Paris silver medallist Emma Twigg is among a group of athletes who will detail their experiences within New Zealand's high performance system before the Employment Court Photo: BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
Three Paris Olympians are due to give evidence this week as a landmark legal case between High Performance Sport NZ (HPSNZ) and the country's top rowers and cyclists heads back to court.
The Employment Court will hear the government agency's appeal against an earlier ruling requiring it to engage in collective bargaining with athlete union The Athletes' Cooperative.
The action is the latest in a long-running legal saga stretching back to July 2022, when about 60 of New Zealand's elite rowers and cyclists banded together to form a new union and sought to negotiate a collective agreement with HPSNZ.
The group wants better rights for athletes, improved well-being, and financial stability.
RNZ understands rowing great Mahe Drysdale - who co-chairs the union and has been the frontman of the fight against the High Performance Sport NZ - will give evidence, alongside fellow rowers Emma Twigg and Tom Mackintosh, and sprint cyclist Sam Dakin.
Twigg, Mackintosh and Dakin, who all competed in the 2024 Paris Olympics, will outline their experiences in the high performance system, which the athlete union has argued "disempowers" athletes.
"High Performance Sport NZ decides everything about how an athlete's life goes on a day-to-day basis. Yet you know we have no input into that, and that's just fundamentally wrong," Drysdale said ahead of the hearing.
It will be the first time athletes have testified in open court about their experiences in the system. Several athletes made written submissions to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) ahead of the February 2023 hearing, but their names and accounts were suppressed.
Paris Olympian Tom Mackintosh Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Drysdale said it was a "courageous" move from the athletes that have agreed to take part in the hearing.
"The course I have taken is one step removed because I've been an athlete, but I'm no longer under [HPSNZ's] control. That's why I have been the mouthpiece for athletes. So for athletes that are still competing to actually stand up and say what they think, I think it's very brave because they have an ongoing relationship with [HPSNZ] that they've got to manage," he said.
"Of course, High Performance Sport's position is that they don't have a relationship with the athletes."
Drysdale said he believed HPSNZ's stance was "disrespectful".
"We've just come off the back of a very successful Olympics for High Performance Sport, they'll bask in all that glory about how well the athletes did. Yet they won't admit that there's any relationship with those athletes."
Cycling and rowing were New Zealand's most successful sports in Paris, winning nine medals between them.
New Zealand rowing legend Mahe Drsydale spearheads The Athletes' Collective Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Important questions
The experiences of the athletes will be important in outlining the merits of The Athletes' Cooperative case, but it will not decide the dispute.
The case will hinge on the finer points of employment law, and whether HPSNZ can be compelled to enter into collective bargaining with a group of athletes it does not directly employ.
In February this year the ERA found in favour of The Athletes' Cooperative, ruling that the government agency was legally obliged to enter into good faith collective bargaining with the athlete body.
Authority member Rowan Anderson concluded in his written determination that "for the purposes of initiating collective bargaining, [it is not] a requirement that the union seeking to initiate bargaining have members that are, at the time of initiation, employees of the proposed employer party".
HPSNZ director of high performance Steve Tew said at the time the agency was "surprised and concerned" with the outcome and would challenge the ruling in the Employment Court.
"We believe the ERA ruling could have implications not just for HPSNZ, but other government agencies and businesses across New Zealand. Given those wider implications, we believe it is important that we ask the Employment Court to clarify and confirm the legal position," Tew said after the organisation lodged its appeal in late February.
HPSNZ's stance from the outset has been that it does not have, nor does it intend to have, a direct employment relationships with athletes.
"The athletes' relationship is with their national sporting organisation; they're the ones that identify the athletes, they select them, they ultimately look after their daily training environment and they take them away to pinnacle events," Tew said.
"Our relationship is as the guardian, if you like, of the high performance system and the government's investment in that system and therefore we're one step removed from the athletes - therefore bargaining which would assume, at least at some level, an employment and a direct relationship, we believe is wrong."
HPSNZ director of high performance Steve Tew Photo: Andrew Cornaga / www.photosport.nz
The Employment Court agrees the case could have wider implications for New Zealand businesses - particularly those that operate under a triangular employment model.
Such is the importance of the case, it has appointed a full court of three judges, led by Chief Judge Christina Inglis, to preside over the case.
Representatives from Business NZ and the NZ Council of Trade Unions were invited to be party to the hearing, but it is understood both organisations declined to take part.
Drysdale says The Athletes' Cooperative was always prepared for the fight to go the distance.
"We're trying to fundamentally change the way sport is done in this country, so it's not going to be an easy process and you know we're going to have to go through it, but we still believe that this is the right way."
The case will be heard in Wellington over Tuesday and Wednesday.
