Do Unions Affect Employer Compliance with the Law? New Zealand Evidence for Age Discrimination

Over the last thirty years, collective rights to organize into unions, bargain collectively and strike have been weakened in both New Zealand and the UK. At the same time, individual rights to due process and to protection from discriminatory or unjust management decisions have been strengthened, leading some to conclude that collective and individual rights are unrelated, incompatible or mutually exclusive. On the contrary, we use evidence of employer compliance with anti-age provisions in the New Zealand Human Rights Act to show that the two sets of rights can be highly complementary: the presence of unions strengthens individual protection from discriminatory treatment.