FIRST Union is part of a new campaign to extend paid parental leave, 26 for Babies, which launched at parliament this week with over 26 babies and toddlers.
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FIRST Union members at NZ Bus are back in negotiations this week, after 96.4% voted against the employer offer, which was for a 2.3% pay increase this November, and a further 2.3% in November 2013. FIRST Union Transport and Logistics secretary Karl Andersen said that the drivers had given a clear mandate to the union to go back to NZ Bus and put the case for a better offer.
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FIRST Union delegates will be meeting with Farmers to negotiate a new Collective Agreement in August, and claims meetings for members will take place in July.
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FIRST Union members are employed in a very diverse range of occupations with many smaller groups of workers covered by union collective agreements.
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Joining FIRST Union has led to big improvements in the pay packets of workers at Post Haste in Wellington.
Union delegate Tenii Tararo said that when he first started with the company last year there was no collective agreement and many workers had been stuck on low wages for a long time.
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Whether it’s your humble cup of gumboot tea, or your decaf vanilla shot trim latte, when you sit down for your morning cuppa you want to know that the people
who produced it are being treated fairly.
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FIRST Union delegate Graham Wilson has worked at Majestic Textiles for 23 years. “Nearly all of us are in the union and it has always been like that since way before I started,” he said.
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No one was more excited to see six months paid parental leave on the political agenda than FIRST Union delegate Noreen Faasoa, who works at Kmart Botany Downs. Noreen is a doting mum to 14 month old Hope and is five months pregnant with baby number two.
Noreen was able to take eight months total off work when Hope was born, but says "financially, it was not easy.”
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