Dunedin-based mediator Walter Grills (75) yesterday ended 44 years working for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and preceding departments resolving contract conflicts.
Speaking before his retirement function, he cast his mind back to the late 1970s during one of his major settlements between freezing works and employees in Southland.
"There were strikes all the time.
"They were mainly about pay and different freezing works competing with each other."
His job was to create an overarching contract for slaughtermen for all the freezing works in Southland.
He got to the point where everyone had signed it except for the freezing works union's secretary.
Mr Grills walked into one of Invercargill's pubs where he thought the man might be found.
"There was smoke and people generally fighting, and I could see him in the corner."
Unfortunately, someone who clearly did not like Mr Grills' work lunged at him and punched him in the chin, knocking him to the ground.
"I crawled over on the floor, under the table, stuck the agreement on the table and said: `Sign the damn thing'."
The man finally agreed to the settlement, which was disliked by both parties.
"It was controversial, it was criticised, and it worked."
Back in Dunedin, he was asked why he was stained with blood.
"I've been mediating in Southland," Mr Grills replied.
Mr Grills grew up Indianapolis, Indiana, and moved to Wellington in 1967 after gaining a scholarship to finish his psychology studies at Victoria University.
He got a job in Wainuiomata, near Wellington, teaching children with disabilities, for which he drew on his United States Marine Corps training.
"They liked to do reconnaissance marine work. The famous time when I almost got sacked was we did an exercise where we all crawled out the window and went down the fire escape."
He worked at carpet company Feltex and then the Employers' Federation before being employed by the Department of Labour in 1975 as one of its first mediators.
After a few years in Wellington at the department he transferred to Dunedin.
In the early 1980s in a settlement for journalists and news photographers he decided they should get a pay rise of almost 12% based on an employer miscalculation of how cost of living increases should be calculated.
"I could point out the employers' interpretation was incorrect, but no-one ever accepts that. They just say: `He's a jerk, the union bought him out'."
However, employers were eventually persuaded.
Mr Grills says a successful mediator needs to be authentic to themselves.
"People will know if you're a phony."
He personally brings a certain "energy" into mediation, and cares about the outcome, he said.
"I'm exceedingly self-critical if I don't get things done. I can't sleep if I can't get it resolved. I feel the pains."
Mr Grills has four children and is married to Dunedin barrister and solicitor Ronda Tokona.
He decided it was time to retire as his wife wants to study education in Auckland.
Once up there he does not think he will give up work entirely and has ideas of some kind of educational role, albeit perhaps informally.
When thinking about the major changes in his role over the years, he points to the rise of neoliberalism that hit the country in 1984.
"It was New Zealand's dark age. I don't think people in modern days realise how dark it was."
This took the "wind out of the union's sails" and his job shifted.
"I ceased being a mediator and became an arbitrator on a tribunal. The emphasis became individual agreements."
However, there are indications the country is moving out of this period, he says.
"There seems to be a return to collective bargaining.
"People are realising that the lower 99% of the country has been screwed and that they are better looked after if they have a collective organisation to bargain on their behalf."
