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Ryan Bridge: Labour shouldn't automatically back the Unions · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: Last week ended with this bizarre situation where Labor basically
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  Speaker 1: came out against a pay rise for teachers. If you
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: caught the end of last week. They did this because of, well,
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  Speaker 1: that's what the unions want, and what the unions want
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  Speaker 1: the unions generally get with labor. Union strategy one oh
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  Speaker 1: one is getting everyone who's not a member to become one.
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  Speaker 1: The tactic generally is pear pressure. If you can deprive
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  Speaker 1: non union members of pay rise while dragging out your negotiations,
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  Speaker 1: that's leverage. Labor last week got rid of Willow gene Prime.
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  Speaker 1: About time she's scored an F in the portfolio. Ginny
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  Speaker 1: Anderson's been lumped with it at a time when national
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  Speaker 1: is seen across a bunch of different polls. This term
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  Speaker 1: to be either better or at least as good as
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  Speaker 1: labor on education, which is saying something because like health,
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  Speaker 1: it's usually the purview of the left to own that issue.
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  Speaker 1: But something shifted and Ginny probably and maybe that's partly
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  Speaker 1: Erica Stanford's doing, but Ginny probably needs to take a
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  Speaker 1: good hard look at which battles she blindly follows who
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  Speaker 1: Comrade's into. She's now got education, of course, charter schools
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  Speaker 1: is another example. I was reading at the weekend about
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  Speaker 1: the breadth of subjects and students that these schools actually
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  Speaker 1: cater to. You've got seven Mardy schools, You've got a
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  Speaker 1: Pacific a girls' school who were featured on the show previously, Autism,
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  Speaker 1: French Sport, Cambridge, you name it, there's a shopping list.
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  Speaker 1: Last week the Principals Union said all of those schools,
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  Speaker 1: I think they're about nineteen applications for them so far.
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  Speaker 1: All of them should be closed and the money, they say,
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  Speaker 1: should be put back into the mainstream system. They don't
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  Speaker 1: believe schools are failing certain cohorts of young people, which
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  Speaker 1: is the very reason, of course, that charter schools exist
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  Speaker 1: in the first place. Now, to an average parent, or
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  Speaker 1: an average person, but actually an average voter, more importantly
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  Speaker 1: for the politicians. For an average voter, this looks political
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  Speaker 1: and not practical. I think most kiwis except that mainstream
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  Speaker 1: schooling doesn't work for everyone. Most also accept that teaching
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  Speaker 1: needs to be better paid, regardless of your union affiliation.
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  Speaker 1: So to rile against these things just because your union
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  Speaker 1: mates demand you do so is hardly going to win
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  Speaker 1: back public support in an area where ground has clearly
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  Speaker 1: been lost. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.
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  Speaker 1: Listen live to News Talks at B from five am weekdays,
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  Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio