TVNZ’s first strike in 20 years is a bill for three years of inflation

TVNZ staff will strike for the first time in two decades, and the timing could not be more instructive. On the morning Stats NZ confirmed inflation was easing, around 150 E tū and PSA members at the state broadcaster announced they would walk off the job over a 2.5 percent pay offer. The stoppage runs from 1pm to 2pm on Thursday 29 October in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

An hour off air is hardly a general strike. But it is a clean, live example of a problem every business owner negotiating pay this year will recognise. Workers are not bargaining off the latest CPI print. They are bargaining off the cumulative damage of the past three years.

The headline number is falling, the grievance is not

Annual inflation for the September quarter came in at 3.7 percent, down from 4.1 percent in the June quarter. On paper, that should take some heat out of pay talks. It has not. E tū describes TVNZ’s offer as well below inflation, following years of offers that failed to keep pace with prices, and says it amounts to a real-terms pay cut. TVNZ journalist and E tū delegate Ethan Te Ora says staff “can’t meet basic costs”.

The arithmetic backs the union on the narrow point. A 2.5 percent rise against 3.7 percent inflation is a real cut of roughly 1.2 percentage points. Stack that on top of the 2023 to 2025 price surge and the gap widens. A slowing rate of inflation does not lower the price level. Rent, groceries and power bills stay where they landed, and people remember what they used to cost.

That is the lesson for employers. Telling staff that inflation is easing is a statement about the future. Their complaint is about the past.

TVNZ has a real number to point to as well

This is not a story of a fat employer refusing to share. TVNZ’s FY26 annual report shows a statutory profit of $16.3 million, but an underlying operating EBIT loss of $23.5 million, including $27.2 million of planned strategic investment. Total revenue fell to $262.9 million from $281.1 million the year before, even as digital grew 16.8 percent to make up a third of the business.

The year before was worse. In FY25, TVNZ reported underlying EBIT of just $4.9 million after TV advertising revenue fell 7.2 percent, and it cut $41.2 million of underlying costs to get there.

A TVNZ spokesperson says the company has been in constructive bargaining since July and remains committed to a pay increase, but that the unions’ proposal “exceeds what TVNZ can sustain”. Given those numbers, that is a defensible position, not a negotiating bluff. TVNZ is a commercial state-owned enterprise. Every dollar it cannot cover from advertising ultimately lands on the shareholder, which is the taxpayer. Treasury has been scrutinising TVNZ’s financial performance since late 2024, and nobody should expect a generous settlement to be waved through.

Fewer people, the same pressure

The staff who remain have also lived through serious upheaval. In 2023, TVNZ’s executive concluded it needed to cut its labour cost base by around $10 million annualised, according to a 2024 Employment Relations Authority determination. By late 2024 it was proposing to axe about 50 net roles to save $30 million, including Breakfast presenters, Seven Sharp roles and camera operators.

In 2024, Michael Wood, then an E tū negotiation specialist, warned the changes could have “far-reaching consequences” for the whole media sector. The wage bill tells the story. Wages and salaries fell from $87.2 million in FY24 to $72.0 million in FY25, then edged back to $74.8 million in FY26. That is a 3.8 percent rise in the total bill, still about 14 percent below where it sat two years earlier, spread across a smaller, busier workforce.

That combination is combustible. Survivors of restructuring often carry more work, absorb more risk and feel entitled to a share of the savings. Management sees a cost base it has only just wrestled under control.

The structural squeeze nobody can bargain away

The uncomfortable truth is that TVNZ’s revenue problem predates the pandemic. Media academic Peter Thompson noted in 2024 that TV’s share of the New Zealand advertising market roughly halved from 34.3 percent to 17.7 percent between 1999 and 2022. No pay deal changes that. Paying staff more without new revenue simply brings forward the next round of cuts.

What employers should take from it

The TVNZ dispute will probably settle somewhere between 2.5 percent and the union’s ask, perhaps with a lump sum or a two-year deal that smooths the hit. But the wider signal matters more. Wage expectations are anchored to cumulative cost increases, not quarterly trends, and that stickiness will keep pressure on businesses even as the CPI falls.

Employers heading into bargaining should come armed with their own numbers, be honest about what the business can carry, and expect the catch-up argument. If a state broadcaster with a $23.5 million underlying loss cannot make “inflation is easing” stick, few private firms will either.

Sources

• RNZ: TVNZ staff to strike for first time in 20 years over pay (2026-10-22)
• TVNZ: Annual Report FY26 (2026-08-27)
• TVNZ: Annual Report FY25 (2025-08-27)
• Employment Relations Authority: E Tū Incorporated v Television New Zealand (2024-09-13)
• RNZ: TVNZ proposes cuts to Breakfast, Seven Sharp roles as it aims to save $30m (2024-11-07)
• NZ Herald: TVNZ cost-cutting proposals risk transforming it and other media, E tū union’s Michael Wood says (2024-10-10)
• The Conversation: First Newshub, now TVNZ – the news funding model is broken, but this would fix it (2024-03-06)