New Zealand posties win back pay after strikes

Postal workers in New Zealand have been awarded back pay for a period of industrial action in which posties took undelivered mail and put it back in post boxes.

The workers undertook the “secret strike” in July last year as part of a row over an employment agreement, the New Zealand Herald reported.

During the strike the workers went to delivery branches and helped sort the mail in the morning, before taking some of it and re-posting it, preventing it from reaching its destination.

As soon as New Zealand Post worked out what was going on, managers issued suspension notices, stopping the workers from getting paid from the time they began the action.

But the country’s Employment Relations Authority (ERA) on Wednesday ruled that the suspension notices could not be backdated and the workers had to be paid for the time they undertook the action until the notices were issued.

NZ Post said it was not immediately aware the industrial action was occurring, so should have been able to issue the suspension notices from the time it began.

But a member of the ERA said that argument wrongly relied on the notion that an employer was entitled to a notice of intended strike action.

Postal Workers Association organiser Mike Treen said the company was found to have breached the Employment Relations Act.

Treen said the action was limited to not delivering some non-essential mail.

Associate Professor Sean Cooney from the University of Melbourne’s Law School said Australian workers found to have been undertaking illegal activities during strike action would face stiff penalties.