provisions be mirrored in the ATI bill. We agree with this recommendation, and believe that union representation should be added to clause 10(4)(b)(i).

Firstly unions are not representative of employees. Off memory less than 17% of employees belong to a union and in the private sector it is under 9%.

But on Labour, they have done it again after backtracking on their plans to legislate to exclude unions from the lobbying bill they are now trying to legislate seats for unions on the stakeholder advisory board of the Advanced Technology Institute. Imagine if the Nats put up an amendment for a seat for Business NZ.

It would be interesting to find out whether this was signed by their research and innovation spokesperson David Shearer – is all this union sycophancy from Labour because they are about to gain 20% of the vote on future Labour leaders?