A protest organiser  spoke of how 254 Tamil Asylum Seekers refused to leave the boat for fear of being locked up in an Indonesian detention centre or being deported back to Sri Lanka.

Returning to Sri Lanka is not an option, as one man who had returned to see his ill mother had been thrown in prison, without charges being laid, and is still locked up.

“The refugees are rightly demanding that they be given basic human rights and that Australia, as a signatory of the UN Refugee Convention, adhere to its international responsibilities” Priyaksha said.

The treatment of the Tamil asylum seekers highlights all the more the need for open borders. The Workers Party view is that while capital, commodities and rich people get to travel more freely around the world, workers’ freedom to move is increasingly restricted. Big companies can move freely to where labour is cheaper, for instance, but workers can’t move freely to where wages are higher. Labour and National governments favour free trade agreements, for instance, while imposing new racist immigration restrictions.

It’s in the interests of workers to support each other and make common cause for the maximum freedom possible.

Protests on 18 January for the Tamil’s cause are also being held in Australia, Canada and Britain.

The New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed on April 7 is the first free trade agreement China has made with any developed Western country. It is an historic deal for the Chinese government in its push to be fully accepted into the capitalist club.

The deal is historic for New Zealand too, for the simple reason that China’s economy is by far the largest that New Zealand has ever signed such an agreement with. With a growing middle class already numbering over 100 million, China offers a huge market for New Zealand businesses, particularly for luxury goods and services.

Reaction to the FTA has been mixed. Opponents of the agreement have ranged from the Green Party on the left, to New Zealand First on the xenophobic right. The CTU, eager to cosy up to Labour in the lead-up to an election that Labour is uncertain of winning, has come out in support of the agreement.

The critics of the FTA have claimed that the agreement in some way condones the poor human rights record of the Chinese government. This objection has become more strident with the recent Chinese crackdown on Tibetan protests.

The New Zealand government and the FTA’s supporters have countered with the point that New Zealand trades with all sorts of countries with all sorts of human rights records. In fact, government-led boycotts of countries over “human rights abuses” have a dubious record, with the independence of small, weak countries often being threatened by countries in the imperialist world on spurious grounds.

Fear of job losses

Attacks on the FTA over China’s human rights record are not the main issue, however. Criticism of the FTA from the left has largely been around the threat to jobs that the agreement might represent.

Helen Clark has stated that the agreement will not cost any jobs. However, this statement was made within the narrow context of the employment of skilled workers coming to New Zealand on temporary work visas. The bigger fear is that jobs in sectors such as the clothing industry will be threatened by an influx of cheap imports following the removal of tariffs. These jobs are important to many small towns which have been seriously affected by the restructuring of the last two decades.

The reality of course is that this process is taking place anyway. Tariffs on imported goods are so low already that New Zealand manufacturers cannot compete on price. Ironically, though, within 24 hours of the FTA being signed, the New Zealand clothing manufacturing company Norsewear was talking up the receipt of a huge new order, which the company linked directly to the signing of the FTA.

In announcing the deal, Norsewear’s General Manager Sandra Shilling said:

This is the biggest single order we’ve had in the history of the company… What I can tell you is that for each of these products, the Chinese have ordered three times the annual numbers we currently produce. The good news is that means more jobs for New Zealanders as all the product will be manufactured locally… The export potential is absolutely mind-boggling. We are talking in the multi-million dollar region so it’s all systems go for us right now.

Norsewear’s announcement notwithstanding, the threat to jobs is distinctly possible, and such job losses must be opposed if they are announced.


“Influx” of Chinese workers?

The other issue which has raised concern is the capacity for skilled Chinese workers to come to New Zealand on temporary work visas.

The CTU has given the skilled worker clause a guarded seal of approval, stating that in their view there should have been no consideration of migration in the agreement. CTU vice-president Sharon Clair responded to the signing of the agreement by commending the placing of a cap on the number of Chinese workers allowed into the country. The cap, she said, has allayed union fears of a huge influx of Chinese into the country. This “influx” was, of course, never going to be allowed.

Now that the agreement is a done deal, the CTU’s response is to advocate strong industry standards. “What needs to happen now is for industry standards to be developed to ensure skilled workers from China coming into New Zealand are not exploited and do not find themselves being paid, for their skill, the minimum wage.”

Surely this should have been a basic principle for the union movement already? But behind the remark is the fear that Chinese workers will drive wages down for “Kiwi” workers. This is the old “yellow peril” hysteria reinvented for the 21st century.

The cap written into the FTA is 1800 workers under the scheme at any one time, and a maximum of 100 in any one sector. Currently, according to the government’s own figures, there are 85,000 people from all over the world working in New Zealand on temporary work visas. So the agreement allows into New Zealand a number of skilled Chinese workers equivalent to barely 2% of the current number of overseas workers, and then under very strict conditions.

The unions should not have left it until this late in the day to decide it is worth protecting the pay and conditions of overseas workers, whether they come from China or anywhere else.


Workers’ solidarity the best protection

Overall, New Zealand is not the victim in this FTA. New Zealand is not Colombia. In third-world countries like that, opposition to free trade by imperialist countries can have, and often does have, a clear anti-imperialist and progressive character. New Zealand however, is an imperialist country, if only on a small scale, and China is still a third-world country, despite its phenomenal growth over recent years.

Imperialist countries maximise profit by exporting capital across international borders while simultaneously denying the right of workers to cross those same borders in search of jobs. It is in the greatest interest of New Zealand workers to unite with Chinese workers, rather than with New Zealand employers or their capitalist governments, to ensure their rights.

When it comes down to it, the only really meaningful gains workers ever make are those that are won in struggle. We can react to the panicked warnings about the coming of the “yellow peril” in different ways. We can buy into the panic, and support the calls for our own Great Wall to keep the Chinese out, whether it is Chinese goods or Chinese workers. Or we can approach this as internationalists.

The first choice might appear the easiest – just call on the government to keep the foreigners and their cheap products out. But the better approach is the internationalist one.

This means we need to build strong, militant, democratic unions in New Zealand that workers want to join. These unions need to reach out to the overseas casual workers who come here and work, and link with militant unions overseas.

It means the difficult task of unionising the low-paid Chinese workers who are already here, often working for below-minimum wages under the table in the fast food industry.

It means making connections with the struggles of workers in China fighting for better wages and conditions. Ultimately it is only because Chinese workers are able to be employed for 50c an hour in China that there is the potential for fear amongst New Zealand workers of an influx of low-paid Chinese workers coming to New Zealand to work.

New Zealand workers must identify first and foremost as workers, in common cause with workers in China and elsewhere. This is a vital ingredient in the building of a meaningful response to the machinations of the capitalists, whether they be in favour of protectionism or of free trade.

- Byron Clark

2007 was a tough year for workers in New Zealand. In February the Brightwood milling plant closed leaving workers “high and dry” as the company’s aggressive anti-union stance left them with no redundancy cover. Later that month a Christchurch ice cream factory announced its closure. This seemed to be the start of a disturbing trend, as 2007 also saw Sleepyhead and Fisher & Paykel laying off 350 staff each, as well as redundancies at Click Clack, G.L Bowron, Skellerup, 3M and others. While manufacturing was the hardest hit, jobs seemed to be disappearing all over the place, Sealord announced plans to cut staff in September and more recently 60 jobs were lost at at freezing works owned by meat company PPCS. SkyCity announced 250 job cuts as a ‘cost cutting’ measure in May, and Telecommunications company TelstraClear announced 100 job cuts in July, with rival Telecom announcing 250 job cuts eight days later.

The stats

While New Zealand’s official unemployment rate is currently 3.5%, other statistics don’t look so good, according to Statistics New Zealand, 7,000 fewer people were working in the September quarter compared with the previous quarter, In addition, 10,000 fewer people are in full-time work, and 6,000 more are in part-time work. What this shows is that relatively well paid and often unionised jobs are disappearing, and being replaced with low paid casualised and part time jobs. An important task now is to organise workers at these new casual jobs to fight for their rights at work, as the Unite union has been doing, and to oppose the casualisation of what are currently permanent jobs. The jobs that are disappearing are doing so for various reasons, in some cases its for cost-cutting- laying of some workers and increasing the work load of those remaining, in other cases new technology was introduced, and rather than resulting less work or even a shorter working week as it should, caused the loss of jobs. The most common reason for job losses however, was the movement of production to the third world.

International solidarity protects jobs locally

The right to a job needs to be defended, whether that job is in New Zealand, China, or elsewhere. When workers are divided by national boarders it only benefits the capitalist class. To defend jobs here, workers should support struggles by workers overseas for a living wage and decent working conditions, rather than letting work rights deteriorate everywhere as a result of workers competing with each other. The Spark spoke to Jennifer Isles, a Workers Party member and delegate for the EMPU at Dynamic Controls, a Christchurch electronics factory which is in the process of moving production to China at the loss of 200 local jobs. “The company have put up photos of their new factory in China which show obviously worse conditions; the workers there have no anti-fatigue mats, no chairs, and no decent footwear. Yet the bosses tell us the new factory isn’t sweatshop- perhaps its a ‘perspiration store’”

Defend jobs

Its important that workers oppose redundancies and defend the right to work, going through the procedures, ‘working together with the company’, getting ‘positive media coverage’ and lobbying MPs do not save jobs or hold out any hope of doing so.

In redundancy situations, the only actions with any hope of success are bold direct action initiatives. If the workers occupy and make the biggest fuss possible, they have at the very least the chance of a better payout to shut them up, and, at best, the chance to keep the jobs. While attempts at resisting redundancy by direct action will not always win, but they are always worth trying.

The statistics cited in this article are from Radio NZ, 9 November 2007.

Many left union officials and members of political parties such as the Alliance have argued that immigration controls and tariffs must be retained to protect NZ jobs and businesses from being undercut by foreign competition.

By contrast the Workers Party strongly believes that this kind of economic protectionism is a poison which only serves to divide the international working class and encourages illusions in the “progressive” nature of local capitalists. We argue that the solution to NZ companies closing down production and laying off workers is not protectionism, but instead a militant union-led campaign to occupy all those businesses threatened with closure and keep them running under workers’ control.

Below we reprint an interview from 2004, in which Workers Party and Spark editorial board member Don Franks responds to a series of questions from an Alliance Party activist on the question of free trade and the approach that the left should take towards it:

What do you see as the problems or benefits of the free trade agenda in NZ?

The ‘free trade agenda’ is a misnomer. Popular at the moment is the slogan ‘fair trade, not free trade’. It is a fantasy to hold up the goal of ‘fair trade’ under capitalism, for at least two reasons. First, under capitalism, exploitation of workers takes place at the point of production and is built into the system of wage labour. The worker’s labour power sold to the capitalist is different from all other commodities in that it is creative. Labour power produces more value than it takes to maintain itself. But the ‘surplus value’ created is taken by the capitalist, not the worker. Despite recent claims from Council of Trade Unions’ president Ross Wilson, there can be no such thing as “a fair day’s wage for a fair days work” under capitalism. The most fundamental and most common exchange taking place under capitalism is inherently unfair, and will remain so as long as the system stands.

Second, capitalism can only exist as many competing capitals. This competition compels those who possess stored up labour to use it as capital, to try and expand its value by employing workers. The basic dynamic of capitalism is production for production’s sake, accumulation for accumulation’s sake. It is a fantasy to claim that there can be ‘fair trade’ in an anarchic system with built-in exploitation and regular crises of overproduction. The ‘trade’ of capitalism has, throughout its whole history, been a ‘trade’ of the most fierce and barbaric competition, accompanied by despoliation, pollution, social destruction and war. That hideously consistent pattern will not suddenly yield to pleas by uncomfortable intellectuals for ‘fair trade.’ The economic and social problems we face today are not problems of any particular form of trade, they are problems of capitalism itself.

What do you see as short-term solutions to any problems you have identified?

The only short term solutions are for workers to organise collectively to get the best deal they can. There is much room for improvement here. A huge advance would be for unions to ditch the false notion of ‘partnership’ with their exploiters. Various forms of this nonsense disarm the trade union struggle.

‘Partnership’ is a rotten thread weakening the fabric of the whole union movement. Instead, union leaders should be building multi-union campaigns for better wages and conditions. To be effective, these campaigns must move beyond feeble token stuff like sending form letters to MPs. Effective multi-union campaigning for better wages and conditions means building up to strike action and street demonstrations. Such campaigns would attract workers back to unions, as the Unite! union organising drive in the fast food industry is beginning to do. Unity on the ground is the key to all this, meaning that union activists should have as their goal “every site a union site” .

What do you see as long-term solutions to any problems you have identified?

International socialist revolution is the long term solution. The only solution to the problems created by capitalism is the destruction of the capitalist system. The only social force strong enough to destroy capitalism and build a new cooperative system is the international working class. We have seen glimpses of this historic process already. For a few weeks, the Paris Commune of 1871 exercised workers power over a city. For a few years, before the restoration of capitalism in Russia, the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 exercised workers power over a country. Today, in every continent of the earth, socialist workers are striving towards the necessary international socialist revolution which will liberate the planet. Eventually, they will prevail.

What would you say to the approximately 150 largely unskilled workers in Palmerston North who are going to lose their jobs in the next three months?

I would say this: Sunbeam workers – through no fault of your own, your livelihood is about to be taken from you. This theft of your livelihood will be presented to you by your employers as a common tragedy which management and staff all suffer. This tale from your employers is bullshit. The company and its bosses will look after themselves as they have always done. They are insulated from the cold wind of unemployment by the wealth that they have gained from exploiting your labour power.

From their safe and comfortable positions they will offer you a few crumbs, perhaps counselling to make you feel better, maybe a day off to look for another job. These offers are insincere. They are made in the hope that you will thankfully be quiet and gratefully take the little scraps that the bosses offer and go away and not bother them anymore. Having made them rich, you are of no further use to them.

Sunbeam workers, the best thing you can do to protect your immediate interests is to brush aside the bosses’ bullshit and kick as hard as you can. One way would be to occupy the factory, demanding that it stay open. That would attract support from pissed off exploited workers all over the country – and also workers overseas. A strong stand such as that would at the very least, be a way to force much higher compensation from the bosses who are tossing you out into the street.

Should this course of action appeal to you, I will be only too pleased to come up to Palmerston and occupy the factory with you.