Craig
McCulloch Deputy Political Editor
Public
Service Minister Paul Goldsmith has criticised public
servants planning to strike next week, saying the industrial
action is part of a “broader political campaign” to change
the government.
About 10,000 members of the Public
Service Association (PSA) are set to strike on the afternoon
of Wednesday, 9 September following prolonged pay
negotiations.
Affected agencies included the Ministry
of Social Development (MSD), the Department of Internal
Affairs (DIA), the National Emergency Management Agency
(NEMA), the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
(MBIE) and the Ministry for Ethnic Communities
(MEC).
Speaking to reporters at Parliament on Tuesday,
Goldsmith said the action looked politically
motivated.
“They’ve got little pamphlets out there
saying ‘change the government’,” he said. “The people of New
Zealand will be inconvenienced out of what could be seen as
a broader political campaign.”
Goldsmith said public
servants received “very significant” pay bumps under the
Labour government and had continued to be offered modest
increases.
“They’ve got a right to strike, but I think
it’s poor form.”
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Speaking
separately, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he’d
prefer the public servants to be “actually working” instead
of striking.
“They should be at work or they should be
around the table negotiating,” he said. “But that’s up to
the agencies that deal with them.”
In a statement, the
PSA said the government should focus on settling collective
bargaining rather than attacking the union.
“Workers
have a fundamental right to strike, and the government
should respect that and focus on settling this dispute,”
national secretary Duane Leo said.
Need to see
improved offer – union
PSA national secretary Fleur
Fitzsimons earlier told RNZ employers needed to come back to
the table with an improved offer.
She denied
Goldsmith’s claim that the strike was politically motivated
and said ministers should focus on settling the dispute
rather than attacking the union.
“Union members have
endorsed the strike action because the offers in bargaining
are not there. We need to see an improved offer from the
employers, and the government should support them to do
that.
“We need to see public servants getting pay
increases that are consistent with the increased cost of
living.”
Ministers punt major ministry merger plan
into next term
In May, the government announced plans
to cut a further 8700 public service roles over the next
three years.
It also promised to streamline and merge
the roughly 40 government departments, but further details
have yet to be revealed.
A newly released document,
reported on Tuesday, revealed Public Service Commissioner
Sir Brian Roche last year advocated to reduce the number of
government agencies down to between 15 and 20.
In his
letter to then-minister Judith Collins, Roche said the
consolidation would take three to five years and be driven
by common technology and “a lot more AI”.
“This
is not making more MBIEs – in fact we will be shrinking
MBIE,” he said.
“This is what you have asked me to do.
I will front it and I will defend it, because I think it is
the right thing to do.”
Goldsmith said no decisions
had been made on the final make-up of the public service:
“That’s something that the next government will
consider.”
Asked what had taken so long, Goldsmith
said the programme was a “reasonably complex
exercise”.
He said National would take a public
service policy into the election, but would not say whether
it would identify a desired number of government
departments.
Luxon said his government would pursue
“major reform” in its second term.
“I’ve been pretty
straight up to say: we’ve got way too many agencies and way
too many ministries, and we need radical
simplification.”
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