Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic, challenging as it is, provides an opportunity to rethink employment relations arrangements in New Zealand in a broader context of economic policy change, in circumstances which echo the challenges of the 1930s. Major transformation will require a combination of political imagination and will, novel economic policy initiatives, and strong commitment from the social partners.
Highlights
As we approach the October 2020 General Election, the spectre of the Covid-19 pandemic hovers over New Zealand’s politics and economic performance
Employment relations might seem to be small beer in this context, with labour market disruption and multiple emergency interventions notionally crowding out any interest in employment relations and bargaining arrangements
In terms of short term measures to mitigate the effects of Covid-19, support for the labour market is most important, but, employment relations arrangements and labour market interventions will go hand-in-hand in the long-term post-Covid-19 recovery
Summary
As we approach the October 2020 General Election, the spectre of the Covid-19 pandemic hovers over New Zealand’s politics and economic performance. This is the focus of this commentary It suggests that a Labour-led government, should it be returned strongly to power in the 2020 election, might undertake simultaneously both the short-term recovery measures required by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the medium-to-long-term piloting of the economy, away from the siren calls of a renewed neo-liberal model, to a contemporary version of the 1930s “Keynesian Accommodation”. Both phases require major innovation in labour market and employment relations settings. Treasury was less ideologically driven and more open to supporting what seemed to work, and inter-party political antipathies under first-past-the-post arrangements were less pronounced and more amenable to consensual “national” solutions
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