Organising Middle Earth? Collective Bargaining and Film Production Workers in New Zealand

In 2010 the NZ Parliament passed an amendment to the Employment Relations Act 2000 (NZ) (ER Act) which purports to exclude a whole class of workers from the definition of ‘employee' in s 6 of the Act. The effect of the amendment in practice is to deny workers who fall within the exemption (film industry workers) access to the schema of industrial regulation under the Act including regulated collective bargaining. But does this mean that those workers cannot engage in any form of collective bargaining? This issue was hotly contested during the dispute that led to the exclusion of actors from the coverage of the ER Act. This paper will explore the extent to which independent contractor workers in NZ may act collectively in the determination of the terms and conditions of their engagements in light of NZ competition law. The paper will adopt a comparative perspective, considering the parallel problems caused by this issue in Australia and considering similarities and differences in the two regimes