On two occasions this year, Jacinda Ardern has abruptly interrupted her tight timetable of pre-arranged meetings and appointments and fronted impromptu at public gatherings on Parliament’s forecourt.
The first was back in March when Greenpeace presented a 45,000-signature petition seeking a ban on oil and gas exploration to Megan Woods, Labour’s Energy Minister.
The second occasion was in August when striking primary school teachers flooded into the grounds of Parliament in a mass protest to up the pressure on Ardern’s Administration to up its offer in negotiations on a new collective agreement on salaries and allowances.
In both cases the symbolism was vivid and telling. In fronting, she was seeking to demonstrate that she was not losing touch with Labour’s core supporters.
But her appearance also indicates she has real fear of ending up doing so.
In that regard, she told the teachers that watching them streaming through the gates of Parliament had not left her with a sense of "them and us". She had a sense only of "us". In other words, they were all on the same side of the argument.
It is a pity the Employment Relations Authority was not present to hear that.
It subsequently wasted a week trying and failing to mediate a settlement of the primary teachers’ pay claim.
In retrospect, the authority really did not have a hope of getting the NZEI, the union which represents the country’s 40.000-plus primary teachers, and the Ministry of Education, the Government’s negotiator, to hammer out a mutually acceptable deal.
While the parties to the mediation might have been on the same side of the fence on some matters, in other aspects, they were all over the paddock on others.
As one major business figure has astutely observed, this is not so much an industrial dispute as a political one. Rob Campbell knows what he is talking about. The current chair of the likes of SkyCity and Tourism Holdings was a prominent trade union official back in the 1980s and also active in the Labour Party at the time.
It is therefore hardly surprising that the Employment Relations Authority‘s mediation failed. To have had a chance of doing so, the authority would have had to have untangled the politics from the pay claim. The authority is not equipped to do so. And even had it done so, the politics would still have got in the way.
That is evident in the stance taken by the NZEI. The union’s members are in the process of voting on the Government’s latest offer. They might yet do so. Tempting as it might be to pocket an increase in pay of 9 per cent over three years, the union’s members would be silly to vote counter to the hard line adopted by their leadership.
The union clearly has the upper hand. It is patently obvious why that is so.
First, the Government has weakened its negotiating power by not hiding its acceptance that it is payback time for a core element of the party’s vote.
Once the secondary sector is included, there are around 70,000 teachers. Assuming most of them voted at last year’s election and that those votes were likely skewed heavily in Labour’s favour, that all adds up to a voting block of not much short of three per cent of all votes cast.
That might not sound very much. But in a tight contest — as National discovered during the John Key era —a couple of percentage points either way can turn out to be the difference between Government and Opposition.
The arithmetic might be rough and the assumptions far too sweeping, but you can bet your house that is the kind of territory in which Labour’s political strategists are focussing.
For confirmation of that, you need look no further than the startling transformation of Chris Hipkins — Cabinet minister in charge of the education portfolio.
The former Opposition chief whip is veering perilously close to becoming the Government’s chief wimp.
Hipkins is trying to write himself into Labour Party history by conducting the most sweeping overhaul of the education sector since David Lange’s Tomorrow’s Schools reforms of the late 1980s.
Whether or not teachers are happy with what emerges from this exercise, Hipkins needs them on board to implement his reforms.
His response to industrial action taken by the NZEI membership — which has included two rounds of one-day strikes — has accordingly been measured. That might be too polite. The word "feeble" comes more readily to mind. As does the word "naive".
The latter certainly applies to his bleating that the teachers have responded to Government concessions during the vexed salary talks by simply upping their demands.
Well, what else did he expect would happen?
His reaction to the teachers upping the ante has been to warn that no more money would be put on the negotiating table.
But his crying poverty lacks conviction. Such claims that the cash bucket is now empty has not infrequently been followed by a fresh salary offer or the spending of money that supposedly did not exist suddenly becoming available to be poured into resources to ease the staffing crisis in schools.
The minister can thus hardly be surprised the union keeps coming back for even more.
The current fiscal forecasts might look to be highly favourable. But they are always vulnerable to the cyclical nature of economic activity.
They are also going to be vulnerable to the added impost on the public purse of an ageing population which is bound to place huge pressure on politicians to boost health and other social services.
The current pay round is thus of critical importance for the teaching profession.
It is a window of opportunity to address the slippage in teacher salaries over time both in real terms and in comparison to other professions.
And likewise compensate for the added workload brought about by the chronic staff shortages in most schools.
With respect to the latter, the NZEI has been careful to pitch its pay claim in the context of lifting the quality of education. Not to do so would risk making teachers look greedy.
Moreover, the quality of education is what matters to parents.
The drawback is the blurring of lines between money which is designated as being part of any settlement of a pay claim when that money would have been spent on extra staffing regardless.
No less a figure than the Prime Minister has been guilty of such a sleight of hand. Ardern had the audacity to suggest that the pay deal being offered to teachers amounted to more than $900 million if the $217 million allocated for the recruitment of up to 600 "learning support co-ordinators" was taken into account.
Ardern’s announcement of that spending on extra staff which was made just a week earlier, made no mention of the ongoing salary negotiations,
The NZEI has similarly judicious when it comes to the "s" word. By including strike action as one of its weapons, the union has sought to send the firmest possible message to Hipkins and his colleagues of the lengths teachers are willing to go to get what they want.
At the same time, strike action has been configured to cause the minimum possible disruption to working parents.
In calling strikes, the union well knows it is treading a very fine line between retaining public sympathy for their cause and that sympathy to turn to annoyance and even anger. In that context, the Government might well call the union’s bluff, thereby force it to contemplate stronger action.
The danger would be that the Government would end up copping the blame for increased disruption of people’s lives.
For its part, the union must be careful not to bite the hand that feeds by lessening Labour’s chances of re-election in 2020.
In that context, the NZEI needs to take a deep breath and think very carefully before committing to any joint action with the Post Primary Teachers Association in what is already being termed as a "mega-strike".
Regardless, one conclusion can be drawn from the whole saga: Ardern's fear of her party losing its base support makes Labour look like a soft touch, while also making something of a mockery of its claim of being fiscally stringent.
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