Several hundred Farmers workers marched up Queen St in Auckland today in a protest parade. They are angry at the company’s offer of a 20 cent an hour pay increase. Their union, the NDU, timed the protest a week before the official annual Farmers Xmas Parade.

On the march were representatives from several unions. A group of striking workers from McDonald’s stores joined the parade in an act of solidarity. Unite union has had nearly 50 strikes in McDonald’s stores for better pay and conditions. Unite’s 20 foot rat was an eyecatching float on the parade.

- Laurie Garnett

When the Contracts Act was repealed in 2000 it was hoped that not only would collective bargaining flourish, but multi-employer agreements (MECAs) would be rebuilt.

But with strikes outlawed except around bargaining, collective agreements can be a device for employers to lockdown wages and prevent strikes for years on end. A multi-employer agreement can do that too on a big scale.

There have been very few MECAs introduced in the past decade in the private sector. The Engineers Union Metals Agreement existed before the Employment Relations Act, and nearly all other MECAs have been public sector agreements.

One exception is the Service and Food Workers Union’s Cleaners’ MECA. With just 10% of the staff employed by the property services companies Spotless (7000 workforce) and OCS (4,000 workers) and ISS (several thousand) the union was not in a strong position. So how did they get the bosses to agree to a MECA?

In this case it was a deal that suited the employers. The cleaners on the agreement are paid just $12.55 (and $13.10 if they are experienced). In a period of labour shortages when it is possible to push for higher wages, the workers have been locked into a pay deal that is barely above minimum wage. For the employers at Spotless, OCS and ISS this MECA has been a means to put a stop to any competition among themselves over wages. And they got it very cheaply - at the expense of the staff.

Why are only 10 percent of cleaners in the private sector unionised? For a start it might have something to do with high union fees - $6 a week, and that members rarely see a union organiser. Many complain that when they call the union office their calls are not returned.

In contrast Unite union has a policy of regularly visiting sites where it has members and has a $2 a week union fee for places where people are on low pay. Unite’s focus is on leading struggles to win improvements. The results are apparent in all the areas Unite organises with significant gains.

The SFWU got good increases in the public sector where it was legislated for but this hasn’t transferred to the private sector where their members are locked into a shabby MECA.

The Clean Start campaign which lasted  two years has failed to lift the wages or to recruit significant numbers to the Service and Food Workers Union. It was a campaign that aimed to get building owners and employers to sign a piece of paper saying they supported “a better cleaning industry … with good jobs… fair pay, reasonable hours and safe conditions”.

Words are cheap. And so was the deal for the bosses.

- Don Franks

Before the election, NZCTU President Helen Kelly had much to say about the two main parties. On April 13th she told the Labour Party Congress:

“Working people have been given the chance to get back on their feet with this government. This is not just because of good policies. It is because we have a Government made up of people who care about workers, who understand the difficulties they face, and who try to make things better.”

Kelly was not ­ quite - absolutely obsequious in her praise of Labour, adding:

“Of course this does not mean that we live in paradise! There is more to do. And workers are really feeling the pinch at the moment with high food prices, rising petrol costs and high rents and mortgage payments.”

Then, even this mild admonition was hastily qualified into nothingness, with the soothing:

“So we need more change and with the continuation of a Labour led government we know that will happen. Labour is the Government with a proven record of change for the better and we need more of it.”

And, after the vision of heaven ­ the warning of hell:

“We have seen National’s industrial relations policy and it is dramatic and will have a major negative impact on working people.”

“National’s plans for industrial relations are the same as in 1991″.

Just before I began writing this, I took a look at the NZ Council of Trade unions website, to see if there was any comment on the election result. Still, after two weeks, not a peep. As we supposedly teeter on the brink of another 1991! It would seem that if National’s plans for industrial relations are really the same as in 1991, so too are the plans of the CTU. Determined inertia. Remember when the top leaders refused to take up calls for a general strike to defeat National’s Employment Contracts Act?

If National is poised for launching a major negative impact on working people, wouldn’t it be the task of union leaders to start rallying and mobilising opposition from day one?

In fact, John Key has already met CTU leaders. Business is going on just as usual; CTU heads know and practice only the narrow strategy of themselves lobbying the government of the day. Mass organising is anathema to them. Even explicit criticism of the former bogey man is quietly put aside; you can’t very comfortably have polite chitchat with someone over morning tea and then call them a bastard in the afternoon. For top union leaders there is really only one difference between Labour and National; Labour offers them more individual career rewards in terms of safe Labour seats. Apart from that, it’s just another day at the office.

Of course, while all this mutual backscratching goes on, workers rights, relative incomes and living standards continue to fall away. The last few years have seen the greatest growth of income inequality in New Zealand’s history. A central problem of unionism today is top union leaders’ servile accommodation to capitalism. When praising Labour in her speech to their congress Kelly said:

“We know that when the party manifestos come out, there will be a stark difference. Labour’s manifesto will contain policies that continue to make New Zealand a good place for all to live in and actually for business to operate in (Labour’s achievements in building successful businesses in this country is also well worth noting)”.

Union leaders know that the idea of a party capable of serving workers and bosses equally is bullshit. When a majority of workers realise the treachery and act on it civilisation will make a huge advance.

For many years, official pundits proclaimed ‘the death of Marxism’.  Marx and his ideas were a curio, possibly of some relevance in the 19th century but completely outmoded today, we were often told.

The current woes in the banking and finance sector, however, have led to a renewed interest in Marx in the First World.  At the same time, revolutionary developments in Venezuela and Nepal suggest that Marx retains relevance for people in the Third World struggling for liberation

Come along to this month’s Workers Forum and hear two prominent union and political activists address the subject and join in the discussion.

Speakers:

Tim Bowron (national organiser, Workers Party)

Paul Piesse (president, Alliance Party)

7pm, Monday, November 24

WEA (Workers Educational Assn)

59 Gloucester Street

       ]]> http://workersparty.org.nz/2008/11/19/marx-in-the-21st-century/feed/ marx21 http://workersparty.org.nz/2008/11/19/nature-vs-nurture-%e2%80%93-genes-vs-environment/ http://workersparty.org.nz/2008/11/19/nature-vs-nurture-%e2%80%93-genes-vs-environment/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:39:21 +0000 WP Admin http://workerspartynz.wordpress.com/?p=1303

Talk given by Daphna Whitmore at the Marxism Conference in Auckland, June 2008

Every week a new gene is supposedly found for something. This week New Scientist has a headline: They’ve discovered the gene for religion. Dig a little and it’s clear that the claims are grossly inflated. Well, it turns out they haven’t quite found a gene for religion after all, but postulated it exists. The theory is based on a computer programme that predicts that if a small number of people have a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, that religion will flourish. And this passes for science somehow!

The popular notions of what genes do are interesting.

I caught part of a programme on TV a few weeks ago. It was about people’s behaviours and their sex lives. The participants were asked to record how many times a day they had a sexual thought. The results were a little mixed, but one male had a huge number of sexual thoughts, another male had a moderate number which was about the same as one of the women and one woman had very few. It was a small sample of only about 4 people, so not the most rigorous scientific study. The conclusion drawn by the programme narrator was that “men think about sex more than women, and this is because in evolutionary terms this is an advantage. A woman once pregnant gains nothing from further copulation, whereas a man can keep spreading his genes around to great evolutionary advantage.”

This sort of theorizing is rather typical these days. Yet in the sample there was as much difference between the two men as there was between one man and one woman. But hey, we all know that humans are driven by the need to spread their genes, don’t we? So how do we explain that bizarre anti-evolutionary practice of contraception?

The trouble with many of the crude genetic explanations is that they come about through a series of assumptions and are deeply coloured by social and historical context.

Much of this talk today draws on the work of dialectical biologist Richard Lewontin. He points out that science is a social activity carried out by organisms with a limited central nervous system and severely limited sense organs. It is, moreover, carried out by organisms who have already gone through a considerable period of individual socialization and psychic maturation before they become employed as scientists, in a social setting that has a history that constrains thought and action. The state of science should not be confused with the state of the universe.”

The debate over what influences the development of an organism most - genes or environment - has largely been treated in a mechanical way. The pendulum has swung back and forth as to which plays the bigger role. Right now the pendulum is in the gene camp with all sorts of characteristics being thought to be linked to genes. The problem is most of the genes they talk about have yet to be discovered! (There’s also the “middle ground” types, who are just as mechanical, who say it’s a bit of a combination between genes and the environment.)

A dialectical approach provides a more insightful way to investigate the material world. What is needed is a more careful understanding of the context of the whole organism as well as the environment. Dialectics is a tool to discover and understand the interactions and interconnections.

Dialectics is a method of how to observe and analyse the movement of opposites that are present in all things and processes from beginning to end. From that analysis one can then establish ways to resolve contradictions. It’s not a formula to prove a proposition, it is a tool for investigation.

So I’m going to look at how the pendulum has swung so hard towards genes but also I’d argue that there’s more to development than simply genes and environment.

In the 19^th century there was a debate between the epigenetic school and the preformationist school. The preformationists believed that there fully formed miniature versions inside each sperm which got bigger and bigger, and the egg supplied nutrients to it. The epigenetic school said that was nonsense, that each embryo or organism is gradually produced from an undifferentiated mass by a series of steps and stages during which new parts are added. So which won out?

Surprisingly, the little man idea has prevailed. The idea that genes predetermine everything is a preformationist view. It’s the same as the notion that all the information necessary is in the sperm and egg.

All the information is not already contained in the fertilized egg. There is other important factors in producing an organism. There is a temporal sequence of environment.

As Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher who was a dialectician said “You can’t step into the same river twice”. There is nothing static about the environment.

Timing is a big factor.

Then there is another factor which is indeterminacy from a quantum level to a higher level. It adds a random component and has a profound effect. So much of development is not predetermined, but is uncertain. I’ll go into this more later on.

One key problem is the limitations associated with specialization in science. Today it’s impossible to be a generalist because the body of science so vast, but how do we deal with the isolation of scientists from each other who work in different fields? This has encouraged people to take a narrow view.

GENETIC DETERMINISM

It’s now 55 years since the structure of DNA was revealed and it is time to ask why gene therapy not progressed beyond the trial stage. (There are currently around 100 gene therapy clinical trials aimed toward cancer and diseases such as cystic fibrosis and hemophilia A, infectious diseases - including AIDS - and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis).

The problem is that individual cells in every organism differ enough from each other that no two will process DNA information in exactly the same way, making many genetic therapies impractical and very difficult.

For cancer, for instance, the treatments by and large remain cut it out, burn it off or poison it.

What we find is that DNA doesn’t play quite the determining role that is commonly believed and that genes are irrelevant for some characteristics (eg asymmetry).

The gene-centred view of evolution was popularised by Richard Dawkins who came up with the term the selfish gene. He says evolution acts on genes, and that selection at the level of organisms or populations almost never overrides selection based on genes. He reckons that it’s about genes replicating, not necessarily those of the organism, much less any larger level. Genes are the main thing in the process of natural selection. (Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common.)

So an almost magical power is ascribed to genes. What’s more there is ‘genomania’ - a frenzied excitement about genes and gene therapy (the ’90s were the decade where it probably reached its height). This has a social context which is holding back progress in science. DNA does reveal a lot, but it is only a part of a bigger picture and must not be taken in isolation.

Heredity involves far more than just genes. Scientists have established that genes are pleiotropic - that is, they convey many messages. The timing and nature of those messages is determined not by them, but by enzymes and other cellular structures that are not genetic.

Conversely, I’m not going to argue though that we are simply, or even largely, a product of our environment. For a start, even our concepts of the environment are shaped by current ideology. “Preserve the environment” is a catchy slogan but nonsense in biology. Lewontin, I think, put the question do organisms “adapt” to their environment or is adaptation a misused metaphor? It bit more on that soon.

We need to take a good look at the social construction of scientific knowledge.

There are various factors which encourage scientists to make overblown claims, (it’s one way of getting funding) and all too often the people who publicise findings are commercially driven to sell papers by over simplifying and sensationalizing.

GENES

There are around 25,000 genes in a human being. Researchers more or less completed the final analysis of the Human Genome Project in April 2003

In 1991 scientists “found the gene for homosexuality” - or so the headlines screamed. They quietly lost those genes some years later when their study could not be replicated. Today there are no known genes for homosexuality.

The mythical gay gene was embraced by various political directions. Gay rights advocates were generally pleased that it was a natural cause, not social, while anti-gays could treat it as a genetic mutation.

What about the risk taking gene?

That was declared discovered, only to missing again. To date there are no genes or set of genes that have been found that relate to any aspect of human behaviour. It’s all purely speculative. But they are still looking!

No one has found the genes for skin colour, height or weight.

Nor has the thrifty gene ever been found. That’s the one Polynesians are supposed to have which is said to make people predisposed to become obese and diabetic once they’ve been in a western society for a few decades. No such gene has ever been found and the geneticist, James Neel who postulated the theory back in 1962 ditched it in 1982. He conducted proper research and found that indigenous people weren’t predisposed - they had normal glucose tolerance tests. He ended up thinking that exposure to a modern diet was the cause, not any gene. Anyway poverty is a much greater marker for obesity than any other factor. It increases the chances by about 50%.

While they are at it maybe they should look for a poverty gene!

If they put as much effort into eliminating poverty as was put into sequencing the human genome the effect on morbidity would probably have been greater.

There’s the thrifty phenotype (phenotype being the appearance rather than the genotype). This is the theory that in poor nutritional conditions, the fetus is prepared for an environment where resources are scarce. If that child is then born into an affluent western environment there is a mismatch. It’s thought that this could last several generations this effect.

Breast cancer genes fair a little better, but not much. To date, most inherited cases of breast cancer have been associated with abnormalities in two genes. But these abnormalities account for only 10% at the most of breast cancers. If one identical twin gets breast cancer, the other’s likelihood of contracting it is only around 10% to 20%. This suggests that genes are not the whole story

There are really only a handful of diseases that have a clear genetic component. Muscular dystrophy, sickle cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis, haemaphilia. There are some other genetic diseases but they are extremely rare.

Around one thousand genetic tests now available to diagnose and assess risk of diseases, and there’s big money in it.

As well as the misguided emphasis on genes, every gene is seen in isolation, certainly in its popular presentation.

This misguided emphasis on genes could be taking away attention from infections as the big killer. Most diseases are caused by infections: cholera, dysentery, malaria, tuberculosis and measles. But they are third world diseases - poverty related. For instance we don’t die from measles in the west because we have adequate protein in our diet. Measles is a protein-consuming disease and can be deadly for people who are protein deficient.

A disease-causing gene that reduces survival and reproduction would normally eliminate itself over a number of generations. One example of this is schizophrenia; patients with the mental illness rarely have children, argues evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald. He thinks schizophrenia may be caused by the Borna virus and argues that this disease would have already been eliminated if it were from a strictly genetic cause.

We know that CJD causes extreme mental illness, and so does syphilis. So it is not such a wild idea that other mental illnesses may be caused by a pathogen not a genetic defect.

So genes are not the be all and end all. Of course, they do play an important role but they are only part of how any organism develops.

ADAPTATION AS A MISUSED METAPHOR

Most people accept that environment does play a role. This is evident when an organism is cloned. It cannot be a simple replica of the parent. For a start it is in a different environment and there is a high degree of uncertainty and random events that result in differences. Evolution is a result of random as well as selective forces. Michael Raglan gives an example of this “Humans, do not have the same fingerprints on their left and right hands and the differences in pattern can be so great that no similarity at all can be detected. Yet the genes of the left and right sides are the same and no usual meaning of environment will allow that the left and right hands of a foetus in its mothers’ womb have different developmental environments”. This is explained at the quantum mechanical - the submolecular level. Quantum mechanics are the physical principles that govern the microworld. It’s this quantum mechanics that accounts for why DNA is a double helix. The H bonds between purines and pyrimidines that are responsible for the double helical structure of DNA. Once again, randomness of the motion of particles is a factor.

History as well as randomness plays a role. Something might have been selected for long ago can influence how organisms take shape later on. An obvious example is our limbs - we have four limbs, not because this is the best possible configuration, but because we are descended from land vertebrates that had fins.

THE NOTION OF EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE

There is a tendency to treat the evolutionary process as one where all aspects of the organism are perfectly adapted to the environment. It’s what we can call optimal adaptation.

This way of thinking assumes every feature must have a benefit for survival. Let’s take skin colour. Actually no one really knows why Europeans are pale, Asians have dark hair etc. Ah, of course, being dark skinned in Africa means you won’t be likely to get skin cancer, one thinks. Indeed that is true. But it doesn’t make any difference to evolutionary survival as skin cancer is something that tends to occur later in life, not during the reproductive years. A more sound explanation, is what Darwin called sexual selection.

For instance, peacocks have large bright feathers, which provide no advantage to flying, and might actually impede flight, thus attracting predators. These spectacular feathers have evolved because they attract potential mates.

People in Europe were attracted to pale faced people and selected them for their mates. That is the current explanation, strange as it may seem. Same thing in Asia - a particular look was favoured and selected for. It sounds weird to us because we aren’t really used to thinking about sexual selection in that way.

The view that we are purpose built for the environment is a notion of an external environment posing “challenges” that successful organisms “solve” those challenges. That is problematic because environments of organisms do not exist before the organism. The physical world exists, but it is not the environment of any organism.

Just as the air we breathe is the result of living organisms, there’s no environment without an organism, and no organism without an environment. Organisms and environment co-evolve. Every organism is in the process of constructing its environment by using it.

Lewontin gives a great example of our boundary layer. Around our bodies is a layer of warm moist air is created by our metabolic activities. We each have our own boundary layer. The wind chill factor is because wind blows away the warm boundary layer. Every organism uses up what it needs and deposits waste products. Plants break up the soil which aids them and other organisms. Fungus grows on a plant and in turn nourishes the plant. Every organism does it at all times. Organisms create and destroy. It’s a symbiotic situation.

It’s not that organisms are well suited to their environment, it’s more that they have interacted and developed a world around them which is suited and which evolves with them at all times. It’s a world in motion, not a fixed world that they enter.

That’s why the notion of “preserve the environment” makes no sense in biology. Every organism has a different environment, its changing with the organism,

And the organism is a unique result of both genes and environment, of both internal and external features, and these are not separate entities. They are a unity and struggle of opposites. It’s not the case that genes determine the organism, which then adapts to the environment. It’s far more dynamic and interconnected: Organisms are influenced in their development by their circumstances and for there part they create, modify, and choose the environment in which they live.

KNOWLEDGE SHOULD ADVANTAGE HUMANITY

No longer should we think of the environment as something unconnected to the organisms that shape and create it out of the raw materials of the physical world.

This perspective enables us to think more constructively so that we can use our knowledge to promote environmental change in a direction that is an advantage to humanity. That sort of ecology is far more appealing than the sort that wants to limit human activity and sees humanity as a blot upon the earth.

Genes are not all powerful. There is a close interaction between genes, environment, and random developmental events. They cannot be separated from the living organism and its realm it inhabits.

- Tim Bowron and Nick Kelly

Photos: ANEF (Chile)

On Monday November 17 over 400 000 public sector workers in Chile began an indefinite nationwide strike demanding a 14.5% pay increase to combat spiralling inflation (9.9% in the last year alone) and the rising cost of living. This was in response to the refusal of the centre-left “Concertación” government of Michelle Bachelet to significantly revise its original 5% wage offer since a 48 hour strike by public sector workers last week.

Meanwhile here in New Zealand where workers are also currently faced with a decline in real wages as well as the prospect of mass redundancies, the Public Servants Association has put out a grovelling press statement praising the incoming National government for its willingness to “engage” with them and offering to provide “constructive suggestions” to National’s promised review of government expenditure:

…the Public Service Association has welcomed John Key’s pledge to engage with unions.

Its national secretary, Brenda Pilott, says the union looks forward to constructively working with the government New Zealanders elected.

“We welcome Mr Key’s commitment to lead a listening, inclusive government and in turn commit to a constructive relationship,” she says.

“Though the PSA is concerned about the possible impact of the promised review in government expenditure, we have constructive suggestions and look forward to an opportunity to discuss them with Mr Key. Our hope is it can be completed without large-scale layoffs or privatisation.” she says.

The PSA has 57,000 members in the public service, NGOs, local government and the health and education sectors.

The reality is that for the last decade this policy of “partnership with the employer” has failed to deliver for PSA members. With the National government-elect strongly signalling it wishes to cut spending in the public sector PSA members need to start fighting to defend their jobs. The only constructive suggestions union leaders should be putting to any government is not to take jobs away from the working class.

The policies of partnership and trying to appeal to the better nature of employers and the government that the PSA has pursued for the last decade will fail its members - and weaken the trade union movement as a whole.

In this respect the PSA has a lot to learn from its Chilean counterparts.

The Workers Party has been rationally assessing the two main political parties for many years. This cartoon appeared with an article in The Spark February 2007 on the similarities between Labour and National.

Whereas a considerable section of the left had illusions in Labour and delusions about National, our analysis has proved to be sound.

-Ian Anderson

The conduct of Go Wellington demonstrates the struggle between capitalism and environmental justice.

 Environmental justice refers not only to environmental impact, but the full participation of those affected. ‘Sustainability’ is the current buzzword amongst politicians, generally meaning the capacity of capitalist practices to dodge points-of-no-return for environmental reproduction. However, working people are disproportionately affected both by environmental degradation and capitalist solutions; as phrased by Karl Marx, “Capitalist production [works] by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker.”

Public transport is often touted as a solution, with companies such as Go Wellington subsidised by local government. This approach is insufficient, primarily serving capitalist ends. Resources must be managed in service of human and environmental need, rather than profit.

 One line currently popular amongst politicians goes, ‘You don’t have to choose between sustainability and profit.’ In fact, green practices can increase profit; avoiding waste cuts costs, and there are enormous PR advantages to going green.

But where there’s a choice between sustainability and profit, it’s not hard to guess which wins out. Go Wellington recently brought a fleet of 60 diesel buses from Scania, citing ‘better environmental performance.’ This fleet has better performance than the previous fleet, utilising clean diesel, but trolley buses are zero-emission. However, trolley buses in Wellington are underused, costing more to maintain than diesel buses. Go Wellington has a monopoly on the trolley lines, and the ratepayer subsidises them for it, but the company does not deliver. For Go Wellington, appearing green generates greater profits than actually going green.

 Transport is the dominant source of air pollution worldwide, and despite corporate green initiatives it is a growing industry. Although scattered cranks dispute the evidence, there is consensus amongst climatologists that human carbon emissions are contributing to a change in climate that breaks from previous patterns. In fact, climate change has exceeded predictions in some areas, while rising at a consistent rate of 0.1c a decade. A debate has developed about how to rework capitalism. This is difficult in large part because human and environmental factors are taken as ‘gratuitous,’ as commodities to manipulate for the sake of capital.

Port unions led the way.

 Energy is central to this debate, and workers have played a critical role in energy struggles. Between 1976 and 1985, port unions took industrial action to keep nuclear ships out of the country; central government finally caught up in 1985. Safety standards for nuclear energy have improved since then, but this demonstrated that while politicians may drag their feet over energy issues, workers don’t. However, National’s Employment Contracts Act and Labour’s more recent Employment Relations Act (ERA) both outlaw industrial action for political reasons. Therefore the bus drivers of Go Wellington cannot legally play a role in energy struggles, and must tolerate the cumbersome, noisy and polluting diesel behemoths brought by Go Wellington. It’s up to politicians to ‘regulate’ capitalism through ineffective devices like the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Capitalists often posit that technological innovations are the solution. However, we have the technology to expand trolley lines, or give the existing ones priority; a lack of technology isn’t the problem. Before the Industrial Revolution, privatisation of land was already causing permanent ecological devastation and unequal development. The Industrial Revolution merely intensified the subjection of land and labour-power to capital. The causes of ecological degradation lie in exploitative social relations, not technology in itself.

 Immigration is a pressing issue where environmental justice is concerned. As the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has observed, “The implications [of global warming] for immigration in Australia and New Zealand are poorly understood.” Tuvalu, a Pacific nation consisting of scattered islands and atolls, is disappearing under rising water. This is a difficult issue for capitalists to address, because capitalist immigration policies are geared towards cheap labour. Our only immigration agreement with Tuvalu is the Pacific Access Category, which requires an offer of employment. The Refugee Convention does not recognise environmental refugees, and neither Australia nor New Zealand has shown any interest in amending this. In addition, those awaiting approval for refugee status in New Zealand have limited access to essential social services.

 The welfare of migrants and refugees is a peripheral concern, unlike their capacity to produce wealth for capitalists. When disgruntled drivers quit in February 2007, Go Wellington began recruiting immigrants through agents in Fiji. These agents discouraged their customers from joining the union, and granted them only temporary work visas – so that the company could cut costs on labour, and the country could get rid of the drivers when necessary. Although the workers got wise and joined the union contract, this incident demonstrates the clash between the demands of capital and those of migrant workers. The only acceptable solution is the freedom of workers to move based on their own needs, rather than the needs of the capitalist class.

 These days, terms such as ‘corporate accountability’ and ‘triple-bottom line’ have entered mainstream political discourse. Because anarchy exists in capitalist production, market solutions do nothing to simplify the problem; emissions trading schemes in Europe and New Zealand open up new share-markets, and industries such as eco-tourism have no consistent standards. This problem is too important to be left to capitalists and politicians, to Go Wellington and the City Council.

 Worker-run businesses are demonstrably more efficient, more responsive and healthier for workers than centralised ones – factories such as Zanon Ceramics in Argentina, or Sanitorios Maracay in Venezuela, lead the way. There are other informative examples. When Cuba’s economy collapsed in the wake of the USSR, urban agriculture allowed workers direct control over agricultural production. Workers in Havana now have significantly greater access to nutrition than most city-dwellers, and their practices avoid the environmental degradation of agribusiness. According to the WWF, Cuba is now the only country developing sustainably. What these solutions have in common is simple; they cut bosses from the equation and allocate resources on the basis of need. This is only a start. The demands of land and labour-power must triumph over those of capital.

The Spark November 2008

The Workers Party is primarily an organisation of activists who fight for workers’ interests on jobs and in the streets. We recognise that the struggle for workers’ rights and workers’ power mostly takes place outside of parliament. Taking mass actions against an employer offers workers more chance of controlling their destiny than voting. However, parliamentary elections provide a chance to raise alternative ideas, and socialists should make use of the opportunity. The reports below show some of the initiatives taken by the Workers Party in the 2008 general election. You can see that we got stuck in and stood up for socialist ideas without mincing our words. If you like the look of our approach, why not join us and help make the socialist voice even louder in 2011!

Workers Party grows in Wellington

The Wellington election campaign effort raised the branch’s morale and fostered Workers Party growth and consolidation in the district.

Activity for Tramways, the union representing Go Wellington bus drivers, fed into election activity. Under WP secretary Nick Kelly, the union held a one-hour strike which resulted in a day-long lockout by the company. Drivers showed organisation and determination, while other unions held fundraisers in support. Workers Party members joined the picketline, contributing placards, stickers and posters. Under pressure from the public and the City Council, Go Wellington lifted the lockout and improved on its previous “final offer.”

The Wellington branch designed, produced and posted hundreds of posters, as well as hundreds of small hi-viz stickers. We also put up over sixty A2 billboards proclaiming “Workers should be running the country!”

Street speaking was undertaken in Cuba Mall, Kilbirnie and Newtown. Party branch teams leafleted and talked to passers-by while taking turns to stand on a beer crate and speak through a megaphone. The quality of our street speaking improved as the campaign went on, with comrades increasing in confidence. This activity will be ongoing after the election.

Wellington Central electorate candidate Don Franks was interviewed on Te Upoko o te Ika radio and Radio Active. He also gave substantial interviews to local papers The Wellingtonian and Capital Times.

Over the course of the campaign Don addressed seven combined candidates meetings, one NZCTU local affiliates’ meeting, one MUNZ meeting, a gathering of bus drivers locked out by Go Wellington and four meetings organised by the Workers Party.

Highlight of the branch’s campaign was the well-attended Workers Party “left of Labour” debate. This assembly of Green Party, Maori Party, Alliance, Independent and Workers Party candidates debated radical ideas instead of the usual personality politics. For more about this meeting, see ” A vision of workers’ freedom“.

Workers Party Christchurch branch election campaign report

While for the capitalist establishment parties election year is all about votes, for the Workers Party Christchurch branch the 2008 election has been all about the opportunity to connect with a bigger working-class audience and recruit activists. In both these areas we have had some success, and whatever our final vote tally, Christchurch WP members will have reason to feel that our intervention in these elections has been worthwhile.

Since August, party members in Christchurch personally delivered over 4000 leaflets containing our WP election manifesto to residents in working-class neighbourhoods such as Wainoni and Linwood. as well as on street stalls and at election forums. We have also been using the election campaign to talk to council housing tenants about the need to form a tenants’ action group to fight recent rent rises, doorknocking around 500 council flats in the Christchurch Central and Christchurch East electorates where we have been standing candidates.

During the campaign, members of the Christchurch branch also travelled to Dunedin and in conjunction with local WP supporters helped to organise public meetings and street stalls there, boosting our party profile in that city.

Particular credit must go to our Christchurch East candidate Paul Hopkinson, who has undergone three weeks’ suspension without pay from his teaching position for challenging the undemocratic restrictions on public servants standing for parliament. While he had originally only intended to campaign during school holidays and weekends, in the final weeks Paul ended up working almost full time on the campaign as a result of his employer’s decision to suspend him!

Despite failing to gain much traction in the capitalist media, our campaign has resulted in a modest increase in membership for the Christchurch branch. The task now is to translate this increase in membership into more activists as well as (to use Gramsci’s phrase) more “organic intellectuals of the working class”.

Auckland: Laying a solid foundation

Solid efforts at Otara market in South Auckland and at other working-class venues laid the foundation of the party’s nationwide election campaign. Auckland comrades netted a huge proportion of the more than 500 people signed up so that the Workers Party could get on the official party list. That meant that for the first time ever, the red flag and a socialist party option were on every ballot paper in the country. Official party status also gained us a one-minute opening address on television and a one-minute radio advertisement on student radio Bnet, the Edge and the Rock.

For five weeks running up to the election the party ran soapbox forums at the Otara market. Workers Party candidates and members spoke about the party’s policies, the world financial turmoil, the economy and job losses. Comrades explained about Labour’s anti-worker laws and why Labour isn’t worker-friendly. We and highlighted the similarities between National and Labour, noting that the choice is rather like Pepsi and Coke. Around 10,000 Workers Party leaflets were distributed in Auckland. Comrades were also involved in the ongoing McDonalds pay dispute.

Auckland comrades attended three combined candidates meetings in the Manukau East electorate where Daphna Whitmore stood for the Workers Party. Daphna also spoke for the party at the Auckland left candidates meeting organised by Global Peace and Justice. For more about this meeting, see “Why we need fewer cops” .