Since the August issue of The Spark a second wave of activity has crossed the country’s major centres in opposition to the employment law changes. Ian Anderson, a Workers Party member in Wellington reports below on activities in the capital.

Over August, two major events were organised in Wellington against the government’s attacks on workers. There was a public meeting against anti-worker laws, and the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) Fairness at Work rally.

Organised by a group including Workers Party activists, unionists and others, Thursday’s “Anti-Worker Laws” public meeting was a success. Due to heavy promotion including posters, leaflets, a Facebook event and a press release, turnout was good with around 60 people showing up. The CTU refused to promote the event, although they did take the opportunity to put up posters promoting their rally on Sunday.

Wellington protest August 2010

The event was held in St John’s on Willis. Starting at 7:30, Bill Logan of the International Bolshevik Tendency introduced the event with an overview of the new laws, introduced by Kate Wilkinson that very day, and their implications for the working class. Logan emphasised that this was not simply a “workplace” issue, but a class issue that affected families and children’s welfare.

Don Franks then launched into a rousing rendition of his new song Class War, which details the daily war waged on the working class as a whole, whether at work or in the WINZ queue.

The first speaker, Lisa Stoneham, gave moving account of being sacked last year from her telecommunications position at HRV, under the 90- Day Act, which at that time extended only to small work-sites. Lisa was not given an explanation, and to this day has not received one.
However, she did contact Unite Union, who held a rally outside her former workplace. Lisa noted that as employers did not have to give a reason, and there was no chance of redress, employers could use this policy for seasonal hiring purposes, or to discriminate against workers. Finally, she stated her intention never to be sacked again with no reason given, opposing the introduction of this 90 Day “hire and fire” policy to all workplaces.

The second speaker, Toby Boraman, spoke on his experiences fighting a public-sector wage freeze, as a delegate for the PSA. Boraman spoke on the tough situation of many white-collar workers citing the insecurity and low wages of many public-sector staff. As the recession set in the government aimed to make thousands of public sector workers redundant, and freeze wages all across the public sector.

This would constitute a drop in real wages, when inflation and raising prices are considered. Workers in the Ministry of Justice were the first to take illegal strike action against this policy. Boraman highlighted the blitzkrieg tactics utilised by the PSA, including 2-hour strikes organised by text. He also highlighted tensions within the campaign, with many workers seeing the PSA as having traditionally undemocratic practices and not doing enough for their members. Additionally, many could not afford even a two-hour strike. Despite these shortcomings, the campaign ended in a partial victory, ending the wage freeze on the Ministry of Justice, but also accepting 70 redundancies. Boraman emphasised that the right to strike is essential in opposing attacks on workers.

Health-care assistant and Workers Party activist Heleyni Pratley spoke third. Pratley put the new law changes changes in context as part of an assault on the working class first launched under the Fourth Labour Government, with the balance of forces favouring the ruling class ever since. She also emphasised the need to understand these changes as a part of the capitalist system, and serving capitalist interests: while Lisa’s sacking might seem random, capitalists need to control the labour market and be able to hire and fire at will. Pratley underlined the importance of strike action in political campaigns, and the need to fight for the unrestricted right to strike.

Finally, Kay Brereton spoke from the People’s Centre, formerly the Unemployed Workers’ Union. Brereton moved on to explain the implications of these changes for unemployed workers: as these laws make it easier to sack workers without explanation, this makes it harder to qualify for the benefit or find further work. Brereton finally called for a revival of collectivism, stating that the decline of unionism has had a deeply negative impact on the working class.

With the speeches concluded, the floor was opened for discussion. Pat Bolster spoke for the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) outlining their intention to educate workers on these changes. Discussion focussed largely on whether the CTU strategy was sufficient, with many favouring more militant action. Don Franks heavily criticised the Fairness at Work slogan, pointing out that workers will not receive fairness at work under capitalism, and do not expect to either.

There was also discussion of legal restrictions, and whether workers or unions should comply with them. A speaker for the PSA stated that any industrial action against these changes would take place during contract negotiations, as stated by law. A Workers Party activist pointed out that the right to strike was only won historically through illegal strike action. In general, there was agreement that workers and unions must take militant action against these changes.

A couple of specific ideas were put forward. Firstly, that Saturday’s Fairness at Work rally conclude with a march on Burger Fuel to oppose their abuse of the 90-Day Bill. Secondly, Warwick Taylor of the Wellington Residents Coalition put forward a motion that this meeting condemn these changes as an attack on the welfare of the majority, and convene an organising meeting at Trades Hall. Another comrade put forward an amendment, that “welfare” be changed to “welfare and well-being” to reflect people’s mental health needs. This amendment was accepted, and the motion was passed unanimously.

“FAIRNESS” AND FIGHTBACK
Saturday’s 2-hour Fairness at Work rally, held in Civic Square, initiated by the CTU, saw a turnout of around 1,500. With officials and rank-and-file from the Maritime Union, Service and Food Workers Union, Unite Union, and various others, the sea of flags and banners was a reminder that the working-class movement is not dead, only sleeping. Various left activists marched into the square with musical accompaniment by the Brass Razoo Solidarity Band, and a Workers Party banner stating: “This is Class War: Smash the Anti-Worker Laws.”

However, the event itself was a fairly limited and top-down affair. The choice to hold a rally, in the closed confines of Civic square, rather than a march, meant that the action could not have much impact beyond those already organised into unions.

Advertised on Facebook as a “party,” the event featured pop songs and a dance routine. Additionally, the political content was typically compromised, and for a two-hour event there was very little participation from the crowd. The CTU seems unlikely to provide the leadership necessary for this fight-back.

At the end of the event, an assortment of workers and activists from Unite Union, Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement and the Workers Party initiated a march. This gathered supporters as it left the square, and around 40 activists marched up Cuba Mall and Courtenay Place, finally settling on Burger Fuel.

Burger Fuel recently used the 90-Day Act to dismiss a worker who asked for a 15-minute break, although they gave no explanation for the dismissal. Activists occupied Burger Fuel for a short period, using the megaphone to explain the situation to customers.

The picket lasted about half-an-hour, chanting slogans such as “boycott Burger Fuel,” before concluding that we would return to picket any business that unfairly dismissed its workers.

Unionists protesting the law changes

Permanent militancy and class struggle is required

Resistance to these changes can be built-up, but the working class and its organisations have clearly not been in shape to respond automatically. They are not in fighting shape and the reasons for this aren’t mystical.

One of the main lessons from this round of attacks is that working class organisations, such as unions and political organisations, must maintain a permanent class struggle position and constantly take initiatives against the employers and government. That has not been the case and we are presented with the objective impossibility of switching from the partnership model (accepting mass redundancies with only a few exceptions where fight-backs were attempted, entering into productivity initiatives with the bosses, entering job summits with the government) to a fighting model.

At another level, our unions cannot switch from the level of economistic day-to-day industrial servicing to broad political organising. It’s like going to sleep and then waking up on a battlefield with no troops. Unions have to constantly champion workers, poor, and the oppressed so that we have forces ready for when the attacks come. Positively, we are not without some pockets of class struggle and worker activism already existing in the field.

Attacks on workers rights are better able to be resisted and also are less likely to occur if workers organisations are taking aggressive initiatives. For example, if the campaign to hold a referendum on raising the minimum wage to $15 had been successful then the public political discourse would have shifted so that there would have been less room for theemployers/government to go on the offensive. They would have been back footed. But the majority of trade union leaders, and many activists at all levels, could not grasp the necessity of making aggressive initiatives, seemingly waiting for the next round of defence. Fundamentally, this is because they don’t understand that underlying contradictions between classes will always break through the fleeting phenomena of social peace and partnership.

This is about class relations, not about individual workers or companies

In order to really understand the nature of these attacks, we need to understand that siding with good employers against bad employers is not a sufficient as a strategy or public line. As stated, our position is that this is about class power. It isn’t about the National Party helping the scumbag employers. This legislation is connected to movements in the economy; again the employing class needs to restore and shore-up profits by imposing laws to further disempower the working class and limit its ability to organise.

The extension of 90-day probationary periods, for example, will deepen the the current labour market flexibility, making jobs more transient and making the organising of whole sectors less feasible, or at least much more difficult, and this will typically be within sectors which comprise a growing portion of the total labour market. The extension will allow increased victimisation and intimidation of workers who do want to organise.

While it is tactically useful to make examples of companies that have used the laws, and to publicise the stories of individual employees who have been
mistreated, the strategic level is about class relations; where people are situated – as classes – in relation to production. Wage levels and employment
rights are determined by the ability of workers to organise.

Labour and other capitalist parties cannot be part of the solution

Despite overseeing the largest transfer of wealth from working people to the ruling class in the 1980s, and despite increasing penalties against workers for
unlawful strike action through the Employment Relations Act (2000), and other such actions, the Labour Party is often referred to by unions as being pro-worker. The concepts of pro-worker government and anti-worker government are frequently referred to within the political perspectives of the trade union movement. However, no government which seeks to uphold the capitalist system of production is pro-worker. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class for the profit of the capitalist class. Therefore, logically, any pro-capitalist government is anti-worker.

Under Key s leadership the National Party has again shown itself to be more aggressive within the sphere of industrial relations, against workers and
unions, than is Labour. In fact, since the election of the Key government, Labour has sought to posture to the left even to the extent that Labour’s leader has openly backed publicly unpopular positions (i.e. opposition to 90-day law) in order to satisfy elements within trade unions.

From the understanding that Labour governments have actually been less openly pro-employer in regard to employment law, it does not follow that we should support Labour or see it as an entity that has any plan, programme, or desire to get workers outside of capitalism. There is more than one way to restrict workers’ liberty and activity. Supposedly pro-worker concessions from Labour, such as good faith principles, improved mediation services, reliance on personal grievances and so forth, added to tighter restrictions on strike action, have had the overall effect of restricting collective action  and therefore solidarity.

Fundamentally, Labour and other capitalist parties operate for the maintenance and service of capitalist production and class relations. This means that any slight gain or benefit secured by workers and unions is immediately retractable by any party including the Labour Party itself should the demand grow from the capitalist class which fundamentally holds state power.

Further, for a truly militant approach, we cannot assess political organisations by viewing their employment relations agenda as the full criteria for judgement; this would mean abandoning solidarity with oppressed sections of our society and also with the international working class, whom these bourgeois parties attack with bullets, the Afghan people being a current example.

In our resistance to this legislation, we argue for anti-capitalism; the long-term building of permanently militant unions and of anti-capitalist organisations.

Tuesday 10 August 2010 6pm-8pm Trades Hall 147 Great Nth Rd, Auckland

Reading: Peter Harris ctuand critical notes by Don Franks (WP) SOME RELECTIONS ON THE ECA INTRODUCTION

Tony Boraman: “The Myth of Passivity” http://libcom.org/files/The%20Myth%20of%20Passivity1.pdf

A Private Member’s Bill introduced by the National Party MP Tau Henare has been drawn from the ballot to be debated in Parliament. The Bill proposes to amend the Employment Relations Act as follows:

“A strike may not proceed under this Act, unless the question has been submitted to a secret ballot of those employees who are members of the union that would become parties to the strike if it proceeded.”

The Council of Trade Unions has announced its “support in principle” for the bill, “as it largely reflects current practice.”

The British experience may be of some use in analysing the effect of secret ballots. Over there, the law has required a secret ballot prior to strike action for nearly 30 years. I asked an official with the Postal section of the Communication Workers Union his opinion on the issue. This is his response:

What the secret ballot does is slow things down and makes it impossible to take spontaneous official action as a response to something immediate. What tends to happen then with our members is that they walk out unofficially. We are required as a Union to formally repudiate this action, which we always do but no-one has ever taken any notice of this.

The problem with strike ballots is the law that surrounds them and the way judges interpret this. Recently both we and Unite have run into trouble with the law concerning the information you have to provide to the employer on who is going on strike. This has become ever more onerous and now requires us not just to provide names but grades and details of workplace. With the best will in the world, this is impossible to get exactly right but judges are becoming less tolerant about errors in the face of injunctions from the employer.

In summary, therefore, it’s not the secret ballot itself that’s the major issue. Most members would probably resist any move to take it away now. It’s the rules surrounding its application and who is in charge of drawing them up. If it’s the Union itself, then no problem. If it’s the state or the courts then they will certainly be designed to make striking more difficult.

Unite union in Britain (not connected with Unite in NZ) is currently in dispute with British Airways over the employer’s plans to cut 1,700 jobs, impose a two-year wage freeze and get cabin crew working longer for less. When union members were balloted in December for a planned 12 day strike over Christmas, they supported strike action by 92% on an 80% turnout. BA then used the High Court to have the strike ruled illegal on the basis of a spurious technicality relating to the balloting process.

Unfortunately, not all workers have the same level of confidence as the posties, who often defy such decisions. The Unite action was suspended while a second strike ballot was taken. The new result was still impressive, although unsurprisingly the loss of momentum meant that the “yes” vote dropped by around 10%.

This brief look at the situation in Britain indicates that the CTU has been very complacent by endorsing Henare’s bill. Even if the bill does reflect the current status quo, it is far better that the law remains silent on the matter (as it is now), than give the employers an opportunity to challenge strike ballots through the courts.

The CTU also ignores an important point of working class principle; unions are workers organisations and should be run by workers from top to bottom. The form of union processes should be a democratic decision for union members, not National party hacks.

We need a movement willing and capable of launching a militant campaign for positive workers’ rights, including the unrestricted right to strike. The CTU has proven once again that it has no intention of leading such a movement.

A Private Member’s Bill introduced by the National Party MP Tau Henare has been drawn from the ballot to be debated in Parliament. The Bill proposes to amend the Employment Relations Act as follows:

“A strike may not proceed under this Act, unless the question has been submitted to a secret ballot of those employees who are members of the union that would become parties to the strike if it proceeded.”

The Council of Trade Unions has announced its “support in principle” for the bill, “as it largely reflects current practice.”

The British experience may be of some use in analysing the effect of secret ballots. Over there, the law has required a secret ballot prior to strike action for nearly 30 years. I asked an official with the Postal section of the Communication Workers Union his opinion on the issue. This is his response:

What the secret ballot does is slow things down and makes it impossible to take spontaneous official action as a response to something immediate. What tends to happen then with our members is that they walk out unofficially. We are required as a Union to formally repudiate this action, which we always do but no-one has ever taken any notice of this.

The problem with strike ballots is the law that surrounds them and the way judges interpret this. Recently both we and Unite have run into trouble with the law concerning the information you have to provide to the employer on who is going on strike. This has become ever more onerous and now requires us not just to provide names but grades and details of workplace. With the best will in the world, this is impossible to get exactly right but judges are becoming less tolerant about errors in the face of injunctions from the employer.

In summary, therefore, it’s not the secret ballot itself that’s the major issue. Most members would probably resist any move to take it away now. It’s the rules surrounding its application and who is in charge of drawing them up. If it’s the Union itself, then no problem. If it’s the state or the courts then they will certainly be designed to make striking more difficult.

Unite union in Britain (not connected with Unite in NZ) is currently in dispute with British Airways over the employer’s plans to cut 1,700 jobs, impose a two-year wage freeze and get cabin crew working longer for less. When union members were balloted in December for a planned 12 day strike over Christmas, they supported strike action by 92% on an 80% turnout. BA then used the High Court to have the strike ruled illegal on the basis of a spurious technicality relating to the balloting process.

Unfortunately, not all workers have the same level of confidence as the posties, who often defy such decisions. The Unite action was suspended while a second strike ballot was taken. The new result was still impressive, although unsurprisingly the loss of momentum meant that the “yes” vote dropped by around 10%.

This brief look at the situation in Britain indicates that the CTU has been very complacent by endorsing Henare’s bill. Even if the bill does reflect the current status quo, it is far better that the law remains silent on the matter (as it is now), than give the employers an opportunity to challenge strike ballots through the courts.
The CTU also ignores an important point of workingclass principle; unions are workers organisations and should be run by workers from top to bottom. The form of union processes should be a democratic decision for union members, not National party hacks.
We need a movement willing and capable of launching a militant campaign for positive workers’ rights, including the unrestricted right to strike. The CTU has proven once again that it has no intention of leading such a movement.

The following article is a shortened and edited version of a Workers Party internal document by Jared Phillips  printed in The Spark February 2010

 Initially socialist organisations in New Zealand responded to the anti-strike laws contained in the Employment Contracts Act and Employment Relations Act with some vigor, including in The Spark. In response to increased strike restrictions put in place by the Labour-led Labour-Alliance coalition in 2000, the Socialist Workers Organisation conducted a campaign in some workplaces and in the public centered around a petition, which was significant as far as petition campaigns extend. 

Casino workers on strike 2008 during bargaining

The new legislation (ERA 2000) included a ban on solidarity strikes and political strikes. In summary the legislation, still in place, from a working class point of view, is this, ‘We can only strike for our own contract, only when negotiations have broken down, and if we do engage in an unlawful strike (i.e. a strike for any other reason), there could be severe damages penalties against us and the union’. It is concerning that the left has withdrawn its activism from the issue because, as the comparison goes, this is the new ‘leg-iron of labour’. 

Withdrawal from the issue over time

 Opposition to the restrictions hasn’t been discussed properly by the far-left since the Progressive Enterprises lockout, in mid-2006, almost four years ago, whereby the situation neared the threshold of necessity for solidarity striking for the defense of a large number of workers. In fact there were small spontaneous labour withdrawals, in accordance with the ERA, in which workers refused to do the work of striking workers, and one such action was led by a Workers Party member who recalled a crew of stores workers who had been called to a site at which they would not have otherwise worked.

 However, the Workers Party has not engaged on the right to strike question as a political issue since May 2005, when Don Franks presented on the issue in conference, and highlighted its importance.

 In 2009, in the face of two significant lock-outs (bus and dairy factory), and a major restructure/redundancy dispute (lines engineers) the question was hinted at by Pat O’Dea (Socialist Worker) and Omar Hamed (Unite, Socialist Aotearoa). However, their idea was to place demands on the CTU to co-ordinate generalised working class action, and the problem with this, of course, is that the CTU has had no interest – beyond the then-regime’s reluctant adoption of a resolution pushed up by SWO in the early 2000s – in generalising the class struggle.

 The Labour Party, i.e. the party of the top union bureaucracy, including the CTU and top bosses of most unions, is the party that inflicted strengthened strike restrictions against workers. Those who called on the CTU are too far behind developments. The CTU’s refusal to act shows that at least a decade ago the CTU was exhausted as a means for promoting the right to strike and generalised struggle.

 For our part, the Workers Party was relatively silent on the issue of a generalised class fight-back against these 2009 developments and that in my opinion is probably because we grasp the impossibility of the union leadership adopting such a path, and because the far-left and union militants do not have the general leadership or support within the working class that is required to provide the leadership for a generalised fight-back. So in my opinion we shrunk from the task of telling the truth, that a generalised fight-back was necessary to establish clear wins or a defense of position in these circumstances.

 For example, take this quote from a Spark article regarding the Telecom lines-worker restructure struggle, published in December 2010:

 A high-stakes battle like the Telecom dispute, which was about totally redefining the employment relationship, required more than business-as-usual trade-unionism. In retrospect the decision of the EPMU to keep picketers penned behind the cordon at the AGM picket instead of trying something more daring was a wasted opportunity.

 While it’s true that a heightened action, such as an occupation, would have produced more pressure against the employer, the more important point is that because of the strike restrictions the struggle could not be extended outwards, leaving the workers engaged in a set-piece battle. Therefore, as a party, we have started overlooking a central question.

 While the need for solidarity strikes to defend workers in defensive struggle is obvious, a more significant point to draw out is that the anti-strike legislation is the main legal restriction on rebuilding a militant workers’ movement. Moreover, the legal restriction hinders the overcoming of other restrictions on rebuilding, including in the areas of collectivism and consciousness.

  The right to strike and rebuilding the workers’ movement

 Clearly, the Workers Party recognises the importance of the right to strike in its political platform. However, despite the right to strike being present in the party’s platform, we have not pursued it in any meaningful way – including even interrogating the question – for a long while. The right to strike should not be viewed only in terms of principle, demand, or programmatic consideration, but should also be appreciated as being almost exclusively important as a concretely necessary means or vehicle, for a) re-establishing working class power and working class confidence and b) redefining the form of class struggle.

 Rebuilding class power

 Strike-levels are commonly used by the Workers Party as a key indicator of the level of class struggle, and in tasks and perspectives documents it is the main objective measure presented to evidence the minimal level of class struggle. If strike levels are the key measure, then the legal limitation on strikes must surely have an equal correspondence of priority within the analysis for addressing the objective measurement of the downturn.

 In terms of the partial and interim goals – rebuilding a militant and class conscious workers’ movement – the more progressive elements of the existing union movement (including the officialdom) as they stand can do little more than build the right kind of apparatus for workers to take hold and exercise.

 The required quantitative growth alone cannot be achieved by the efforts of the more progressive elements of union officialdom. The more significant private sector union recruitment efforts have been undertaken by Unite and the NDU. Unite retains a focus on recruitment as its means to offset its 70-80% annual turnover and to preserve steady modest growth. Without that focus, the union’s membership would collapse. The NDU employs a section of staff charged specifically with growing the union through recruitment. The evidence is that this has prevented a decrease in membership but no reportable significant growth. Both approaches – and they are the better of the approaches currently applied by wider officialdom – reflect the practice of rebuilding the union movement one recruit at a time, punctuated with short bursts of quickly doing so. And therein lies the evolutionist approach to practice in the workers’ movement. Whilst there are commendable and courageous efforts, they are not yet meeting the challenge.

 As noted, it is possible with genuine leadership to form the right type of apparatus to rebuild working class levers of power. But in order for the labour movement to expand in this environment (entrenched neo-liberalism), working class self-organisation is required. This presents an immense problem because the most critical weapon for working class self-organisation has been outlawed by the employer class and decommissioned by the union bureaucracy.

 Going back, the fourth Labour government’s Labour Relations Act (1987) cemented in law the individualisation of workplace grievances in Part Nine – Personal Grievances. This earlier legislation was central to the undermining of strike action for the resolution of issues not pertaining to wage negotiations. It significantly weakened the strike muscle. Now, decades later, unions have become more professionalised and in many ways more bureaucratised and serve primarily as instruments of bargaining (led by officials), and as legal instruments pertaining to the PGs (led by officials and lawyers).

 It is near impossible for the working class to regenerate its activity and take charge of its activity without its most vital instrument. For each unionised workplace or firm, the weapon can be picked up every one, two, or three years, at the end of the term of agreement, but even then it’s unlikely.  Without re-examining the role of the right to strike, we would be overlooking an impossibility. The impossibility is the re-emergence of a collective movement by the use of individualist measures and site-specific measures, both led by largely external bodies that unions have become. In essence, these union structures administer past gains but have no power to win further gains or expand the workers’ movement.

 Rebuilding consciousness

 As well as citing reduced strike levels, the Workers Party’s Tasks and Perspectives document has linked industrial action with class consciousness:

  In New Zealand, industrial action by workers remains at an all-time low and class consciousness – ie consciousness of the working class as a class rather than each worker seeing her/himself as an individual – is also very weak.

 On the one hand it can be, with strong evidence, asserted that the wider working class lacks the required consciousness to take the necessary industrial action. This can lead to an exaggeration of the weakness of the working class and downplay the extent to which it continues to be misled, mis-trained and mis-organised by a professionalised leadership. As is well-known this misleadership was expressed in a condensed way at the time of the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act (1991) when many thousands of workers took to the streets but whose initiatives were quashed and not galvanized by the then-leadership.

 Conversely, it could be reasoned that when workers feel strongly enough to take an action over an individual or site issue, they will do so in spite of the law. This view was represented by former CTU president Ross Wilson in his deflection of the right to strike campaign. Wildcats have occurred from-time-to-time but certainly without any conscious intention to forge solidarity with other working class sections or to rejuvenate generalised class struggle.

 The problem with both lines of reasoning is that there is a relaxation and giving-in to spontaneity. If our perspective is to wait for workers to either break with the bureaucracy and challenge it, or if our perspective was to be content with a minute number of odd disconnected pockets of workers taking un-influential wildcats; if either of these formed our perspective, in future we will not find ourselves operating as a vanguard or part thereof, but rather as an organisation unable to meet the needs and leadership requirements of our class.

 As revolutionaries we know that class consciousness is only realised when workers willingly defend oppressed sections of society outside the workplace. A further point with regard to the redevelopment of class consciousness is that the economistic dimension of the workers’ movement is reinforced by the conditions under which workers can only strike over issues pertaining to bargaining. The workers’ movement can define itself as the champion of oppressed sections when it lends them tangible support. There are many examples, such as the Australian Builders Labourers’ Federation which carried out green bans on behalf of communities against poor environmental planning and also industrial action in support of persecuted gay students. Union magazines can promote this or that cause, but without being able to provide tangible support, the workers’ movement can’t regain its true political character and generalized  leadership of the oppressed.

 Lastly, on the subjective side, it must be pointed out that consciousness won’t drop from the sky and won’t necessarily be prompted by up or down economic movements. Consciousness is only formed through action, which is only formed through leadership (leadership not being synonymous with officialdom, but reflecting aspects of correct officialdom, left political forces, and the expansion of rank-and-file initiatives). Mass industrial action is formative of class consciousness. Too often the distinction between trade union politics and revolutionary politics is not given the right treatment, and the separation is over-emphasised. Engels’ dictum, that unions should be viewed as the schools of class struggle gets lost.

 Re-establishing the right to strike issue

 As well as focusing on the solidarity strike as a necessity for victory in defensive campaigns, we have to press for recognition of the central role that non-bargaining strikes can have in regard to regenerating collective processes, regenerating union consciousness, and regenerating working class ownership of the union movement. There is also a strong connection between the right to strike and rebuilding class consciousness. As clarified in the discussion, the official trade union leadership is not fit for the tasks ahead and the leadership to take these matters forward can only be advanced by the genuinely radical elements within officialdom, left political forces, and spontaneous militants. In mid-2010 the Workers Party will be initiating a campaign on the two related principles of the right to strike and freedom of action/expression at work.

 Overview

 The Statistics NZ Survey of Working Life (March 2008) identified 30.1% of all employees as union members. Female employees were more likely to be union members than males (33.0% and 27.4%, respectively). Only 17.4% of casual employees were unionised. By industry, union membership was highest for those who worked in education (58.5%), health and community services (52.0%) and other services (42.8 %). Professionals (46.1%) and those who worked as plant and machine operators and assemblers in their main job (41.5%) had the highest level of union membership.

There has been a strong downward trend for work stoppages in the recent period, by every measure:

Source: Statistics NZ Work Stoppages: June 2009 quarter

 Although the year to June figures excludes a number of recent major disputes towards the end of 2009, they represent the lowest number of stoppages in 18 years. The transport, postal and warehousing industry was responsible for most stoppages, significantly ahead of the next most militant sector, manufacturing.  Undeniably, we are still in the midst of a protracted downturn in the class struggle, although some notable exceptions to the trend may point the way to a revival of militancy in the coming year.

 Internationally, combativity has been most pronounced where the global recession has bit the hardest. The Spark has highlighted some of the exemplary instances of resistance, such as the occupations of Vestas wind turbines and Ford’s Visteon plants in the UK, SsangYong motors in Korea and Waterford Crystal and Thomas Cook in Ireland. Nevertheless, these have remained isolated pockets of militancy.

 Highlights

 A number of disputes this year were provoked or exacerbated by employer belligerence. The telephone line engineers’ dispute was caused by Telecom bringing in an aggressive new contractor Visionstream in the Auckland and Northland regions. The deal offered to the engineers as of 1 October was to sign up as an individual contractor, or be out of a job. The way the employment relationship was structured was to load all the costs and risks on the worker. The engineers union, the EPMU, had little option but to mount a large-scale public campaign. They picketed exchanges, and there was a big mobilisation at the Telecom AGM in Auckland.

 The results of that struggle were not clear-cut, and are still emerging. The union appears to have secured an outright win in Northland, where solidarity was strongest. The workers there will continue to work on wages via a subcontractor. Elsewhere, it’s a mixed bag. A fair number have signed up as individual contractors, a few are still on wages, and others remain in limbo. A high-stakes battle like the Telecom dispute, which was about totally redefining the employment relationship, required more than business-as-usual trade unionism. In retrospect, the decision of the EPMU to keep picketers penned behind the cordon at the AGM picket instead of trying something more daring was a wasted opportunity.

 The increasingly confrontational approach of employers was in evidence with several high-profile lockouts. Dairy workers at Open Country Cheese in the Waikato fought a bitter lockout imposed by their anti-union employer in response to the workers’ demands for a Collective Employment Agreement (CEA). The parties reached a deal at mediation on 24 October, which included a CEA. The intensity of this struggle by a relatively small group of workers (around 35) will have been a wake-up call to the Dairy Workers Union who previously relied on “partnership” approaches to industrial relations.

 The week-long lockout of Auckland bus drivers drew widespread public support for the workers, as well as backing from the Auckland Regional Council. Unfortunately, the drivers were plagued by division amongst the three main unions involved. After the lockout was lifted, the employer presented an offer of an 11.5% pay increase over three years, which was rejected by a narrow margin at a mass stopwork meeting on 4 November. However, a further stopwork meeting three weeks later overwhelmingly voted to accept substantially the same offer (with a few less management claw-backs.)

 Political Situation

 While some unionists were predicting that the new National-led government would herald a re-run of the devastating Employment Contracts Act of the 1990s, the behaviour of the leadership of the union movement in practice has revealed that they regard the new government as not all that different from their predecessors under Helen Clarke.  Unions bought into John Key’s self-publicising “Jobs Summit”, and Key scored a further propaganda victory when addressing the Council of Trade Unions conference as keynote speaker.

 The government’s sop to employers, the 90 day “Fire at Will” law, whilst repugnant, has not significantly shifted the balance of power in the workplace. Key has been keen to distance himself from the neo-liberal fundamentalists, who have little to offer the ruling class in the current period of capitalist crisis.

 The Workers Party has maintained that the union movement will not succeed in defeating the current enemy if it remains obsessed with fighting the enemy of yesteryear. Key’s approach is not for a full-scale confrontation with organised labour, but rather seeks the incorporation of elements of it in order to help run the capitalist system more efficiently. It is far more insidious than the “slash-and-burn” approach of the 1990s, and needs to be countered by an explicitly class-struggle based politics.

 As is usual under National, union bureaucrats are far more willing to criticise the government.  We have seen this over privatisation of prisons, the government pay freeze and attacks on ACC. There is a real danger that this one-sided “anti-Toryism” may result in some of the non-aligned unions (such as NDU and AWUNZ) sleepwalking back into the default position of supporting Labour, for lack of a political alternative. Revolutionaries need to start discussing with workers about building a fighting union movement that will stand up to all pro-capitalist governments of whatever hue.

Wellington

Workers Party member Heleyni Pratley took the Unite Living Wage petition around eight central Wellington workplaces last Sunday evening. She visited Farmers, Subway, New World, Time Out, Hoyts, Starmart, City Stop, Hallensteins and Glassons. The petition was popular among most workers and several of them were very enthusiastic about it. Fifty signatures were collected. Only 2 staff who were approached didn’t want to sign the petition. Some of the employees on unorganised sites had their interest in unionism prompted by the Unite petition. They asked about how they could get some representation on their job. Heleyni is going to return to the keener signatories to get them going with their own petition kits, to turn them into collectors. Unite volunteers will be looking to repeat this Sunday evening visit process in other areas.

‘Queensgate, Wednesday the 23^rd at 12pm. I’ll be there just before noon. Anyone else who can make it please come on out.’

‘Newtown fair At: carpark, St. Annes Church, Emmet St Newtown, on Saturday 27^th June Brass Razoo is playing from 12.30 as an attention grabber for the Unite petition.’

The Tramways union let me address a Lower Hutt meeting, which was good and netted a lot of signatures and they will let me address their Wellington stopwork when it comes. The Wellingotn posties have taken 13 petition kits, one for each delegate; I am confident I will get most of those back, filled up. Maritime Union organisers have said that they have got the petition out to all their sites.

Christchurch

The Workers’ Rights Campaign went to collect $15 minimum wage campaign signatures at the All Blacks vs. Italy game tonight. Ten people went along. Coming back, Warren tallied up 14 full sheets (140 signatures) and there would have been at least another 20 on incomplete sheets which he didn’t gather in. That was from 7 of us – the WP and Alliance people because we went back as a group. Kelly put the rest of us in the shade by collecting 45 herself. Josh managed to score a free seat at the game in a corporate box, courtesy of someone who didn’t even sign the
petition!

At rugby games there are always quite a lot of bosses, so they wouldn’t sign of course. One of us approached a group which turned out to be a boss shouting at his staff. The workers looked interested in the petition until the boss told them if he had to pay them $15 an hour he couldn’t afford to shout them to the game. Of course if they got $15 per hour they could buy their own ticket every week and still have money left over but in this case the boss’s word was final…

One thing I discovered was that a lot of the people queuing up for the game were tourists – not just Italians, but Americans, British, Irish etc. Still it wasn’t a bad effort all told. And Paul H managed to get the staff at the cafe to sign when we went for coffee afterwards!

‘It was freezing’.

Auckland

Saturday, June 21 – Workers Party activists collected around 100 signatures for Unite’s campaign for a hike in the Minimum Wage at Auckland’s Otara Flea Market. A further 30 signatures were also collected outside Westcity mall, Henderson. WP has had an ongoing presence at both ot these places which has included campaigning against the 90-day probationary employment legislation. Many of the signers of the $15 minimum wage petition remarked how they would personally benefit from raising the rate to $15 per hour – which would result in a pay increase for some 450,000 workers in New Zealand. It was an encouraging start to the year-long campaign to get the 300,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum on the issue.

Saturday, June 27- Socialist Aotearoa and Unite activists made use of a busy morning in the central city and gathered hundreds of signatures on K-road.

A cinema attendent has started collecting signatures from movie-goers at the ticketing desk.

A fast-food worker, and member of WP, is planning a regular stall at the mall he works in, where he knows a lot of regular shoppers.

Download the petition at http://www.unite.org.nz/ Get your workplace to sign it and send it in to Freepost UNITE, PO Box 7175, Wellesley Street Auckland 1141.

Many of the signers remarked how they would personally benefit from raising the rate to $15 per hour – which would result in a pay increase for some 450,000 workers in New Zealand. It was an encouraging start to the year-long campaign to get the 300,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum on the issue.

Workers Party activists in Christchurch and Wellington have also been collecting hundreds of signatures at stalls and in workplaces.

In a press release on 4 June 2009 the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions deplored the Government’s removal of the minimum wage protection for workers on the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme.

“There have been significant examples of unauthorised and unfair deductions from RSE workers’ pay even under the existing regulations,” said Wagstaff. “Relaxing the minimum wage rule will only result in more blatant exploitation of already vulnerable workers as unscrupulous employers shift costs onto them.”

“Allowing employers to make deductions which will reduce pay rates below the minimum of $12.50 per hour will significantly increase exploitation of RSE workers and undermine the credibility of the scheme”, said CTU Vice-President Richard Wagstaff.

Richard Wagstaff is dead right about the exploitation, but from a workers point of view, RSE has no credibility to be undermined.

The New Zealand Labour Department says:

“The RSE scheme facilitates the temporary entry of overseas workers, mainly from the Pacific, to plant, maintain, harvest and pack crops in the horticulture and viticulture industries to meet labour shortages in order to remain competitive with the rest of the world.”

In other words, grape picking in this country is so shit paid that it can only be done by abusing desperate Third World labourers.

Workers under the RSE Work Policy may return to work in New Zealand at a future time provided they have not previously breached the conditions of their RSE work permit conditions.

The Labour Department smugly observes:

“The possibility of returning the following season will encourage workers to play by the rules”.

There’s no corresponding obligation for the employers to play by rules that disadvantage them.

Employers “may choose to pay their workers’ entire airfare”.

But the bosses’ other legal option is that:

“During the course of employment deductions may be made from workers’ wages for half of that airfare.”

Such deductions are the means by which minimum wage protection is torn away.

Overseas employees are not eligible for free New Zealand health care except under ACC. The Labour Department washes it hands of any responsibility by suggesting:

“Employers are encouraged to organise health insurance for their workers.”

Wages and conditions for workers in New Zealand horticulture have been atrocious for years. Underpayment and non payment in the industry has caused local workers to avoid the fields and orchards of this country. Even in a recession.

The International Trade Union Confederation’s 12 June 2009 report on Core Labour Standards in New Zealand comments: 

“Cases of forced labour continue to be reported in horticulture, viticulture and in prostitution. Additional government inspections are required to eliminate such core labour standards violations. Minimum wage protections need to be reinforced in respect of workers on the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme.”

The pro boss New Zealand Labour Department policies’ quoted in this article show the futility of “additional government inspections”. Until there’s some serious union organising on the sites in New Zealand horticulture the injustice to all workers will continue and most likely get worse.

The RSE scheme is nothing less than brutal racist capitalist oppression.

The Council of Trade Unions should follow up their criticism of the scheme by creating some new paid organiser positions to work among local and immigrant horticultural workers.