The importance of collective agreements In construction and manufacturing, employers generally noted that Pacific workers are concentrated in the waged jobs as opposed to the salaried jobs. They often expressed the view that it would be less likely for Pacific workers to experience pay disparities in waged work as these pay scales are negotiated through collective agreements, whether or not the employee is a member of the union. One manufacturing employer noted that the proportion of their waged workforce that was covered by a collective agreement was relatively low and that, in their view, further unionisation would assist in closing pay gaps: We don’t have very many under a collective. Our proportion of a collective agreement is probably only 2 or 3 percent. So if you’re asking me, it’s a double-edge sword. Again, because we have a really good relationship with team members and our production managers, they trust us a lot to kind of work through that process, but I actually think if you’re talking about what would you do in this sector to kind of push overall, then maybe you would give – and I can’t even believe it’s coming out of my mouth, I come from Australia where unions are really strong and powerful and quite militant – it’s weird to me that that is not happening here. This employer identified the need for workers in waged work to have further support when bargaining with them: We’ll just be perfectly blunt about it and we kind of get stuff, but sometimes I want to shake them and say, “These guys need a little bit of someone in their corner.” They’re not strong. It’s really strange, I find it strange, and it’s things like just giving people help when we bargain. Another manufacturing employer described a contrasting situation in which almost 90 percent of their waged workers were protected through a collective agreement, which was described by the 90 employer as very generous. They experience very strong retention rates, which they attribute to the strong collective agreement. While they believed their collective agreement to be very strong and the reason for their strong retention rates, the same manufacturing employer observed that, in their company, white men are disproportionately represented in the upper echelons and managerial roles and that, while they observed this to be changing slowly, they consider this to be fairly typical. We’re no different from anyone else. You go in the doors at supply chain and you get to certain levels and its very white and very male. It’s changing, but we have a long way to go. One employer we spoke with had a different perspective on unionisation. They felt that the loyalty Pacific workers felt to their union, which was in many cases intergenerational, may be a factor holding people back from advancing into salaried leadership positions: A lot of our Māori and Pasifika staff are part of unions. That’s a bit of a legacy piece as well. And why that’s important is because people are reluctant, because I spoke about that three generations example. If your whānau have been part of the union for three generations deep, it’s very tough to break that shackle because you’ve always believed that you’re waged and that supports your lifestyle and so the shift to a salaried role is perhaps quite a challenge. It’s like what? It’s quite different.