It's great to see so many workers - members of the SFWU and EPMU as well as other unions. We have shown today that when we stand together, when we fight alongside each other, we will be heard!
We're experiencing today the power of workers united; the power of the union and isn't it great?
In the next few weeks the future of New Zealand will be decided by you and all those others who take the time to cast their vote.
The Election this year will be closely fought - much closer than the polls predict, much closer than the media suggests. This is because they represent the interests of big business and they underestimate the power we hold as workers, as family members and as members of our communities.
The choice is stark.
Do we continue with a worker-friendly Government that works for us?
OR do they take control?
Do we entrust John Key with our future, our kids' welfare, our health care, our education system?
Is that what we want?
(NO)
Can we stop that?
(YES WE CAN)
Under Labour we have Kiwi Bank, KiwiSaver, and Kiwi Rail: all owned by us Kiwis, all run for our benefit.
Under National, instead of Kiwi, we will get the "Key Way" which means ALL these will be sold off. They will all end up in the hands of Key's rich mates; to make them even richer.
Is that what we want?
(NO)
Can we stop that?
(YES WE CAN)
This Government works for us. This Government put in $16 million to pay every cleaner, every kitchen worker, every orderly, from Invercargill to Kaitaia at least $14.62 an hour.
That's why when we asked SFWU members at AGMs held all round the country, "Do you want our Union to actively campaign to return a Labour-led Government?", 84% of them said "Yes!"
The Labour Party was built by the trade unions. It is the only mass workers' party in New Zealand. It is our party and it is up to us to make sure it remains our party ... in Government.
That's because, while this Government has delivered much for workers, there is more work to be done.
We need stronger collective bargaining rights across whole industries; like the old Awards.
We need a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
We need to deal with freeloaders.
And we need the right to strike when a Collective Agreement is in force and the employer uses restructuring or the threat of outsourcing to force cuts in conditions, like Air NZ did.
Will National extend our right to strike? Will they stop freeloaders? Will they get us $15 an hour? Will they strengthen collective bargaining?
NO WAY.
National is the party of big business. They want to cut workers' rights, especially the rights of new workers. That's what their 90 Day Bill was about and they still plan to do it.
We have an important duty to do over the next eight or nine weeks. We need to make sure our workmates and our whanau are on the Roll.
We need to talk to everyone we know about why it's important to defend our rights at work and all the gains of this Government. That way you don't just have your vote; you get to multiply your influence. If 5000 workers here today talk to 5 people each, that's 25,000 and if those people speak to 5 each, that's 150,000 votes - and that's an extra 6 MPs in Parliament working for us.
That will make the difference in the election
It is our job to mobilise everyone who wants to keep what we have won in the last nine years, everyone who wants to go forward.
We have to turn out on Election Day in numbers never seen before; in Mangere, in Manukau East, in Manurewa, Maungakiekie, Papakura and Botany; to be there in our hundreds of thousands, to vote for "Fairness at Work", to vote for "Workers' Rights", to vote for OUR Government.
Then this country will see the power of the workers; the power of the people.
Who's got the power?
[We've got the power.]
What kind of power?
[Union power!]
It's in our hands.
When you cast your vote on Election Day, vote for workers' rights!
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Which side are the Greens on?
After the Green Party conference last weekend, workers are entitled to ask: Which side are the Greens on?
The Green conference decided not to decide until later which of the two main parties, Labour and National, they would support in a coalition government after this year’s general election. In other words, they have not ruled-out that they may support National instead of Labour.
Union members, and workers in general, would not agree that this is an issue you can be neutral or undecided about. They want to know which side the Greens are on: the side of the workers and their party, Labour; or the side of the bosses and their party, National.
Labour “disgusting”, says Norman
Russell Norman, the Green Party co-leader, lumped both Labour and National into the same basket and said they were both “disgusting” and working together in a Grand Coalition, at least on the issue of climate change.
Norman told the Green conference that Labour had backed-down on measures to stop global warming “merely to save their skin come election time.” He was referring to the Government’s decision to delay introducing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) for transport and not increase petrol tax at this point in time.
When she announced this, Helen Clark made it clear that the delay in including petrol in the ETS was due to the financial pressures on households and businesses and that rising oil prices were reducing petrol use without the need for further petrol-tax increases.
She said the Government had always said it would do something to assist "vulnerable consumers" when they were hit with higher energy bills due to the ETS.
Russell Norman said that he was “particularly disgusted at Labour, the party that was courageous last century in creating the welfare state, in opposing playing sport with whites-only teams and in standing up to the United States to make New Zealand nuclear free. … Now, with the biggest moral issue of our time, Labour has lost its guts. Principle has surrendered to politics.”
Workers might say that rather than losing “its guts”, Labour has done the right thing by them in not increasing petrol prices any further than they already are. I know of people who are being forced to walk many kilometres to work because they cannot afford petrol for their cars. Their bosses, of course, can still afford to drive.
Oil company profits
A recent article on the internet by Greg Palast, the author of a book on war and oil, showed how the big oil companies have deliberately restricted the flow of oil from Iraq since 1928 in order to keep the world price of oil as high as possible. The American war on Iraq is just another rung in the ladder of this on-going policy.
Oil companies have reaped huge windfall profits from the recent price-hikes. Chevron, America’s second biggest oil company, announced a $US18.7 billion profit for 2007 while Exxon Mobil scored the biggest corporate profit in US history, $US40.6 billion.
In New Zealand, the Automobile Association says the profits made by oil companies BP and Shell are “almost obscene”. BP posted a 48 percent increase in the first quarter of 2008, with a profit of $8.5 billion, while Shell's profit jumped 12 percent to $10.1 billion dollars.
AA spokesman Mike Noon said it does not sit well with motorists to see profits that are bigger than telephone numbers, particularly when motorists in New Zealand are hurting so much.
Are the Greens “disgusted” at this sort of profit-gouging by oil companies? They should be!
Need to see policies before deciding?
Norman said the Greens had decided to assess other parties polices and programmes before determining which parties they will work with after the election to form a government. The Greens say they have not seen all the parties’ policies, so they cannot decide yet.
But this is a cop out!
Labour bought back the railways. Do the Greens support that? Of course they do. Would National have done it? No they would not have: they support private ownership of key economic assets.
Under Labour’s leadership, the government brought in a 4th week of annual leave, time-and-a-half pay and a day-in-lieu for working public holidays, cheaper doctors visits and prescription charges, 14-weeks paid parental leave, zero-interest on student loans, 20-hours free child care for 3 and 4 year-olds, extra sick leave, Kiwi Bank, and Kiwi Saver.
They have also legislated for compulsory meal breaks, protected vulnerable workers when there is a change of employer, and before the recent budget tax-cuts had already given tax-cuts for families with children through the “Working for families” package.
And without Labour in government, would SFWU hospital workers have won their big pay increase? No they would not.
Under Labour, the minimum wage has increased every year and is now $12 an hour. This is a 70% increase in eight years.
Crucial for those of us in the trade union movement, Labour repealed the Employment Contracts Act and gave unions the right to organise and bargain collectively.
Would National have done any of these things? The answer is; “No”.
Are these gains safe under a future National government? The answer is again: “No”.
The Greens have supported most, if not all of the good things Labour-led governments have done for workers over the last nine years. Why would they not continue to support Labour? Why don’t they say they will?
Stand together to defeat National
It is clear that for workers (the poor, and the low-paid especially) there is a big difference between Labour and National.
The Greens say they stand for social justice; if that is true then they cannot support National.
On the environment, it is Labour, not National, that has taken up the global warming issue and done something about reducing carbon emissions; in the face of vehement opposition from National.
The Greens should stop posturing and give Labour the support it deserves and needs. The Greens should take a strong stand against National and its big-business, anti-worker, anti-environment agenda.
We have to stand together to defeat National.
The Green conference decided not to decide until later which of the two main parties, Labour and National, they would support in a coalition government after this year’s general election. In other words, they have not ruled-out that they may support National instead of Labour.
Union members, and workers in general, would not agree that this is an issue you can be neutral or undecided about. They want to know which side the Greens are on: the side of the workers and their party, Labour; or the side of the bosses and their party, National.
Labour “disgusting”, says Norman
Russell Norman, the Green Party co-leader, lumped both Labour and National into the same basket and said they were both “disgusting” and working together in a Grand Coalition, at least on the issue of climate change.
Norman told the Green conference that Labour had backed-down on measures to stop global warming “merely to save their skin come election time.” He was referring to the Government’s decision to delay introducing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) for transport and not increase petrol tax at this point in time.
When she announced this, Helen Clark made it clear that the delay in including petrol in the ETS was due to the financial pressures on households and businesses and that rising oil prices were reducing petrol use without the need for further petrol-tax increases.
She said the Government had always said it would do something to assist "vulnerable consumers" when they were hit with higher energy bills due to the ETS.
Russell Norman said that he was “particularly disgusted at Labour, the party that was courageous last century in creating the welfare state, in opposing playing sport with whites-only teams and in standing up to the United States to make New Zealand nuclear free. … Now, with the biggest moral issue of our time, Labour has lost its guts. Principle has surrendered to politics.”
Workers might say that rather than losing “its guts”, Labour has done the right thing by them in not increasing petrol prices any further than they already are. I know of people who are being forced to walk many kilometres to work because they cannot afford petrol for their cars. Their bosses, of course, can still afford to drive.
Oil company profits
A recent article on the internet by Greg Palast, the author of a book on war and oil, showed how the big oil companies have deliberately restricted the flow of oil from Iraq since 1928 in order to keep the world price of oil as high as possible. The American war on Iraq is just another rung in the ladder of this on-going policy.
Oil companies have reaped huge windfall profits from the recent price-hikes. Chevron, America’s second biggest oil company, announced a $US18.7 billion profit for 2007 while Exxon Mobil scored the biggest corporate profit in US history, $US40.6 billion.
In New Zealand, the Automobile Association says the profits made by oil companies BP and Shell are “almost obscene”. BP posted a 48 percent increase in the first quarter of 2008, with a profit of $8.5 billion, while Shell's profit jumped 12 percent to $10.1 billion dollars.
AA spokesman Mike Noon said it does not sit well with motorists to see profits that are bigger than telephone numbers, particularly when motorists in New Zealand are hurting so much.
Are the Greens “disgusted” at this sort of profit-gouging by oil companies? They should be!
Need to see policies before deciding?
Norman said the Greens had decided to assess other parties polices and programmes before determining which parties they will work with after the election to form a government. The Greens say they have not seen all the parties’ policies, so they cannot decide yet.
But this is a cop out!
Labour bought back the railways. Do the Greens support that? Of course they do. Would National have done it? No they would not have: they support private ownership of key economic assets.
Under Labour’s leadership, the government brought in a 4th week of annual leave, time-and-a-half pay and a day-in-lieu for working public holidays, cheaper doctors visits and prescription charges, 14-weeks paid parental leave, zero-interest on student loans, 20-hours free child care for 3 and 4 year-olds, extra sick leave, Kiwi Bank, and Kiwi Saver.
They have also legislated for compulsory meal breaks, protected vulnerable workers when there is a change of employer, and before the recent budget tax-cuts had already given tax-cuts for families with children through the “Working for families” package.
And without Labour in government, would SFWU hospital workers have won their big pay increase? No they would not.
Under Labour, the minimum wage has increased every year and is now $12 an hour. This is a 70% increase in eight years.
Crucial for those of us in the trade union movement, Labour repealed the Employment Contracts Act and gave unions the right to organise and bargain collectively.
Would National have done any of these things? The answer is; “No”.
Are these gains safe under a future National government? The answer is again: “No”.
The Greens have supported most, if not all of the good things Labour-led governments have done for workers over the last nine years. Why would they not continue to support Labour? Why don’t they say they will?
Stand together to defeat National
It is clear that for workers (the poor, and the low-paid especially) there is a big difference between Labour and National.
The Greens say they stand for social justice; if that is true then they cannot support National.
On the environment, it is Labour, not National, that has taken up the global warming issue and done something about reducing carbon emissions; in the face of vehement opposition from National.
The Greens should stop posturing and give Labour the support it deserves and needs. The Greens should take a strong stand against National and its big-business, anti-worker, anti-environment agenda.
We have to stand together to defeat National.
Friday, April 11, 2008
SEIU - Centralism trumps Democracy by Herman Benson
From Benson's Union Democracy Blog
On "democratic" centralism: Stern's illusion and democracy's nightmare
By Herman Benson
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union and labor's latest celebrity, seems to be resurrecting a neglected ideology: the concept of a militarized "democratic" centralism. For him and his followers, the hope of imposing it upon a newly invigorated labor movement may be a utopian illusion. For union democracy, it is a nightmare. Hints, but only hints, of his underlying philosophy were implicit in his schemes for reorganizing his own SEIU and the whole labor movement. But its trend has become manifest as he is apparently moving to crush critics on the west coast, impose a repressive trusteeship over the 140,000-member United Healthcare Workers-West, and cut down Sal Rosselli, its president.
In February this year, Rosselli resigned from the SEIU International Executive Committee so that he could feel free to criticize what he charged was the "undemocratic practices we have experienced first hand." The SEIU convention was coming up at the end of May. "In good conscience," he wrote, "I can longer allow simple majorities of the Executive Committee to outweigh my responsibility to our members to act out of principle on these critically important matters. I say this with no ill will, but with a deep sense of conviction." [Rosselli to Stern 2/9/08]
They differ over bargaining strategy, over the role of the international and locals, over the right of the membership to veto the merger and dissolution of local unions, over whether to go easy on employers to get a foot in the door for unionism. The issues in dispute are not trivial, and the charges and countercharges are correspondingly harsh. Rosselli accuses the Stern people of "company unionism" and "top-down organizing" to beef up membership statistics by any means whatsoever. They denounce him for sabotaging the SEIU drive to organize, for falsifying the record, for hypocritically benefiting from policies he now derogates.
This is no idle talk at a cocktail party; it is a serious difference over policy. He attacks vigorously; they reply in kind. So far, routine. That's what democracy is for, to allow an outlet even for the bitterest of debates. But the problem is that Rosselli's critics go beyond denouncing him for criticizing. They would make his very right to criticize illicit. And, because they are armed with organizational power, they would resolve the dispute not simply by democratic decision but by suppression. The irony is that they wrap autocratic intentions in the flag of a democratic "majority". Rosselli, they insist, must go along with the "majority." But a majority in power can always take care of itself. The essence of democracy is to preserve an orderly means of opposing a majority.
In replying to its self-posed question, "What is real union democracy?" The SEIU's anti-Rosselli web site, "Fact Checker," pandering to the bias against any genuine spirit of democracy asks, "Is democracy abiding by majority rule just when you like the outcome but ignoring it when you don't?" But democracy, as we practice it in America, cherishes precisely the right of a minority to oppose the majority. "Fact Checker" continues in line with what has become official SEIU ideology, "Is it democracy when 11 out of 12 workers in an industry are not even at the table?" What they mean by this muddle is what they have suggested before more clearly: members must abstain from exercising their union democracy until most workers, now nonunion, are organized. By that standard, union democracy must wait patiently for a long time, perhaps forever.
They use the boilerplate language available to any overbearing union official annoyed anytime by any critical dissident. Mary Kay Henry, international executive SEIU vice president, writes in the course of a long attack on Rosselli [Calitics.com website 3/25/08], "he is giving employers ammunition to use against workers..."
Three members of the SEIU international executive committee found Rosselli's decision to speak out impermissible. "Just as we expect members of our local unions to unite behind a common strategy after there has been a full debate," they wrote, "and a majority has reached a democratic decision, we as leaders must do the same." There it is. Once a "democratic decision" is reached everyone, members and leaders, must swallow their opinions, keep quiet, and toe the line. We discuss, we decide, we unite, you shut up, we remain a fighting force. If you open your mouth against the line we discipline you. (How some might love to apply this principle to the Iraq War! The irony in this case is that, as they wrote, the SEIU was on the eve of an international convention to open in three months. If now is not the time for that democratic discussion, when?) [Regan et al to Rosselli 2/11/08]
That same tone now permeates life in the SEIU. In 2006, as the SEIU was about to run a membership referendum on creating those huge California megalocals, Stern turned the union into one advocacy monolith to guarantee a favorable outcome. He ordered, "All local unions, union officers, and assigned staff must fully cooperate in the implementation and transition process to assure that this decision is carried out in an orderly fashion... No union funds, resources or staff may be used to oppose, interfere or undermine in any way the IEB determination in this matter." (The referendum carried, but according to one report, only 16% of the membership voted.)
In the same spirit, applicants for appointment to the executive board of the new 45,000-member Local 521 had to sign an oath of loyalty to the union administration, including these assurances: "I will not ... engage in personal attacks on other members, staff, or leaders at unions meetings, in the press, or other literature, or venues". Once a decision has been made, I will support that decision to members and others... I will not ... take ... legal action against the union for actions they take in their legal role as leaders as long as I remain a member of this appointed board or committee." Come weal, come woe; high or low, no one can remain in any official union position and ever ever act against any misdeeds by other officials.
Here then is how the labor movement would operate if the system being implanted by Stern could take root and flourish: A policy is adopted, say at the international convention, the union's highest constitutional authority --- for the sake of argument we make the generous assumption that it has been a "democratic" decision. Then for the next five years until the next convention (four years for the SEIU) every union institution and representative, must fall in line. No criticism permitted: every hired staff employee, every elected officer in every local and in the international, every steward appointed or elected, every editor and PR spokesperson, every executive board member of every local must propagate the vaunted "democratic" decision. None can oppose it or publicly express misgivings on pain of swift dismissal. Stern envisions a monolithic disciplined army of thousands, all spouting the politically correct official line. After five years, during which everyone sang the same notes in harmony, comes the next convention; and at last, presumably, democracy's brief moment has arrived.
Proceedings at the convention, as always, are carefully manipulated by the administration. Under the Stern regimen, those in power will already have been safely protected against criticism for the previous five years. If, at the convention, venturesome critics are unusually resilient, if they are not demoralized by five years of deadly uniformity, if they are lucky enough to get the floor and keep it before the question is called, they might get five minutes in the sun, maybe even seven or ten. Then it is all over. The delegates, people who knew how to stay on top during those five silent years, adopt the new official policy. The period for "democratic" debate is over. Time to unite and fight and bite your tongue. Five new silent years loom.
But is this bureaucrat's dream likely to come alive? Perhaps in part, but never in full panoply. By now, websites and the Internet afford too many ways for members and officers alike to evade the proscriptions on democracy. Federal law offers some protection for civil liberties for members in their unions. Stern will never have full scope for the fulfillment of his dream; nevertheless, as we see in California, federal law and the union constitution still provide ample means for chilling dissent.
More resources on Change to Win and SEIU:
See Benson's Union Democracy Blog for several articles
Healthcare leader raps Stern; quits SEIU board
SEIU rearranges 600,000 into mega locals
Debate on Union Democracy and Change to Win
If you can't woo 'em, sue 'em! An ingenious twist in punishing dissent in the SEIU
SEIU's Unite to Win blog reviewed.
Local 509 asks questions about democracy in the SEIU
New Unity Partnership:Sweeney Critics would bureaucratize to organize.
Service Employees: Mass. merger in Local 888.
Benson's Union Democracy blog.
Student Labor Activists support union democracy.
Articles on the Labor Notes site on NUP from various sources.
See UDR articles on the Carpenters (UBCJA) for case studies in merger and bureaucratization.
Several articles on the New Unity Partnership are available on the BC Carpenters website.
Find articles on the consolidation of power in the Carpenters union on the main UDR page.
An exchange on union democracy between Herman Benson and Steve Fraser, on the Laborers.org website (click on Fraser's name for a link to his article)
Links to rank-and-file websites in the NUP unions: Carpenters, Hotel and Restaurant Employees, Laborers, Needle Trades (UNITE), Service Employees (building services, public employees).
On "democratic" centralism: Stern's illusion and democracy's nightmare
By Herman Benson
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union and labor's latest celebrity, seems to be resurrecting a neglected ideology: the concept of a militarized "democratic" centralism. For him and his followers, the hope of imposing it upon a newly invigorated labor movement may be a utopian illusion. For union democracy, it is a nightmare. Hints, but only hints, of his underlying philosophy were implicit in his schemes for reorganizing his own SEIU and the whole labor movement. But its trend has become manifest as he is apparently moving to crush critics on the west coast, impose a repressive trusteeship over the 140,000-member United Healthcare Workers-West, and cut down Sal Rosselli, its president.
In February this year, Rosselli resigned from the SEIU International Executive Committee so that he could feel free to criticize what he charged was the "undemocratic practices we have experienced first hand." The SEIU convention was coming up at the end of May. "In good conscience," he wrote, "I can longer allow simple majorities of the Executive Committee to outweigh my responsibility to our members to act out of principle on these critically important matters. I say this with no ill will, but with a deep sense of conviction." [Rosselli to Stern 2/9/08]
They differ over bargaining strategy, over the role of the international and locals, over the right of the membership to veto the merger and dissolution of local unions, over whether to go easy on employers to get a foot in the door for unionism. The issues in dispute are not trivial, and the charges and countercharges are correspondingly harsh. Rosselli accuses the Stern people of "company unionism" and "top-down organizing" to beef up membership statistics by any means whatsoever. They denounce him for sabotaging the SEIU drive to organize, for falsifying the record, for hypocritically benefiting from policies he now derogates.
This is no idle talk at a cocktail party; it is a serious difference over policy. He attacks vigorously; they reply in kind. So far, routine. That's what democracy is for, to allow an outlet even for the bitterest of debates. But the problem is that Rosselli's critics go beyond denouncing him for criticizing. They would make his very right to criticize illicit. And, because they are armed with organizational power, they would resolve the dispute not simply by democratic decision but by suppression. The irony is that they wrap autocratic intentions in the flag of a democratic "majority". Rosselli, they insist, must go along with the "majority." But a majority in power can always take care of itself. The essence of democracy is to preserve an orderly means of opposing a majority.
In replying to its self-posed question, "What is real union democracy?" The SEIU's anti-Rosselli web site, "Fact Checker," pandering to the bias against any genuine spirit of democracy asks, "Is democracy abiding by majority rule just when you like the outcome but ignoring it when you don't?" But democracy, as we practice it in America, cherishes precisely the right of a minority to oppose the majority. "Fact Checker" continues in line with what has become official SEIU ideology, "Is it democracy when 11 out of 12 workers in an industry are not even at the table?" What they mean by this muddle is what they have suggested before more clearly: members must abstain from exercising their union democracy until most workers, now nonunion, are organized. By that standard, union democracy must wait patiently for a long time, perhaps forever.
They use the boilerplate language available to any overbearing union official annoyed anytime by any critical dissident. Mary Kay Henry, international executive SEIU vice president, writes in the course of a long attack on Rosselli [Calitics.com website 3/25/08], "he is giving employers ammunition to use against workers..."
Three members of the SEIU international executive committee found Rosselli's decision to speak out impermissible. "Just as we expect members of our local unions to unite behind a common strategy after there has been a full debate," they wrote, "and a majority has reached a democratic decision, we as leaders must do the same." There it is. Once a "democratic decision" is reached everyone, members and leaders, must swallow their opinions, keep quiet, and toe the line. We discuss, we decide, we unite, you shut up, we remain a fighting force. If you open your mouth against the line we discipline you. (How some might love to apply this principle to the Iraq War! The irony in this case is that, as they wrote, the SEIU was on the eve of an international convention to open in three months. If now is not the time for that democratic discussion, when?) [Regan et al to Rosselli 2/11/08]
That same tone now permeates life in the SEIU. In 2006, as the SEIU was about to run a membership referendum on creating those huge California megalocals, Stern turned the union into one advocacy monolith to guarantee a favorable outcome. He ordered, "All local unions, union officers, and assigned staff must fully cooperate in the implementation and transition process to assure that this decision is carried out in an orderly fashion... No union funds, resources or staff may be used to oppose, interfere or undermine in any way the IEB determination in this matter." (The referendum carried, but according to one report, only 16% of the membership voted.)
In the same spirit, applicants for appointment to the executive board of the new 45,000-member Local 521 had to sign an oath of loyalty to the union administration, including these assurances: "I will not ... engage in personal attacks on other members, staff, or leaders at unions meetings, in the press, or other literature, or venues". Once a decision has been made, I will support that decision to members and others... I will not ... take ... legal action against the union for actions they take in their legal role as leaders as long as I remain a member of this appointed board or committee." Come weal, come woe; high or low, no one can remain in any official union position and ever ever act against any misdeeds by other officials.
Here then is how the labor movement would operate if the system being implanted by Stern could take root and flourish: A policy is adopted, say at the international convention, the union's highest constitutional authority --- for the sake of argument we make the generous assumption that it has been a "democratic" decision. Then for the next five years until the next convention (four years for the SEIU) every union institution and representative, must fall in line. No criticism permitted: every hired staff employee, every elected officer in every local and in the international, every steward appointed or elected, every editor and PR spokesperson, every executive board member of every local must propagate the vaunted "democratic" decision. None can oppose it or publicly express misgivings on pain of swift dismissal. Stern envisions a monolithic disciplined army of thousands, all spouting the politically correct official line. After five years, during which everyone sang the same notes in harmony, comes the next convention; and at last, presumably, democracy's brief moment has arrived.
Proceedings at the convention, as always, are carefully manipulated by the administration. Under the Stern regimen, those in power will already have been safely protected against criticism for the previous five years. If, at the convention, venturesome critics are unusually resilient, if they are not demoralized by five years of deadly uniformity, if they are lucky enough to get the floor and keep it before the question is called, they might get five minutes in the sun, maybe even seven or ten. Then it is all over. The delegates, people who knew how to stay on top during those five silent years, adopt the new official policy. The period for "democratic" debate is over. Time to unite and fight and bite your tongue. Five new silent years loom.
But is this bureaucrat's dream likely to come alive? Perhaps in part, but never in full panoply. By now, websites and the Internet afford too many ways for members and officers alike to evade the proscriptions on democracy. Federal law offers some protection for civil liberties for members in their unions. Stern will never have full scope for the fulfillment of his dream; nevertheless, as we see in California, federal law and the union constitution still provide ample means for chilling dissent.
More resources on Change to Win and SEIU:
See Benson's Union Democracy Blog for several articles
Healthcare leader raps Stern; quits SEIU board
SEIU rearranges 600,000 into mega locals
Debate on Union Democracy and Change to Win
If you can't woo 'em, sue 'em! An ingenious twist in punishing dissent in the SEIU
SEIU's Unite to Win blog reviewed.
Local 509 asks questions about democracy in the SEIU
New Unity Partnership:Sweeney Critics would bureaucratize to organize.
Service Employees: Mass. merger in Local 888.
Benson's Union Democracy blog.
Student Labor Activists support union democracy.
Articles on the Labor Notes site on NUP from various sources.
See UDR articles on the Carpenters (UBCJA) for case studies in merger and bureaucratization.
Several articles on the New Unity Partnership are available on the BC Carpenters website.
Find articles on the consolidation of power in the Carpenters union on the main UDR page.
An exchange on union democracy between Herman Benson and Steve Fraser, on the Laborers.org website (click on Fraser's name for a link to his article)
Links to rank-and-file websites in the NUP unions: Carpenters, Hotel and Restaurant Employees, Laborers, Needle Trades (UNITE), Service Employees (building services, public employees).
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Hone's Tangi by Sally James
Len Richards & I intended to make our way leisurely to Kaikohe to be on the marae for the last night and the funeral the following day on Wednesday but on Tuesday morning it was announced on the 7am news that Hone Tuwhare was to be interred that afternoon, the same day as Ed Hillary's state funeral. We left an hour an a half later after a plate of bacon and eggs. Just as well as it was a long time before we ate again.
It was a sad wee tangi with a LOT of god-bothering. He had four ministers, one made no mention of him specifically, two said they knew nothing about him, only what they had learned the night before from the speeches on the Marae, but there was a Tuhoe guy, Wayne Tekaawa who had trained in Dunedin who knew Hone well. Nice guy.
It said on the news there were 150 people. There may have been before the burial but it was more like sixty after the ceremony.
No one at the marae knew the Tuwhares as they had left such a long time ago. One of the local speakers even said “apparently he was a great poet" and most of them read poems about god that they had written or came from from other sources (like the Psalms).
The house was divided more or less equally: the mainly Pakeha visitors on one side and the local Maori on the other and the family at the end where the body lay in an open casket. It was problems with the body in the heat that apparently prompted the bringing forward of the funeral.
Hone’s son Rob said many times that this was the end of the hikoi (from Dunedin where 500 people farewelled Hone) and that it was his granddaughter Moana that insisted that he come home. It just did not feel like his home though to a mere visitor.
At one point Pat Hohepa welcomed newcomers to the marae but with no waiata and we were told there should have been two speakers. In my mind Hone is as important as Ed Hillary and yet they could not get another speaker for him.
There was no mention of his being a boilermaker or a socialist. The local people concentrated on religion.
It seemed to be the original family taking him home: Jean (McCormack), Hone’s wife from 1948 until around 1970, their three sons (Rewi, and the twins Robert and Andrew) along with their families.
Jean’s younger brother Duncan told Len that he had no time for the arty people and that Jean had not collaborated in the writing of Hone's biography because she wanted to maintain her privacy.
At the graveside Len sprinkled some dirt on the coffin and called out: “Hey Hone, have a beer with Marx, Lenin & Mao when you get there” – a reference to the last verse of Hone’s poem Old Comrade written on the death of Jim Jamieson.
Two women approached the grave together and said: “This is for you Shirley” as they sprinkled ashes, presumably of Shirley Grace, into the grave. “Together at last,” they said.
Ngahuia [previously Volkerling] was probably the only representative of the Maori Writers & Artists. Dun Mihaka was there, as was Tame Iti as a pall bearer although he did not come in for the religious bit.
As we wound towards the cemetery I did notice one woman came out to watch but that night in the pub we spoke to a couple of blokes from Dargaville who work with dairy cows (thousands of them) and they had never heard of Hone.
He did not want to be buried up north and yet there he was taken to be amongst strangers. According to Janet Hunt’s biography, Hone Tuwhare, published in 1998, his wish was to be cremated and his ashes scattered on the waters of the four harbours he had most connection with – Hokianga, Waitemata, Whanganui-a-Tara and Otakou.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Farewell to an old comrade (Hone Tuwhare)
Len Gale farewells Hone Tuwhare, his old comrade and workmate at the Otahuhu Railway Workshops.
PEOPLE'S POET 1922---2008
Hone Tuwhare was a part of the fragile bridge that exists between workers in struggle, the political left movement and their allies, art workers.
Hone laboured alongside his father on market gardens as a child. He had little schooling, yet he scored well in his trade exams as an apprentice boilermaker at the Otahuhu Railway Workshops.
That’s where he received his grounding in Marxism, where he also met Gorky and Steinbeck as well as Lenin. Otahuhu was his university. Towards the end of WWII Hone and his mates joined the army and eventually served in the J-force, the Western allies' occupation force in Japan, where he found a role as singer/lyric writer.
Hone went on to work and learn on Hydro construction sites in the Waikato. He ventured into the Pacific, teaching fellow Polynesians welding and trade unionism.
Gradually his talents were recognised. The publication of his first book of poems, No Ordinary Sun, put academia on notice. Here was a grass roots talent!
At public functions Hone never felt at ease with the upper crust and he often clowned around to send them up.
Hone severed his membership with the NZ Communist Party at the confusing time of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, yet he remained a Marxist to the end.
Janet Hunt’s biography Hone Tuwhare is a quite wonderful book about a unique man who could laugh in prose and in verse at the trials of a lifetime, who was at home in both the Maori and the Pakeha worlds. Hone was a taonga that comes this way so rarely.
Len Gale.
PEOPLE'S POET 1922---2008
Hone Tuwhare was a part of the fragile bridge that exists between workers in struggle, the political left movement and their allies, art workers.
Hone laboured alongside his father on market gardens as a child. He had little schooling, yet he scored well in his trade exams as an apprentice boilermaker at the Otahuhu Railway Workshops.
That’s where he received his grounding in Marxism, where he also met Gorky and Steinbeck as well as Lenin. Otahuhu was his university. Towards the end of WWII Hone and his mates joined the army and eventually served in the J-force, the Western allies' occupation force in Japan, where he found a role as singer/lyric writer.
Hone went on to work and learn on Hydro construction sites in the Waikato. He ventured into the Pacific, teaching fellow Polynesians welding and trade unionism.
Gradually his talents were recognised. The publication of his first book of poems, No Ordinary Sun, put academia on notice. Here was a grass roots talent!
At public functions Hone never felt at ease with the upper crust and he often clowned around to send them up.
Hone severed his membership with the NZ Communist Party at the confusing time of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, yet he remained a Marxist to the end.
Janet Hunt’s biography Hone Tuwhare is a quite wonderful book about a unique man who could laugh in prose and in verse at the trials of a lifetime, who was at home in both the Maori and the Pakeha worlds. Hone was a taonga that comes this way so rarely.
Len Gale.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Backwoods terror?
Anti-terror laws are a legislative response to a political problem. The New Zealand anti-terror laws seem motivated more by extraneous concerns about mollifying the demands of the US ruling elite (themselves a group responsible for more civilian killings by military violence than any designated terrorist group could ever hope to effect) than by any real threat of terrorism inside our country.
As we all know, the only terrorist bombing that has taken a life within the borders of Aotearoa was the Rainbow Warrior sinking executed by the French secret service. Notoriously, neither our own spy agencies nor our putative allies' spy agencies gave any warning of this outrage.
So what of the "anti-terrorist raids" of recent weeks? Have we developed a home-grown terrorist culture with individuals or groups willing and able to wreak violent destruction on the social and material fabric of our relatively peaceful society? The jury is still out on this, but what is clear is that new anti-terror laws were not necessary to deal with any such real or perceived threat. The police already had sufficient powers to deal with arms and conspiratorial offences.
The greatest threat posed by the new 'anti-terror' laws is to otherwise legitimate political action by opponents (and defenders) of the status quo. The Council of Trade Unions has called for the repeal of the anti-terrorism laws and is right to express its concern. The laws will be able to be used against those taking action to disrupt economic activity to force a government to act in some particular way. This would clearly threaten union strike action against, say, the reintroduction of anti-union laws along the lines of the Employment Contracts Act of the 1990s.
The political groups and individuals targeted in the recent raids are a disparate gaggle of anarchists, Maori-sovereignty campaigners, peace and rights activists along with at least one possibly deranged or disturbed individual. Are they terrorists? Well if we are talking about Al Qaeda or the IRA, the French DGSE or the CIA, then no, there is no comparison. However, was there a likelihood that someone or some sub-group within the targeted and arrested people was capable of and planning armed or violent action that could have injured or killed people? This is, as yet, an open question.
In the relatively recent past, activist groups and individuals have utilised explosive devices for political purposes in New Zealand. Tim Shadbolt relates in his book Bullshit and Jelly Beans the story of "The Bombers" who carried out a campaign of thirteen bomb attacks on "military bases and conservative establishments throughout the country". Their first attack was on the Waitangi flagpole in 1969. This small group centred around the Bower brothers who came from a troubled background. These young politicos, frustrated by the seeming ineffectiveness of more conventional protest action like demonstration marches, sit-ins etc (particularly against the US invasion of Vietnam), turned to 'direct action'. No-one was hurt, and the bombers never intended to hurt anyone, but bombs could obviously do harm to people if they happened upon the scene inadvertently.
The police and justice department did not need special anti-terror powers to deal with these young men. As Shadbolt wrote: "Everyone realised that they were guilty, including themselves, but everyone also realised that they were not really criminals." Nevertheless, not many quibbled with the four to five-year jail sentences that three of them eventually received.
Chris Trotter reminded us in his last Sunday Star-Times column that in 1981 some anti-springbok tour protesters used a bomb to disrupt Wellington's passenger rail system on the day of a rugby match in that city. Other potentially dangerous stunts like the threat of flying a small plane into a packed football stadium were also utilised in the service of this undoubtedly just cause. Serious damage was done to television broadcast equipment on at least one occasion. Mass action of people to block roads and motorways was another tactic utilised by anti-springbok tour protesters in 1981.
Could the perpetrators of the 'direct action' tactics in 1969-70 or in 1981 be called terrorists? Well they could, and some undoubtedly would give them this nomenclature, but it would be stretching the definition of the meaning of "terrorism" to do so.
Bombing and killing or injuring hundreds of innocent holidaymakers in Bali; bombing the tube train and double-decker bus in London; flying hundreds of passengers to their deaths while using jet-planes as flying bombs to kill thousands of others; blowing up drinkers in an English pub; blowing up the Rainbow Warrior with total disregard to the safety of those on board; air-strike and guided missile bombing of civilians with high explosive, napalm and cluster bombs: that is terrorism.
Running around the bush with guns is not terrorism. Thousands of people do this every week in New Zealand - it is usually called "hunting". Nevertheless, if police had solid information that lives were being threatened or endangered by misguided political activists who saw themselves as acting in the tradition of the guerrilla freedom fighter, then no one in New Zealand would expect anything else but that the police would act to stop such threats in their tracks.
Some questions must be asked, however. The first question that arises is; did the police act judiciously in their 'invasion' of the Tuhoe country, given the past history of the Maori of that area? The second question is; are draconian anti-terror laws that could potentially outlaw hitherto legitimate political activities necessary to deal with such a threat, whether real or perceived?
The answer to both questions must be a resounding; No!
The additional question that left and green political activists should be addressing themselves to is; what are the acceptable limits of direct political action? For example; is planning to assassinate leading establishment figures (eg as has been claimed by some; George Bush or Helen Clark) an acceptable political strategy? For the socialist left, terrorism has always been seen as the preserve of the despairing and the disconnected, usually petit-bourgeois, members of society who try to substitute individual action for the action of the masses.
Left-activists must defend democratic rights from erosion by the passage of draconian legislation, but they should also be careful about how far they go down the road of defending the provocative actions of wild-catting individuals who, inadvertently (or possibly deliberately), discredit the just causes we fight for and pave the way for attacks by the right and the state on the hard-won democratic rights we currently have.
As we all know, the only terrorist bombing that has taken a life within the borders of Aotearoa was the Rainbow Warrior sinking executed by the French secret service. Notoriously, neither our own spy agencies nor our putative allies' spy agencies gave any warning of this outrage.
So what of the "anti-terrorist raids" of recent weeks? Have we developed a home-grown terrorist culture with individuals or groups willing and able to wreak violent destruction on the social and material fabric of our relatively peaceful society? The jury is still out on this, but what is clear is that new anti-terror laws were not necessary to deal with any such real or perceived threat. The police already had sufficient powers to deal with arms and conspiratorial offences.
The greatest threat posed by the new 'anti-terror' laws is to otherwise legitimate political action by opponents (and defenders) of the status quo. The Council of Trade Unions has called for the repeal of the anti-terrorism laws and is right to express its concern. The laws will be able to be used against those taking action to disrupt economic activity to force a government to act in some particular way. This would clearly threaten union strike action against, say, the reintroduction of anti-union laws along the lines of the Employment Contracts Act of the 1990s.
The political groups and individuals targeted in the recent raids are a disparate gaggle of anarchists, Maori-sovereignty campaigners, peace and rights activists along with at least one possibly deranged or disturbed individual. Are they terrorists? Well if we are talking about Al Qaeda or the IRA, the French DGSE or the CIA, then no, there is no comparison. However, was there a likelihood that someone or some sub-group within the targeted and arrested people was capable of and planning armed or violent action that could have injured or killed people? This is, as yet, an open question.
In the relatively recent past, activist groups and individuals have utilised explosive devices for political purposes in New Zealand. Tim Shadbolt relates in his book Bullshit and Jelly Beans the story of "The Bombers" who carried out a campaign of thirteen bomb attacks on "military bases and conservative establishments throughout the country". Their first attack was on the Waitangi flagpole in 1969. This small group centred around the Bower brothers who came from a troubled background. These young politicos, frustrated by the seeming ineffectiveness of more conventional protest action like demonstration marches, sit-ins etc (particularly against the US invasion of Vietnam), turned to 'direct action'. No-one was hurt, and the bombers never intended to hurt anyone, but bombs could obviously do harm to people if they happened upon the scene inadvertently.
The police and justice department did not need special anti-terror powers to deal with these young men. As Shadbolt wrote: "Everyone realised that they were guilty, including themselves, but everyone also realised that they were not really criminals." Nevertheless, not many quibbled with the four to five-year jail sentences that three of them eventually received.
Chris Trotter reminded us in his last Sunday Star-Times column that in 1981 some anti-springbok tour protesters used a bomb to disrupt Wellington's passenger rail system on the day of a rugby match in that city. Other potentially dangerous stunts like the threat of flying a small plane into a packed football stadium were also utilised in the service of this undoubtedly just cause. Serious damage was done to television broadcast equipment on at least one occasion. Mass action of people to block roads and motorways was another tactic utilised by anti-springbok tour protesters in 1981.
Could the perpetrators of the 'direct action' tactics in 1969-70 or in 1981 be called terrorists? Well they could, and some undoubtedly would give them this nomenclature, but it would be stretching the definition of the meaning of "terrorism" to do so.
Bombing and killing or injuring hundreds of innocent holidaymakers in Bali; bombing the tube train and double-decker bus in London; flying hundreds of passengers to their deaths while using jet-planes as flying bombs to kill thousands of others; blowing up drinkers in an English pub; blowing up the Rainbow Warrior with total disregard to the safety of those on board; air-strike and guided missile bombing of civilians with high explosive, napalm and cluster bombs: that is terrorism.
Running around the bush with guns is not terrorism. Thousands of people do this every week in New Zealand - it is usually called "hunting". Nevertheless, if police had solid information that lives were being threatened or endangered by misguided political activists who saw themselves as acting in the tradition of the guerrilla freedom fighter, then no one in New Zealand would expect anything else but that the police would act to stop such threats in their tracks.
Some questions must be asked, however. The first question that arises is; did the police act judiciously in their 'invasion' of the Tuhoe country, given the past history of the Maori of that area? The second question is; are draconian anti-terror laws that could potentially outlaw hitherto legitimate political activities necessary to deal with such a threat, whether real or perceived?
The answer to both questions must be a resounding; No!
The additional question that left and green political activists should be addressing themselves to is; what are the acceptable limits of direct political action? For example; is planning to assassinate leading establishment figures (eg as has been claimed by some; George Bush or Helen Clark) an acceptable political strategy? For the socialist left, terrorism has always been seen as the preserve of the despairing and the disconnected, usually petit-bourgeois, members of society who try to substitute individual action for the action of the masses.
Left-activists must defend democratic rights from erosion by the passage of draconian legislation, but they should also be careful about how far they go down the road of defending the provocative actions of wild-catting individuals who, inadvertently (or possibly deliberately), discredit the just causes we fight for and pave the way for attacks by the right and the state on the hard-won democratic rights we currently have.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Review: No Left Turn by Chris Trotter
New Zealand society is marked by two great fissures: that between Pakeha and Maori, and that between capital and labour. Any history of New Zealand must portray and explain both. Chris Trotter accomplishes this in his No Left Turn. Trotter's book is a welcome and impressive addition to the ideological armoury of the left.
Unlike historian Michael King who gave priority to the Maori/Pakeha divide in his best-selling History of New Zealand, Trotter concentrates on the class-based struggle between those whose social motivation is wealth and power and those who fight for equality and justice: the on-going battle between right and left.
No Left Turn takes the form of a series of essays canvassing significant events in modern New Zealand’s history, from the days of colonisation up until the end of the twentieth century.
Trotter deals first with E.G. Wakefield’s “systematic colonisation” plans which sought to recreate the class relations of Britain in the last frontier of New Zealand. This land-grabbing, money-grubbing project cost Wakefield's brother Arthur his life in the Wairau “massacre”. This occurred in 1843 as settlers sought to seize the Wairau Plain from the Maori warrior-chief, Te Rauparaha.
The second chapter exposes the role of the banker and land speculator Thomas Russell and his partner-in-crime, lawyer Frederick Whitaker, in provoking the Waikato and Taranaki land war that raged through the 1860s. Trotter calls this the “Sovereignty War” because it was the heroic last stand of Maori in defence of an independent political realm.
Although this period was one of colonisation by Great Britain, settlers from that country came from both the oppressor and oppressed classes: the latter were looking for a better life, the former had less noble motives. The same capitalist imperatives that were behind the colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand drove all subsequent economic, social and political developments. The exploitation of the land was premised on the exploitation of wage-labour.
The working class, like Maori before them, were also warriors – class warriors. After the subordination of Maori resistance, the main battleground shifted to the urban centres. Maori joined this class-struggle as they were urbanised into the working class.
Trotter’s graphic prose does justice to the dramatic battles that ensued, like that in 1912 at Waihi where Frederick George Evans was murdered by a scab lynch-mob as striking miners and their families were violently driven out of town.
The stories of the Great Strike of 1913 and the waterfront Lockout of 1951 are interspersed with chapters on the ANZACs and Auckland as it could have been. Trotter reveals how thousands of young men were sacrificed in WWI in the interests of British imperialist capitalism in order to safeguard New Zealand's butter and meat trade. In 'The Auckland that never was' chapter he exposes the sabotage by the Sid Holland-led National government ("the crudest, most ignorant and bigoted collection of far-right reactionaries by which New Zealand has ever had the misfortune to be governed") of the public transport and urban development plans that would have created a model, human-centred city instead of the car-clogged monstrosity that Auckland is today.
Trotter’s main subject matter is the changing political landscape of the twentieth century, especially the rise and fall of Labour and its latter-day revival. Here we have a left-revisionist, revision of previous versions of New Zealand’s political history.
His assessment of the 1951 Lockout, for example, is that Jock Barnes (the leader of the wharfies and the militant breakaway Trade Union Congress) and F.P. Walsh (the leader of the Federation of Labour) were “never on different sides”. The breach in the working class ranks that they provoked was the result of their irreconcilable differences in strategic approach. They both wanted to maintain and extend the gains that had been made during the fourteen-year term of the first Labour Government (elected in 1935), but Barnes utilised militant industrial struggle while Walsh favoured political rapprochement with the government of the day. In retrospect, a combined industrial and political campaign by the working class would have been most likely to succeed, but entrenched ideological and political positions prevented this.
As Trotter puts it, those generally regarded by many on the left as the “villains” of 1951, the trade union leaders Walsh and Young along with the Labour Party leaders Fraser and Nash, sought to adapt the union movement to the “political and economic realities of corporatism”. “Their unacknowledged and unappreciated role” was, Trotter writes: “To keep the milk of Labour’s social and economic reforms, by separating out and sacrificing the cream of the labour movement.”
The book ends tantalisingly with the coming to power of the Labour-Alliance coalition on 6 December 1999. “The Left was back in power.” The “Epilogue” outlines the right’s reaction to this unwelcome (to them) turn of events. Labour’s conciliatory response showed that: “Though Labour, the Alliance and the Greens had won, New Zealand capitalism had not lost.” The coalition government “would need to emulate the strategy of the Roman general Fabius Maximus, and learn how to ‘make haste slowly’.”
The controversial judgements in No Left Turn will undoubtedly spark much debate on the left. The book will certainly attract critical commentary from the right. It will be interesting to see what labour-historian turned Tory-propagandist, Michael Basset, for one, makes of Trotter’s foray into historiography.
A further book by Chris Trotter on the twenty-first century chapter of the left-right struggle is bound to be in the offing. Let's make sure this will not conclude with a description of the victory of the right in next year’s general election. The lesson of No Left Turn is that the left must be united in struggle if we are to defeat the right.
Unlike historian Michael King who gave priority to the Maori/Pakeha divide in his best-selling History of New Zealand, Trotter concentrates on the class-based struggle between those whose social motivation is wealth and power and those who fight for equality and justice: the on-going battle between right and left.
No Left Turn takes the form of a series of essays canvassing significant events in modern New Zealand’s history, from the days of colonisation up until the end of the twentieth century.
Trotter deals first with E.G. Wakefield’s “systematic colonisation” plans which sought to recreate the class relations of Britain in the last frontier of New Zealand. This land-grabbing, money-grubbing project cost Wakefield's brother Arthur his life in the Wairau “massacre”. This occurred in 1843 as settlers sought to seize the Wairau Plain from the Maori warrior-chief, Te Rauparaha.
The second chapter exposes the role of the banker and land speculator Thomas Russell and his partner-in-crime, lawyer Frederick Whitaker, in provoking the Waikato and Taranaki land war that raged through the 1860s. Trotter calls this the “Sovereignty War” because it was the heroic last stand of Maori in defence of an independent political realm.
Although this period was one of colonisation by Great Britain, settlers from that country came from both the oppressor and oppressed classes: the latter were looking for a better life, the former had less noble motives. The same capitalist imperatives that were behind the colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand drove all subsequent economic, social and political developments. The exploitation of the land was premised on the exploitation of wage-labour.
The working class, like Maori before them, were also warriors – class warriors. After the subordination of Maori resistance, the main battleground shifted to the urban centres. Maori joined this class-struggle as they were urbanised into the working class.
Trotter’s graphic prose does justice to the dramatic battles that ensued, like that in 1912 at Waihi where Frederick George Evans was murdered by a scab lynch-mob as striking miners and their families were violently driven out of town.
The stories of the Great Strike of 1913 and the waterfront Lockout of 1951 are interspersed with chapters on the ANZACs and Auckland as it could have been. Trotter reveals how thousands of young men were sacrificed in WWI in the interests of British imperialist capitalism in order to safeguard New Zealand's butter and meat trade. In 'The Auckland that never was' chapter he exposes the sabotage by the Sid Holland-led National government ("the crudest, most ignorant and bigoted collection of far-right reactionaries by which New Zealand has ever had the misfortune to be governed") of the public transport and urban development plans that would have created a model, human-centred city instead of the car-clogged monstrosity that Auckland is today.
Trotter’s main subject matter is the changing political landscape of the twentieth century, especially the rise and fall of Labour and its latter-day revival. Here we have a left-revisionist, revision of previous versions of New Zealand’s political history.
His assessment of the 1951 Lockout, for example, is that Jock Barnes (the leader of the wharfies and the militant breakaway Trade Union Congress) and F.P. Walsh (the leader of the Federation of Labour) were “never on different sides”. The breach in the working class ranks that they provoked was the result of their irreconcilable differences in strategic approach. They both wanted to maintain and extend the gains that had been made during the fourteen-year term of the first Labour Government (elected in 1935), but Barnes utilised militant industrial struggle while Walsh favoured political rapprochement with the government of the day. In retrospect, a combined industrial and political campaign by the working class would have been most likely to succeed, but entrenched ideological and political positions prevented this.
As Trotter puts it, those generally regarded by many on the left as the “villains” of 1951, the trade union leaders Walsh and Young along with the Labour Party leaders Fraser and Nash, sought to adapt the union movement to the “political and economic realities of corporatism”. “Their unacknowledged and unappreciated role” was, Trotter writes: “To keep the milk of Labour’s social and economic reforms, by separating out and sacrificing the cream of the labour movement.”
The book ends tantalisingly with the coming to power of the Labour-Alliance coalition on 6 December 1999. “The Left was back in power.” The “Epilogue” outlines the right’s reaction to this unwelcome (to them) turn of events. Labour’s conciliatory response showed that: “Though Labour, the Alliance and the Greens had won, New Zealand capitalism had not lost.” The coalition government “would need to emulate the strategy of the Roman general Fabius Maximus, and learn how to ‘make haste slowly’.”
The controversial judgements in No Left Turn will undoubtedly spark much debate on the left. The book will certainly attract critical commentary from the right. It will be interesting to see what labour-historian turned Tory-propagandist, Michael Basset, for one, makes of Trotter’s foray into historiography.
A further book by Chris Trotter on the twenty-first century chapter of the left-right struggle is bound to be in the offing. Let's make sure this will not conclude with a description of the victory of the right in next year’s general election. The lesson of No Left Turn is that the left must be united in struggle if we are to defeat the right.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Who has the power?
Who has the power?
WE HAVE THE POWER
What kind of power?
UNION POWER!
This was one of the chants that rang out on the picket lines outside many of our public hospitals over the last week.
Hospital cleaners, orderlies and kitchen staff are to be congratulated for staying staunch in the face of the nine-day lockout by their employer, Spotless. The lockout of the 800 Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) members involved was yesterday declared illegal by the Employment Court.
Spotless has now acceded to the terms of the multi-employer collective agreement (MECA) already agreed by the District Health Boards (DHBs) and three other contractors. This is a great victory for the Spotless employees and the more than two thousand other hospital workers who will gain significant pay increases as a result.
The future of contracting-out is now under question by workers, their unions, some DHBs and by Labour MP, Mark Gosche. Why use private multi-national contractors, especially now that DHB service workers are on common pay and conditions across the whole sector?
Contracting out was introduced in the 1990s by a National Government to cut costs in the health sector. This meant wage and job cuts.
It is time to bring health sector workers back into direct employment by the DHBs. Service workers are essential for the healthy and efficient operation of hospitals and deserve decent pay and conditions.
WE HAVE THE POWER
What kind of power?
UNION POWER!
This was one of the chants that rang out on the picket lines outside many of our public hospitals over the last week.
Hospital cleaners, orderlies and kitchen staff are to be congratulated for staying staunch in the face of the nine-day lockout by their employer, Spotless. The lockout of the 800 Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) members involved was yesterday declared illegal by the Employment Court.
Spotless has now acceded to the terms of the multi-employer collective agreement (MECA) already agreed by the District Health Boards (DHBs) and three other contractors. This is a great victory for the Spotless employees and the more than two thousand other hospital workers who will gain significant pay increases as a result.
The future of contracting-out is now under question by workers, their unions, some DHBs and by Labour MP, Mark Gosche. Why use private multi-national contractors, especially now that DHB service workers are on common pay and conditions across the whole sector?
Contracting out was introduced in the 1990s by a National Government to cut costs in the health sector. This meant wage and job cuts.
It is time to bring health sector workers back into direct employment by the DHBs. Service workers are essential for the healthy and efficient operation of hospitals and deserve decent pay and conditions.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
RED & GREEN 6 - Out Now!
The latest issue of RED & GREEN (#6) has just been published. It can be purchased for $12.50 by contacting me (or by emailing redandgreen@actrix.co.nz). Subscriptions (two issues) are also available for $25 ($50 Institutions or International). This NZ Journal of Left Alternatives is 162 pages of essential reading for those on the 'left'.
Note: I am one of the editors of RED & GREEN.
CONTENTS (of Issue 6)
ARTICLES
The CTU and the struggle against the ECA
Brian Roper
The engineer, the Wobbly and the scribe
Len Richards
The post-September 11 AWM in New Zealand
Matthew Stephen
HISTORY
Toby Hill (1915 - 1977)
Gerry Hill and others
Remembrance: Men and Women of ‘51
Len Gale
INTERNATIONAL
Human rights on the agenda in Philippines
Rod Prosser
Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution
Scott Hamilton
BOOK REVIEWS
National exposed. Wayne Hope reviews The Hollow Men by Nicky Hager (2006)
Lest we forget. Len Richards makes additional comments on The Hollow Men
The power of speaking truth. Chris Trotter reviews Speaking Truth to Power
The ‘War on Terror’ and the class war at home. Jason Schulman reviews Blood in the Sand
DISCOURSE
Let the “underclass” roar
Jill Ovens
Swap Treaty rights for human rights
Bernard Gadd
The curse of nationalism
Don Franks
POETRY
Haven on earth?
Don Franks
Note: I am one of the editors of RED & GREEN.
CONTENTS (of Issue 6)
ARTICLES
The CTU and the struggle against the ECA
Brian Roper
The engineer, the Wobbly and the scribe
Len Richards
The post-September 11 AWM in New Zealand
Matthew Stephen
HISTORY
Toby Hill (1915 - 1977)
Gerry Hill and others
Remembrance: Men and Women of ‘51
Len Gale
INTERNATIONAL
Human rights on the agenda in Philippines
Rod Prosser
Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution
Scott Hamilton
BOOK REVIEWS
National exposed. Wayne Hope reviews The Hollow Men by Nicky Hager (2006)
Lest we forget. Len Richards makes additional comments on The Hollow Men
The power of speaking truth. Chris Trotter reviews Speaking Truth to Power
The ‘War on Terror’ and the class war at home. Jason Schulman reviews Blood in the Sand
DISCOURSE
Let the “underclass” roar
Jill Ovens
Swap Treaty rights for human rights
Bernard Gadd
The curse of nationalism
Don Franks
POETRY
Haven on earth?
Don Franks
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Comments on The Hollow Men by Nicky Hager
It is important to put the unprincipled and even unlawful 2005 election campaign tactics of the National Party into the historical context of the last twenty five to thirty years. This period saw the collapse of the "historic compromise" based on an a "long-term reconciliation with capitalism" by the working class represented by the Labour Party and trade unions. According to Bruce Jesson, this compromise had its origins in the first Labour Government elected in 1935.
The compromise had two sides to it and was embedded in a global context. Internationally, after WWII, there was an historical compromise struck between capital and labour. Its economic basis was the ‘Bretton Woods’ agreement that set up the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Its political basis was hammered out between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in talks at Yalta at the end of WWII. The threat of revolution subsided and capitalism was stabilised.
This compromise suffered meltdown from the late 1960s under the pressure of declining profit rates. By 1980, in the words of Senegalese Marxist economist Samir Amin, "the new single thought" of capitalist ideology guiding and justifying government policies all over the world had changed from Keynesian economic interventionism and welfare-statism, to one directing policies aimed at "systematically dismantling the specific rights that had been achieved by the workers and lower classes" .
In New Zealand this took the form of the introduction of neo-liberal ideas and policies by the 1984-1990 Labour Government in a country hitherto rightly considered as a bastion of Keynesian Welfarism. The neo-liberal "New Zealand Experiment", as it is known, is perhaps definitively depicted by Jane Kelsey in her book with that title. Bruce Jesson and others, including myself, have extensively explored the co-option of that Labour Government to the ends of the neo-liberal project.
Wayne Hope's forthcoming review of The Hollow Men in RED & GREEN 6 points out that the 2005 election campaign conducted by National was comparable to the 1987 Labour campaign. They were both based on "new right corporate backing and the construction of a deceptive communications strategy".
The same could also be said of the successful election campaigns of Labour in 1984 and National in 1990. These Governments were both elected on platforms which espoused the conventional class-compromise policies of the post-WWII period, but were Trojan-horse vehicles for the implementation of economic policies that were straight out of the neo-liberal text books.
In 1984 Lange was elected to end the oppressive regime of Muldoon but his finance minister, Roger Douglas, led the charge to corporatise, deregulate and privatise the economy. The electorate was deceived. Similarly, Jim Bolger was elected in 1990 on the slogan of creating a "decent society’, but Ruth Richardson carried on the ‘Rogernomics’ agenda with benefit cuts, the anti-union Employment Contracts Act and the continued sell-out of state-owned assets to her private business backers. Again the voters were betrayed.
In all three cases the electors were conned by clever election campaigns that concealed the real agendas that were to be implemented after the elections. National in 2005 systematically set out to repeat the feat. The fact that they failed (only by a whisker) does not detract from the perfidy involved. Nicky Hager’s book reveals how Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas were intimately involved in the far-right take-over of National by Don Brash.
MMP was supported in 1993 by an electorate who saw proportional parliamentary representation as a way of breaking the treacherous two-party election swindle that they had endured for a decade or more. However, it was one of the MMP parties that next let the voters down (in 1996) with Winston Peters’ NZ First enabling the National Party to continue in office despite having camapigned against National before the election.
The Alliance and a Helen Clark-led Labour Party finally got their game together and began to turn the new-right revolution around with their victory in the 1999 election. But rust and the new-right never sleep.
The far-right cabal of Deane, Shirtcliffe, Richwhite, Fay, Myers, Heatley, Friedlander, Foreman, Colman, Farmer, Trotter (Ron) and others like Kerr, Scott and Brash from Treasury have been actively promoting the Freidman/Hayek, "Washington Consensus" strategy for more than two and a half decades. Their projects include the infiltration of Treasury, the colonisation of the Labour Party, the campaign against MMP, the formation of the Act party to make best advantage of MMP, the Brash coup in the National Party, and support for his surrogate John Key.
Hager exposes the key roles of these and other players like Michael Bassett and the perhaps less known supporting roles of the likes of Margaret Austin and David Caygill. The New Zealand working class public has been subject to the Machiavellien machinations of these political plotters for far too long.
Nicky Hager describes the Brash challenge to be leader of National as "not so much a leadership coup as a political coup, in which a group of ACT Party and others from the radical right succeeded in gaining control of the National leadership... This coup set the stage for a two-year fight in which Brash and his backers from the 1980s and 1990s tried to regain control of government." The revelations of the shadowy intrigue behind the election attack-ads on the Greens and Labour by the Exclusive Brethren cult, and their links with Brash (that are more fully exposed in Hager’s book), probably stymied this attempt in 2005.
But we can be sure this right-wing group who comprise some of the richest and most powerful people in New Zealand, whose agenda is intensely anti-working class (using that term in its broadest sense), is still actively plotting and planning to take power in the next election if they can. It is crucial to stop this happening and the left can thank Nicky Hager for providing, with The Hollow Men, an important tool to help do this.
Brash lost the support of his big-business backers because he failed to win the election and because his cover was blown. Brash’s far-right credentials and support was exposed to the sunlight of public scrutiny.
The myth now being promoted by former Brash supporters like spin-manager Richard Long is that Key is a "centrist". To think that John Key offers a ‘softer’ alternative to Brash would be a mistake. His speech to the 2006 National Party annual conference showed his true politics. He called for lower taxes and attacked public spending, red tape and overly protective labour laws.
Commentator Chris Trotter called this speech "pure Business Roundtable-speak" and noted that Key was the natural successor to Brash – the insurance policy for the right wing.
As Hager comments, National will "continue along the same tracks" under Key. "It would continue with the same strategies, the same political alliances and the same hidden agendas." If Brash is the archetypal Hollow Man, then Key is Hollow Man 2.
The compromise had two sides to it and was embedded in a global context. Internationally, after WWII, there was an historical compromise struck between capital and labour. Its economic basis was the ‘Bretton Woods’ agreement that set up the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Its political basis was hammered out between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in talks at Yalta at the end of WWII. The threat of revolution subsided and capitalism was stabilised.
This compromise suffered meltdown from the late 1960s under the pressure of declining profit rates. By 1980, in the words of Senegalese Marxist economist Samir Amin, "the new single thought" of capitalist ideology guiding and justifying government policies all over the world had changed from Keynesian economic interventionism and welfare-statism, to one directing policies aimed at "systematically dismantling the specific rights that had been achieved by the workers and lower classes" .
In New Zealand this took the form of the introduction of neo-liberal ideas and policies by the 1984-1990 Labour Government in a country hitherto rightly considered as a bastion of Keynesian Welfarism. The neo-liberal "New Zealand Experiment", as it is known, is perhaps definitively depicted by Jane Kelsey in her book with that title. Bruce Jesson and others, including myself, have extensively explored the co-option of that Labour Government to the ends of the neo-liberal project.
Wayne Hope's forthcoming review of The Hollow Men in RED & GREEN 6 points out that the 2005 election campaign conducted by National was comparable to the 1987 Labour campaign. They were both based on "new right corporate backing and the construction of a deceptive communications strategy".
The same could also be said of the successful election campaigns of Labour in 1984 and National in 1990. These Governments were both elected on platforms which espoused the conventional class-compromise policies of the post-WWII period, but were Trojan-horse vehicles for the implementation of economic policies that were straight out of the neo-liberal text books.
In 1984 Lange was elected to end the oppressive regime of Muldoon but his finance minister, Roger Douglas, led the charge to corporatise, deregulate and privatise the economy. The electorate was deceived. Similarly, Jim Bolger was elected in 1990 on the slogan of creating a "decent society’, but Ruth Richardson carried on the ‘Rogernomics’ agenda with benefit cuts, the anti-union Employment Contracts Act and the continued sell-out of state-owned assets to her private business backers. Again the voters were betrayed.
In all three cases the electors were conned by clever election campaigns that concealed the real agendas that were to be implemented after the elections. National in 2005 systematically set out to repeat the feat. The fact that they failed (only by a whisker) does not detract from the perfidy involved. Nicky Hager’s book reveals how Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas were intimately involved in the far-right take-over of National by Don Brash.
MMP was supported in 1993 by an electorate who saw proportional parliamentary representation as a way of breaking the treacherous two-party election swindle that they had endured for a decade or more. However, it was one of the MMP parties that next let the voters down (in 1996) with Winston Peters’ NZ First enabling the National Party to continue in office despite having camapigned against National before the election.
The Alliance and a Helen Clark-led Labour Party finally got their game together and began to turn the new-right revolution around with their victory in the 1999 election. But rust and the new-right never sleep.
The far-right cabal of Deane, Shirtcliffe, Richwhite, Fay, Myers, Heatley, Friedlander, Foreman, Colman, Farmer, Trotter (Ron) and others like Kerr, Scott and Brash from Treasury have been actively promoting the Freidman/Hayek, "Washington Consensus" strategy for more than two and a half decades. Their projects include the infiltration of Treasury, the colonisation of the Labour Party, the campaign against MMP, the formation of the Act party to make best advantage of MMP, the Brash coup in the National Party, and support for his surrogate John Key.
Hager exposes the key roles of these and other players like Michael Bassett and the perhaps less known supporting roles of the likes of Margaret Austin and David Caygill. The New Zealand working class public has been subject to the Machiavellien machinations of these political plotters for far too long.
Nicky Hager describes the Brash challenge to be leader of National as "not so much a leadership coup as a political coup, in which a group of ACT Party and others from the radical right succeeded in gaining control of the National leadership... This coup set the stage for a two-year fight in which Brash and his backers from the 1980s and 1990s tried to regain control of government." The revelations of the shadowy intrigue behind the election attack-ads on the Greens and Labour by the Exclusive Brethren cult, and their links with Brash (that are more fully exposed in Hager’s book), probably stymied this attempt in 2005.
But we can be sure this right-wing group who comprise some of the richest and most powerful people in New Zealand, whose agenda is intensely anti-working class (using that term in its broadest sense), is still actively plotting and planning to take power in the next election if they can. It is crucial to stop this happening and the left can thank Nicky Hager for providing, with The Hollow Men, an important tool to help do this.
Brash lost the support of his big-business backers because he failed to win the election and because his cover was blown. Brash’s far-right credentials and support was exposed to the sunlight of public scrutiny.
The myth now being promoted by former Brash supporters like spin-manager Richard Long is that Key is a "centrist". To think that John Key offers a ‘softer’ alternative to Brash would be a mistake. His speech to the 2006 National Party annual conference showed his true politics. He called for lower taxes and attacked public spending, red tape and overly protective labour laws.
Commentator Chris Trotter called this speech "pure Business Roundtable-speak" and noted that Key was the natural successor to Brash – the insurance policy for the right wing.
As Hager comments, National will "continue along the same tracks" under Key. "It would continue with the same strategies, the same political alliances and the same hidden agendas." If Brash is the archetypal Hollow Man, then Key is Hollow Man 2.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Reply to James (2)*
(*See comment to previous post)
You are, I think, being somewhat disingenuous with your criticism of Jill Ovens and her leadership of the SFWU members in the Air NZ outsourcing dispute. Rather than acting "immaturely and irresponsibly", Jill Ovens showed remarkable courage and strength of purpose in resisting strong pressure to concede to the EPMU/Air NZ-negotiated solution. Her determination reflected that of the members who stood with her.
The SFWU members involved voted five times to reject any attempts to destroy their existing CEA. They opposed accepting cuts in wages and conditions. They also strongly opposed the attempt to separate them from their fellow Air NZ workers who are parties to their collective. They were entitled to expect their CEA to be honoured and to maintain the position that they would renegotiate it when they had the right to take industrial action. This was a perfectly rational and responsible stand to make as workers and trade unionists.
The EPMU is to be congratulated for its democratic processes but democracy, as you well know, is constrained by the choices put before the electorate. The EPMU position was that the choice was between ‘outsourcing’ and ‘an in-house solution’. This thrust the EPMU members into a catch-22 situation where they were damned to accept cuts no matter which choice they made. It was a bit like giving a condemned person the choice of which form of execution they wanted. The dispute was allowed to be framed in the employer's terms. The SFWU chose to fight the dispute under their own terms, as was their right.
This fight included two highly successful mass-mailing campaigns to the Board of Air NZ. One was a postcard campaign. Thousands of signatures were collected from members of the public at places like markets. I helped to collect these and there was huge support for the workers and opposition to outsourcing. The other campaign was an email one organised through the international Labour Start website. This campaign had the biggest response ever recorded by Labour Start.
The SFWU position was simply "no concessions". The only way to stop cuts is to first of all reject the employer's right to make them. Workers of today do not have the right to give-back the hard won gains of workers of the past. Their duty to the class is to fight to retain and improve those past conquests. If this is your frame of reference then you will come up with the course of action that was decided upon by the SFWU members and Jill Ovens as their (elected) regional secretary.
As to some of your other analysis; it is an open question as to whether the Government’s position would have remained fixed. Governments have been known to change their minds under public pressure. A campaign by two of the country’s most powerful private-sector unions, supported by trade-union-backed Labour MPs, could have tested the Clark administration’s resolve. The public could expect a publicly-owned entity like Air NZ to listen to and act upon public concerns.
The argument that the Government cannot legally interfere in the running of state-owned enterprises and companies does not hold water. This is a matter of political will. Government’s can change laws or apply political pressure to appointed boards; it happens all the time. The neo-liberal legislation and assumptions from the 1980s that still underpin social and economic life in New Zealand should be challenged when they conflict with the public interest and the interests of workers.
The point about being in a "far worse" situation under the Swissport deal is also a moot one. The savings and conditions proposed by Swissport look remarkably similar to the in-house deal eventually struck. Before the SFWU pulled out of the process, experts from both unions examined the Swissport proposals as part of the process of developing an "in-house solution". Swissport’s $20 million-per-year claimed savings were shown to be only about $12 million worth: the same amount of saving being made by the EPMU/Air NZ-agreed deal. So workers would not have been "in a far worse position". In fact the Swissport outsourcing would have resulted in all the workers receiving a full redundancy pay-out, whether they were staying or transferring over. Only workers who leave the job in the face of a cut in basic pay rates will now get redundancy. The $3000 sweetener goes nowhere near making up for the lost wages or the forgone redundancy payout.
Similarly, you say that the workers are now not subject to a "retendering process" and are therefore are in a better position to claw the cuts back in the future. Two things: First, the threat of "retendering" in the form of outsourcing has not been permanently removed. It could be argued, as Jill Ovens has in fact done, that it will now be more attractive for the outsourcing to proceed in the future because the transition costs have largely been eliminated by the cuts already made in this current deal. Second, the workers’ position is not stronger but weaker, because, for one thing, they are separated off in a separate CEA from their fellow Air NZ workers who were previously under the same CEA.
The best way to claw back cuts is to not concede them in the first place. The SFWU have not conceded their wages and conditions, they have not been separated off into a different CEA; that is why the SFWU can rightly claim a victory. Of course there is still a fight on to maintain wages and conditions, but not conceding them in the first instance was a pre-condition to engaging in that fight. The SFWU is at least on the front foot, unlike the EPMU members who have a hard slog just to get back to where they were before.
You are, I think, being somewhat disingenuous with your criticism of Jill Ovens and her leadership of the SFWU members in the Air NZ outsourcing dispute. Rather than acting "immaturely and irresponsibly", Jill Ovens showed remarkable courage and strength of purpose in resisting strong pressure to concede to the EPMU/Air NZ-negotiated solution. Her determination reflected that of the members who stood with her.
The SFWU members involved voted five times to reject any attempts to destroy their existing CEA. They opposed accepting cuts in wages and conditions. They also strongly opposed the attempt to separate them from their fellow Air NZ workers who are parties to their collective. They were entitled to expect their CEA to be honoured and to maintain the position that they would renegotiate it when they had the right to take industrial action. This was a perfectly rational and responsible stand to make as workers and trade unionists.
The EPMU is to be congratulated for its democratic processes but democracy, as you well know, is constrained by the choices put before the electorate. The EPMU position was that the choice was between ‘outsourcing’ and ‘an in-house solution’. This thrust the EPMU members into a catch-22 situation where they were damned to accept cuts no matter which choice they made. It was a bit like giving a condemned person the choice of which form of execution they wanted. The dispute was allowed to be framed in the employer's terms. The SFWU chose to fight the dispute under their own terms, as was their right.
This fight included two highly successful mass-mailing campaigns to the Board of Air NZ. One was a postcard campaign. Thousands of signatures were collected from members of the public at places like markets. I helped to collect these and there was huge support for the workers and opposition to outsourcing. The other campaign was an email one organised through the international Labour Start website. This campaign had the biggest response ever recorded by Labour Start.
The SFWU position was simply "no concessions". The only way to stop cuts is to first of all reject the employer's right to make them. Workers of today do not have the right to give-back the hard won gains of workers of the past. Their duty to the class is to fight to retain and improve those past conquests. If this is your frame of reference then you will come up with the course of action that was decided upon by the SFWU members and Jill Ovens as their (elected) regional secretary.
As to some of your other analysis; it is an open question as to whether the Government’s position would have remained fixed. Governments have been known to change their minds under public pressure. A campaign by two of the country’s most powerful private-sector unions, supported by trade-union-backed Labour MPs, could have tested the Clark administration’s resolve. The public could expect a publicly-owned entity like Air NZ to listen to and act upon public concerns.
The argument that the Government cannot legally interfere in the running of state-owned enterprises and companies does not hold water. This is a matter of political will. Government’s can change laws or apply political pressure to appointed boards; it happens all the time. The neo-liberal legislation and assumptions from the 1980s that still underpin social and economic life in New Zealand should be challenged when they conflict with the public interest and the interests of workers.
The point about being in a "far worse" situation under the Swissport deal is also a moot one. The savings and conditions proposed by Swissport look remarkably similar to the in-house deal eventually struck. Before the SFWU pulled out of the process, experts from both unions examined the Swissport proposals as part of the process of developing an "in-house solution". Swissport’s $20 million-per-year claimed savings were shown to be only about $12 million worth: the same amount of saving being made by the EPMU/Air NZ-agreed deal. So workers would not have been "in a far worse position". In fact the Swissport outsourcing would have resulted in all the workers receiving a full redundancy pay-out, whether they were staying or transferring over. Only workers who leave the job in the face of a cut in basic pay rates will now get redundancy. The $3000 sweetener goes nowhere near making up for the lost wages or the forgone redundancy payout.
Similarly, you say that the workers are now not subject to a "retendering process" and are therefore are in a better position to claw the cuts back in the future. Two things: First, the threat of "retendering" in the form of outsourcing has not been permanently removed. It could be argued, as Jill Ovens has in fact done, that it will now be more attractive for the outsourcing to proceed in the future because the transition costs have largely been eliminated by the cuts already made in this current deal. Second, the workers’ position is not stronger but weaker, because, for one thing, they are separated off in a separate CEA from their fellow Air NZ workers who were previously under the same CEA.
The best way to claw back cuts is to not concede them in the first place. The SFWU have not conceded their wages and conditions, they have not been separated off into a different CEA; that is why the SFWU can rightly claim a victory. Of course there is still a fight on to maintain wages and conditions, but not conceding them in the first instance was a pre-condition to engaging in that fight. The SFWU is at least on the front foot, unlike the EPMU members who have a hard slog just to get back to where they were before.
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