As the recession has bitten, redundancies have risen and unemployment figures have begun to climb, Labour’s Darien Fenton has had her Private Member’s Bill drawn from the ballot. The Bill would enforce a minimum redundancy payout on all employers, starting at four weeks pay after one year of employment. The Labour Party of course is the party that introduced the Employment Relations Act, which does not even provide a definition of the word redundancy, let alone provide significant protection for workers. New Zealand workers actually have no legal right to redundancy compensation and very few have provision for it in their contracts.

Workers at LWR’s Wairarapa sites who were made redundant earlier this year have been told that they are unlikely to receive any more than seventy percent of their entitlement in redundancy and holiday pay. Approximately eighty percent of staff with written employment agreements (contracts) have no redundancy provisions at all according to a Massey University survey commissioned for the Department of Labour’s Restructuring and Redundancy Public Advisory Group.

The generally accepted legal definition of redundancy is the one provided by the Labour Relations Act of 1987. It states that a redundancy is “… a situation where…[a] worker’s employment is terminated by the employer, the termination being attributable, wholly or mainly, to the fact that the position filled by that worker is, or will become, superfluous to the needs of the employer…” New Zealand case law has always focussed on the position, not the worker, so it is the position that becomes redundant. What this means in effect is that it is the employer’s right to decide the structure of the business and, consequently, to make positions redundant, provided that the redundancies are “genuine” and are “carried out in a fair and reasonable manner”. The ERA added some largely worthless prerogatives to define “fair and reasonable”, primarily around the concept of good faith. Despite legal requirements for consultation with workers and their representatives and a 2004 amendment to the ERA intended to strengthen the definition of what a “fair and reasonable employer” would do, the Employment Court has consistently interpreted the law as placing the decision making power firmly in the hands of the employer:

“So long as an employer acts genuinely and not out of ulterior motives, a business decision to make positions or employees redundant is for the employer to make and not for the Authority or the Court…”

Those “genuine” reasons are very broadly defined: The introduction of new technology Rationalisations of staff to increase business efficiency Restructuring business operations Closure of the business Outsourcing Sale of the employer’s business

These conditions of “genuine” behaviour can be, and are, interpreted very broadly, making it very easy to define a job as a redundancy if it suits the employer to do so.

Workers cannot depend upon the Labour Party to gain them any improvements in their working conditions. Now in opposition after nine years in Government, Labour has suddenly discovered that the working people of this country have been having their rights and conditions eroded. Labour has proved time and time again that when in government they are both unwilling and incapable of delivering sufficient real gains for workers. That the Fenton Bill needed to be introduced as a Private Member’s Bill is itself indicative of Labour’s inability to deliver for workers. Workers will only get real gains when they fight for them as workers, because the Labour Party will not deliver.

As a result of the recession, the National-led government has been made to face rising unemployment. Its response has been to attempt to offset unemployment with redundancy initiatives and job creation initiatives. The job creation initiatives are partly corporate welfare (if not corporate welfare, then company welfare) and partly based on the provision of freely trained skilled or semi-skilled labour to firms.

Investment into the different initiatives varies. However, the proportions of all such initiatives can only remain completely at odds with rising joblessness.

From a working class perspective, the response to unemployment must be made as a response against the capitalist system. This means recognising that unemployment is an inherent and increasingly (in the long-term) problematic aspect of capitalism. It also means recognising that during an economic downturn the demands and actions needed to significantly alleviate the rate of unemployment and the conditions of the unemployed must take an anti-capitalist form.

A sharp rise in unemployment

In August, Statistics New Zealand reported that there had been a 38.5 percent increase in joblessness between June 2008 and June 2009, and that the number of jobless people had increased in that period to 236,100.

It is commonly acknowledged that in order to produce a more favourable spin, parties in government emphasise the `Unemployed’ statistics from the Household Labour Force Survey, which are significantly lower than `Jobless’ figures from the same survey. A survey participant may be deemed to be ‘not seeking work’ through failure to check job advertisements. So the Jobless category is more relevant in understanding the extent of unemployment. Within the Jobless category is the unemployed category which had increased by 48,000 to a total of 138,000 in the year to June 2009. Also comprising the Jobless category are those defined as being without jobs because they are seeking work but are not currently available, and those who are `discouraged’ (generally this means long-term unemployed). In June these categories amounted to 98,100 of the jobless. The number of ‘discouraged workers’ had more than doubled on the previous year.

The category of work that declined most dramatically was women’s full-time employment, meaning women’s employment was effected disproportionately. While the report showed a general decline in full-time employment, it also showed an increase in the part-time employment category which was up by 7,000 positions in the June 2009 quarter.

The government’s initiatives

Bourgeois democratic governments, whilst functioning fundamentally as institutions of service to the ruling class, also seek to maintain social peace. With this comes the requirement to try and ensure that people have work.

The government’s concrete response to the rise in unemployment has consisted of initiatives – very public relations driven initiatives -for managing both job losses and redeployment throughout the economic downturn.

Last year, still in government, Labour announced a redundancy package following the first wave of recession related redundancies. In October, before its election victory, National counter-posed Labour’s plan with its own transitional relief package which – in comparison to Labour’s policy – was more favourable to lower income families as according to income by number of children configurations.

National’s election was followed by John Key’s Jobs Summit initiative, which consisted of a national forum followed by local forums for business leaders and which included participation from some major trade unions. The major initiative to come out of the Jobs Summit was the job support scheme which has allowed companies employing 100 or more people to reduce the hours of employees by ten hours per fortnight, with a government top-up for those employees at the rate of minimum wage for five hours each fortnight. The intention was to prevent redundancy through the sharing of hours of work reductions. The uptake of the scheme was minimal and the government has reduced the criteria for participation so that firms with 50 staff or more can access the scheme.

The redeployment schemes have included subsidies on training in McDonalds stores, which can cover workers’ wages for up to eight months. There are subsidies for home insulation firms, which have continued to charge consumers more money than have the firms without the subsidies.

Aside from those bits of company welfare, the larger more serious projects include a $5000 subsidy on wages, paid for six months of employment for up to 4000 of the 17,000 young unemployed in the 16-24 age bracket. There’s Community Max, a programme costing up to $40 million which will fund 500 young people to work for 30 hours per week doing `worthwhile tasks in the community’. $50 million will be spent constructing a national cycle-way. And there is a further combined $44 million being allocated to defence-related training, polytechnic placements, and summer scholarships.

The reserve army of labour

The reality is that no job creation scheme, redundancy prevention measure, or redeployment scheme can ever harness unemployment. The rate of unemployment is an outcome of the use (or not) of a permanent force within capitalist production which Marx called the reserve army of labour or the industrial reserve army.

The reserve army of labour is not exactly synonymous with the unemployed. The term `unemployed’ describes the group that is without work at any one time, whereas the reserve army of labour is a description of the ever-increasing proportion of the population that is superfluous to the general requirements of capitalism. It can be deployed during a boom period and then released during a slump period.

The reserve army becomes superfluous to the needs of capitalism because capitalist expansion is characterised by a continuous replacement of the use of living labour with the use of dead labour. Put another way, the labour power purchased from workers is replaced by machinery as capitalist interests use the efficiency of machinery to compete against one another. Whilst labour-power is not completely replaced, its ratio measured against machinery is steadily reduced. The intensification of labour and increases in working hours can also contribute to the growth of the industrial reserve army.

The reserve army though is not just a product of capitalist expansion. Capitalism couldn’t expand without the reserve army holding down wages and creating cheap labour supplies for new enterprises or new regions of capitalist development. In summary, the reserve army of labour is an inescapable creation of capitalist development, and capitalism cannot develop without the reserve army of labour. This is how unemployment is unavoidable within capitalism.

Degradation and deprivation of unemployed by government

Despite the inevitability of unemployment within capitalism, and despite concrete attempts by governments to offset unemployment, operating at a more subjective or ideological level, is the moral condemnation of beneficiaries by capitalist governments, especially present since neo-liberalism became the dominant economic outlook and practice.

In New Zealand this practice has been referred to as `beneficiary bashing’ and has been an on-and-off practice of governments since the early-1990s, depending on the intermittence of higher levels of unemployment.

Against the current picture of rising unemployment, which clearly shows the social need for an expansion of social security measures, Minister of Social Development Paula Bennett has caused several affrays in the media and with beneficiaries advocates. She did this firstly by releasing to the media the personal details of a beneficiary couple who had complained about the removal of the Training Incentive Allowance and then by publicly targeting the so-called ‘Top 50′ beneficiaries in the country (those who receive the most income support, including one-parent families) for review.

This type of government/state-led ridicule has been normalised by previous National-led and Labour-led governments. For example, the National Party heavily reduced benefits in 1991 by reducing basic welfare incomes and itemising additional payments according to means-tested individual needs. In 1998, Prime Minister Jenny Shipley pushed a ‘work-for-the-dole’ programme through her government’s Code of Social Conduct, which was accompanied by a campaign to encourage people to report on others whom they suspected of misusing benefits. The work-for-the-dole system, labelled `the community wage’ by the government, actually hampered the ability of unemployed people to move into jobs with genuine employers.

Following this, Labour-led governments consciously ignored the demands of workers’ and beneficiaries’ organisations to raise benefits back up to pre-1991 levels. In 2004 Labour’s Steve Maharey, acting as Minister of Social Development, used the Jobs Jolt scheme to target beneficiaries on the basis of work testing, drug testing, and living in remote areas. Finally, before it was removed from government, Labour seamlessly scrapped the special benefit which allowed beneficiaries in hardship to receive a weekly amount equivalent to proven weekly deficits.

Government condemnation of the unemployed is often seen as and criticised as being political populism and an opportunist appeal to `redneck’ voters. The resultant political strategy is a liberal one; that individuals including politicians, should not attribute negative connotations to (or say bad things) about the unemployed.

It is important to counter-pose this approach with the understanding that the degradation and depriving of the unemployed is part of the capitalist superstructure and produces many benefits for the employing class, such as compliant workers who fear being demoted into the unemployed ranks of the working class. The main point of the degradation in particular is to play sections of the working class off against one another.

Fighting unemployment

Capitalism is inseparable from unemployment, however, this does not mean that revolutionary socialists sit back and discuss fighting capitalism as an abstract concept. Revolutionary socialists emphasise demands and actions that can form a plank between current working class struggles and consciousness and upcoming class battles. Such demands that have been followed up by action have included demands against redundancy that have been backed up and won by strikes and occupations, and the winning of shorter working weeks for the same pay as a measure against redundancies.

Revolutionary socialists oppose the use of demands and actions that temporarily alleviate unemployment without producing class awareness and that go nowhere in terms of fighting capitalism over the longer term. With the continuing growth of partial unemployment the subsequent demands for secure hours of work and job security are sure to become stronger but need to be posed in such a way that they confront capitalism itself and do not contribute to its strengthening.

The government has made a deal with fast food giant McDonald’s in which young people receiving the unemployment benefit will be sent to jobs in McDonald’s restaurants, and have their ‘training’ subsidised by the state. Every beneficiary McDonald’s hires will get the company up to $16,000 which is the equivalent of about 8 months wages for a McDonalds worker. Social Development and Employment Minister Paula Bennett is citing the relationship with the golden arches as an example of “the Government’s commitment to getting beneficiaries into jobs,” but while the growing number of unemployed certainly need jobs, McDonald’s needs workers a whole lot more, and this is what the scheme is really about.

Fast food is a growth industry during this recession, as people who would have previously eaten at more up-market restaurants lower their budgets. McDonald’s in New Zealand is continuing to build on its profits, enough to open a number of new outlets. They need to employ an estimated 6,000 workers over the next few years. The reason? Those workers are where their profit comes from. The company can provide an investment to build a new store with all the cooking and food preparing equipment that requires, but it can’t see a return on that investment until labour (ie, workers) is added. A McDonald’s worker doing an eight hour shift for minimum wage will be paid $100, but by turning raw materials (buns, meat patties, frozen Happy Meals, that worker could produce $200 for the company. Without the worker, McDonald’s couldn’t realise a profit.

Shareholders always want a bigger return on their investment (or they would simply invest their money elsewhere) so workers are always being pushed to make more money for the company’s shareholders; partly through selling upsizes and extra fries, and partly through being made to work harder and faster.

Since in reality its not each worker producing an individual share of wealth for the boss, but a whole number of workers working collectively to produce wealth, squeezing more out of the workers is often done by taking a labour process done by, say, four workers, and having it done by three workers with the same expectation that the customer will get their order within 2 minutes. The ideal for McDonald’s, as for any employer, is to get the maximum amount of profit from a minimum amount of wage outlay. With this being the case, how is the government’s new scheme going to help more people gain employment? Well, hiring four people at minimum wage with one of them a former beneficiary on subsidised wages is certainly more profitable than hiring four unsubsidised workers, but then, hiring three workers with one of them a subsidised former beneficiary is even more profitable still. If this scheme really creates any more jobs than McDonald’s would create anyway — without the helpful hand of corporate welfare —it would be for the short term at best.

Even if we take Paula Bennet at her word, and believe that this scheme is all about giving a helping hand to unfortunate unemployed young people, then why McDonald’s? Is the expansion of the fast food industry National’s answer to capitalism’s economic woes? McDonald’s jobs are the archetype of the ‘McJob’ and of course, the originator of the term. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a McJob as “An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.” McDonald’s restaurants are fast-paced and highly stressful workplaces, and there are stores with many health and safety hazards caused by hot oil, wet floors and intoxicated late night customers. While McDonald’s workers have fought to improve wages and conditions, the company is aggressively anti-union. In addition to all this, the food they sell is frequently associated with poor public health, and the packaging it comes in is a significant environmental concern. Yet this is the kind of job creation the government is putting resources into, at a time when polytechnics — places where people learn skills in carpentry, engineering, information technology and a huge number of other professions — are crying out for more funding and turning away students in their thousands.

The National Distribution Union’s (NDU) main public response to the May 15 redundancy of 186 clothing manufacturing workers employed by Lane Walker Rudkin (LWR) has been to invite workers and supporters to hold cake stalls as a fundraising activity for the redundant workers. Of LWR’s 470 staff, 102 in Christchurch, 61 in Greytown, 19 in Pahiatua, and four in Auckland have been made redundant.

LWR is New Zealand’s oldest currently-unionised company, and has operated since 1904. In recent years the company has been managed incompetently as a result of the break up in the personal relationship of Ken and Patricia Anderson, who took over the company from a group of businessmen in 2001. The bank, Westpac, won’t even release the redundancy payments.

Some outside observers have called The NDU’s response to these redundancies “a great initiative”. A real path of resistance would have been the occupation of all LWR factories and plants and the reorganisation of the company under worker’s control. However, other interim measures, such as a serious occupation against Westpac bank to get the redundancy money (which has been withheld from the workers), or local community rallies and demonstrations at the workplaces are better alternatives to that presented by the NDU.

The NDU’s public response is not only insufficient, it is a move in the opposite direction of the approach that needs to be taken against redundancies, especially in a period where redundancies of a more structural nature are taking place as a consequence of the economic downturn.

Another aspect is that the NDU has an unwritten position of supporting the rights of New Zealand employers over the rights of foreign employers. This type of left nationalism impacts on the ability to challenge New Zealand employers such as LWR.

Without a strong history of militant fight-backs against closures in the workers movement in New Zealand, it may seem difficult in some circumstances to wage a serious fight-back against redundancies. However, that difficulty needs to be overcome, not avoided. Its relative political independence from the Labour Party and blue-collar nature of its ranks puts the NDU on the left of the general trade union movement in New Zealand. The NDU should therefore be putting its resources at the forefront for organising workers to develop a fighting strategy.

On its website, fishing company Sealord boasts of its responsible environmental practice:

 ”We are committed to harvesting the seas[sic] resources in a sustainable way and this is one of the key points of our company environmental policy. We have secure access to about 19 percent of New Zealand’s quota and have alliances or joint ventures in other countries. Wherever we operate we promote the adoption of sustainable fishing practices. In New Zealand waters we work with other fish quota holders, through fisheries management companies, to improve and monitor fishing standards, carry out research on fish stocks and find ways to reduce bycatch of mammals.” 

Sealord isn’t committed to employment sustainability. The company intends cutting 180 land-based jobs in Nelson and is not ruling out the closure of its plant there.

The Service and Food workers union estimates that a total of 500 workers could lose their jobs. The union notes that at a time when unity and collective cooperation between unions, employers and the Government is making headlines, Sealord have demanded that their employees must accept a reduction in wages to increase profits or face dismissal. 


  
”Sealord intends to lay off around 160 staff immediately, and have indicated to us that they may close the processing plant in the near future unless staff agree to what is effectively a $70 a week cut in wages across the board.” says Neville Donaldson, SFWU Assistant National Secretary. 
  
Sealord have demanded that workers increase the company profits by $1.8 million through wage and condition cuts.” 
  
”If staff don’t agree to the proposed cut in wages and conditions within the three week consultation process, Sealord management have advised us that the board may take an option to close the processing facility in Nelson which currently employs over 500 workers.” 

The company plans to process fish on factory ships out at sea.

Sealord’s announcement came within days of the National government initiated  “Jobs Summit”, where Sealord was represented. Prime Minister John Key has done much theoretical speculating about job losses recently. When faced with a real issue, he had no help to offer.

“I think in the case of Sealords they’re actually restructuring their business.” said Key.

“One thing we have to be realistic about is the recession will ultimately drive some of those changes, it’s not to say we’re not hugely sympathetic to those who have lost their job, we understand that there will be change,” Mr Key told TV3′s Sunrise.

On 21/ 3/ 09, more than 200 people turned out to support the redundant workers at a jobs rally in Nelson.

They marched up Trafalgar St carrying banners reading: “Put People First”, and chanted: “What do we want? To keep our job.” and “There’s no need for corporate greed”.

The rally was organised by the Service and Food Workers Union .

Other workers in the region have also been hit. Nelson Pine will lay off 60 workers on April 9, and 100 night shift workers at Alliance Group’s Stoke plant had their season finish two months earlier than last year.

The SFWU has nearly 4000 signatures on a petition calling on Sealord to reconsider its redundancies, and it used the rally to collect more signatures.

The petition will be presented to the company next week.

Sealord day shift worker Susie Falloon said she joined the march to show Nelsonians that Sealord was cutting their wages and overtime.

“It’s not fair on us and the company is thinking only of its money and its product,” she said.

That comment sums up the essence of the problem. Expansion of company profitability comes before every social consideration. Sealord is owned jointly by Nippon Suisan Kaisha of Japan and Maori tribes via Aotearoa Fisheries. The fact of Maori tribe ownership has been of no benefit to the many Maori Sealord workers about to be sacked.

Under the capitalist economic system we currently live in, all Sealord’s attacks on workers’ jobs are entirely legal. As long as we accept this state of affairs, legal assaults on workers living will continue; future generations of workers will be doomed to suffer forced unemployment.  A necessary part of union fightback against redundancies is questioning, rejecting and working to replace the capitalist system.

Almost every day union leaders across different sectors make public comments and statements with which revolutionary socialists disagree. Often we publicly oppose them. Sometimes it is completely necessary to oppose them.

 In response to the economic downturn the Engineers Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) leadership has started an information campaign declaring that the recession has brought crunch-time to workers. But it’s not just crunch-time for the workers locked into the struggle for bread. It’s also crunch-time for the union leaderships. Will they stress unity and look to generalise class resistance, or will they identify less worthy sections of workers to be first on the chop-up blocks as part of a crisis-management process brokered by union bosses and ‘the’ bosses?

 On March 17 a major New Zealand newspaper – The Press – carried the headline ‘Get rid of migrant workers first: unions’, the TV1 website carried the story ‘Union: Kiwis before migrants in hard times’, and a popular weeknight current affairs show, Campbell Live, ended a segment with Andrew Little – leader of the EPMU – stating ‘We are saying that where the employer is left to choose between New Zealand workers and migrant workers on short term visas then they ought to favour New Zealand workers’.

A Little bit of national chauvinism

Both Andrew Little and Graeme Clarke, who is the general secretary of the Manufacturing and Construction Workers Union (M&C Union), have made comments and taken initiatives that have led to the media spike. Their admissions directly contradict a socialist perspective by conceding that the employing class and the state are – albeit under pressure from the union movement – entitled to control the movement of international labour.

 The M&C union has made a complaint to the Labour Department regarding the decision of an employer to make 28 New Zealand workers redundant while retaining 24 migrant workers on short-term contracts. The Press reported that the union had submitted to the government that employers should re-prove the need to employ migrant workers and quoted Clarke as saying “Our answer has always been ‘yes, you can import people’, but now we want it proved again that the shortage still exists.” If it is true that Clarke said this, his view of international labour mobility does not clash with that of the National Party’s Immigration Minister Jonathon Coleman who reckons “Temporary visas are more of a tap that can be turned on and off.”

 Little has emphasized that it is better for employers to retain New Zealand workers because they will be able to give longer service to businesses whilst migrant workers, employed under two-year permits, will not be as beneficial to firms in the longer term. This is quite a spin, begging the question as to why it should be accepted that workers from other countries should be placed on insecure and temporary permits. Instead of appealing to the needs of migrant workers, Little has appealed to the needs of the bosses.

The cruel irony here is that large numbers of workers still absorb the bureaucratic idea that the employer will treat them better for giving loyalty and service. Time and time again this has proven to be wrong. The competitive nature of capitalism ensures that employers look after their short-term gains, not the men and women who sing the company song and wear the company hat.

 Clarke has a strong history of militant unionism and a past association with radical politics. Little has recently become president of the New Zealand Labour Party. Neither have called for the deportation of migrant workers and nobody is arguing that either of them would want to see the return of large scale deportations as in the early 1980s when economic downturn and joblessness was resolved through reaction. However, without being hysterical, it should be noted that the perspectives they are putting forward are not inconsistent with perspectives that finally led to such disgraceful events.

 If migrant workers lose their positions with sponsoring employers they are sent back to their origin countries. In the final analysis, the reported position held by Clark and Little can lead to deportation.

 Anti-capitalism: Left-nationalism or Internationalism?

Socialists argue that NZ-born workers must oppose attacks on migrant workers and not fall for the left-nationalist position of “kiwi jobs for kiwi workers” perpetuated by some or most union leaderships. Socialists start from the interests of workers as a global class. Socialists oppose national chauvinism on moral grounds but it’s not just about liberal principles. It’s in the actual material interests of NZ-born workers to see things in terms of class and not immigration status, and then act accordingly.

 The interests of the international working class take precedence over the limits of capitalism. Capitalist limitations are not natural, they have been socially constructed over centuries. Socialists insist on defending every job – workers should not take or share any responsibility for the woes of the capitalist system. If the goal is to build an anti-capitalist movement then socialists and workers must reject the idea that any section of workers should pay the price of a capitalist recession.

Union officials, even left ones, accept the limits of capitalism and therefore accept layoffs, seeing their job as managing the layoff process. Once unionists (and also workers themselves) start picking and choosing which workers should go, the working class gets divided and redivided; it becomes weaker and less able to defend the rights of any section of the working class.

 Further, accepting lesser conditions for migrant workers puts NZ-born workers in the camp of the boss. It means union officials are saying that the bosses’ profits and the state’s ability to manage recession are more important than the rights of a group of fellow workers.

Migrant workers are not only a part of the working class, they bring all kinds of useful things into the working class in NZ. They help make it more cosmopolitan, more international, they bring a range of experiences from their home countries which can strengthen the fight for workers’ rights here.

 Impacts on the union movement

It is important to recognise that all actions have consequences.

 For unions that are based in the lower-paid sectors, where organising migrants (particularly new migrants) is not an ambition, but is an absolute necessity in order to ‘grab’ these sectors. The last thing that unions in these sectors need is public statements from union leaders who are putting migrants into lesser categories.

 In fact migrant workers have been at the forefront of the wider-movement’s ‘offensive’ (not defensive) struggles that have led to increased wages and improved conditions across all sectors.

The EPMU leadership has come under pressure from migrant workers within it’s own ranks to reverse the stated position.

That migrant workers reaction is entirely justified. For the sake of a narrow defensive gain for New Zealand-born workers in their own sectors, these union leaders have disadvantaged other workers and have acted contrarily to the organising efforts of other unions .

 Class unity needed

The union leaders statements quoted above are not throw-away comments made in back-rooms. They are public statements from leaders who know the power and influence of the media. These signals need to be challenged and stopped before they gain more ground. The alternative is internationalist working class solidarity against capitalist cut-backs.

Redundancies are NOT inevitable!

Redundancy is affecting more and more workers around the country as employers use the pretext of economic recession to throw more workers on the dole queue. As workers we are not responsible for the crisis in the system, yet we are being asked to pay the price for its failure.

Why have none of the employers so keen on redundancy considered the rational and humane alternative of reducing work hours without loss of earnings. That way we could share the available work around and have more free time without putting any of our workmates out of a job. We often hear those in authority positions bleating on about “Work-Life balance”, but when an opportunity comes for them to actually do something about it, they refuse to do the right thing, for fear of it eating into their profits.

Of course the building construction industry is especially vulnerable to crashes, dominated as it is by profit-hungry developers and get-rich-quick finance companies. The government should be implementing a massive state housing, hospital and school building programme to take up the slack in the industry.

The solution to the slump is simple: cut work hours, not jobs or pay!

Issued by the combined unions at Winstone Wallboards: AWUNZ, BTU, EPMU & NDU

As the recession bites, workers are again carrying the heaviest burden.

The layoffs just announced at Silver Fern Farms’ Belfast plant are another sign that the current parties have nothing left to offer workers. The Workers Party thinks jobs for all should come before profits for private companies and supports action by workers to keep their jobs, including occupations of workplaces threatened with closure.

As a first step, the Workers Party of New Zealand will abolish GST because it is a regressive tax that hits workers particularly hard.

We are launching our Christchurch Electoral campaign at 7pm on Monday July 28th. The campaign launch will be held in the WEA at 59 Gloucester St.

The Workers Party is standing two candidates in Christchurch electorates: secondary school teacher and former meat worker Paul Hopkinson in Christchurch East and retail worker and student Byron Clark in Christchurch Central. We also have candidates standing in Auckland and Wellington.

If elected, WP candidates have pledged to use their parliamentary resources to support workers’ struggles and campaigns. Workers Party policy is that candidates accept a skilled worker’s wage for themselves. The remainder of the inflated MP’s remuneration will contribute to a fund to support such struggles.

The Workers Party is a party of workers, for workers. We are campaigning for the complete freedom of movement for workers through a policy of open borders, and for freedom from all anti-democratic laws such as the Terrorism Suppression Act, the Electoral Finance Act and the current Bill to amend the Immigration Act. The Workers Party stands for jobs for all, a shorter working week and no restriction on the right to strike. The Workers Party also aims for a workers’ republic.

The Workers’ Party intends to be registered on the party list, giving every voter in the country the opportunity to vote for a party that stands firmly for workers.