Socialist media project based in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia
In this talk Babu Maharjan presents a brief history of the people’s war in Nepal that has led to expulsion of the monarchy and overwhelming success for the revolutionary party in the first fully-democratic election in that country, in which it gained a majority. Recording also includes lengthy Q&A session. Recorded at Marxism 2008
Download the MP3 here
– article from the upcoming June 2008 issue of Cinema Worker
Photo: Socialist Aoteaora
Strikes will be spread around the country until the employers offer experienced-based pay for cinema attendants, appropriate rates for supervisors, and secure hours of work with a progressive rostering protocol. The Skycity Cinema offer has been for cinema attendants to start on minimum wage and stay on minimum wage, and for supervisors and projectionists to loose their relativity with other staff. This was rejected and staff voted to take action.
On Tuesday 10 June at 6pm 27 Skycity Cinema workers formed a picket line at the Henderson complex on a busy intersection. Nine of these workers were striking, other Henderson complex workers who were not on shift turned out, as well as four workers from the Broadway and Massey complexes. The strike was taken on the cheap-ticket night and lasted for 80 minutes.
Press release
The Workers Party wants public election funds shared equally between parties.
“Other countries such as Japan, Italy, India, Mexico and the Czech Republic have equal fund allocations”, said the party’s national organiser Daphna Whitmore, in a submission to the Electoral Commission. “It’s currently a cartel-like arrangement where Labour and National get the bulk of the funding. All parties contesting the list vote should receive exactly the same allocation of funding” she said.
She noted that the electoral rules are the same for all other parties in respect of the size of deposits and limits on campaign expenditure and so should the funding allocation. She argued favouring National and Labour is contrary to natural justice and notions of democracy and ‘level playing fields’.
At the last elections 62 percent of the $3.2 million public funds went to National and Labour.
Currently the division just gives a few crumbs to the parties outside Parliament.
Press release
Criticisms of the junior doctors’ strike by Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly are ill timed and highly questionable, says Workers Party national organiser Daphna Whitmore. “Traditionally unions extend solidarity during strike action, not issue public condemnation”.
“Medical staff do not take strike action lightly, and the doctors have been negotiating since May 2007 for renewal of their employment agreement” she said.
“With severe doctor shortages in the public health sector it is not surprising the doctors are taking action” she said. “The CTU would do better to criticise the government for failing to resolve the problems in the health system.”
All life preserving services have been maintained during strike action.
CONTACT: Daphna Whitmore 0294949865 wpnz(at)clear.net.nz
The announcement of over 1000 job losses yesterday is certainly bad news for New Zealand workers, yet while various commentators have blamed the latest round of redundancies on the high dollar or the free trade agreement with China, this disappearance of jobs is nothing new, in 2007 job losses made the news almost every other week. The following article from the December 2007 issue of The Spark looks at last years job losses and the need for international solidarity to defend jobs:
2007 a tough year for New Zealand Workers
– 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.
Subscribe to RSS feed
FightBack 
You must be logged in to post a comment.