Strike rights threatened

March 27, 2010 by

Mike Kay

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: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Industrial Relations Legislation, National Party, Union movement, Work rights

National’s McJob Creation Scheme

August 5, 2009 by

The Spark August 2009burger
Byron Clark

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

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

Filed Under: Economics, Fighting Redundancies, National Party

The Jobs Summit and how we respond to the Nat’s strategy

March 22, 2009 by

Philip Ferguson

Misjudging the Nats

Most of the left, both organised groups and the wider milieu of individual leftists, still really believe there is a fundamental difference between Labour and National.  While the Workers Party have never argued that they are exactly the same, we’re probably the only people who really believe – and act in accordance with the belief – that they are fundamentally the same.  They are liberal bourgeois parties; largely made up of urban, socially-liberal, middle class individuals.  Their goal is to manage the capitalist system.  Politically they’ve converged around liberal economics and liberal social policy, although both have some more blatantly right-wing social policies around issues like law and order.

 For much of the left, however, the Nats remain seen as some backwoods social reactionaries, a la Piggy Muldoon era.  And, economically, they are seen as unchanged since the 1990-93 period.  An especially crude representation of this view of the Nats was summed up in Socialist Aotearoa’s response to last November’s election: that a Nat-Act junta was now in power.

 We have always challenged this demonisation of the Nats and done so for three reasons:  one is that it always lets Labour off the hook; the second is that it’s just not an accurate analysis of what the National Party is in the twenty-first century.  The third reason is that it is devoid of any Marxist analysis of modern NZ capitalist society and the politics that the economic system requires.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: National Party

Rat Patrol and Workers Rights Campaign – fight unfair sackings

March 11, 2009 by

by Michael Ashton

An online survey commissioned by the New Zealand Business Council in February found that 1 in 5 people in the workforce fear that they will lose their jobs in 2009. Thirty-nine percent of those indicating they fear job loss are earners of between $20,001 and $30,000 a year, meaning that this category feels most insecure.

The introduction this month of the 90-day probationary employment legislation will compound the growing anxiety amongst working people and especially the working poor. A stand is being made through the Rat Patrol, a group of people who have undertaken to put pickets and a giant inflatable rat outside the premises of employers who unfairly dismiss workers in their first 90-days. [Read more…]

Filed Under: National Party, Workers in Struggle

New Zealand’s Imperialist attitude toward Fiji

March 7, 2009 by

Byron Clark The Spark March 2009

In what John Key has described as sending “a strong message” Pacific Forum leaders voted earlier this year to suspend Fiji from the Forum unless the interim government sets an election date before May 1. The suspension means that Fiji cannot attend meetings between forum leaders, ministers or officials; it will also be excluded from benefiting from any regional initiatives run under the forum. Both Mr Key and forum chairman Toke Talagi said the decision was made by consensus, a surprising result given smaller Pacific nations were expected to vote against suspension, with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare stating in his speech (released to the media before the meeting) “I am of the strong view that adopting an isolationist approach would be unhelpful.”

Fiji has already lost the benefits of one “regional initative” – participation in the seasonal work scheme allowing Pacific Islanders to work in New Zealand. Fiji was suspended from the scheme by the previous Labour government. So far this sanction has done little – if anything – to destabilise the military regime, instead it has effected ordinary Fijians. The Fiji based Coalition for Democracy and Peace, consisting of citizens’ groups and non-governmental organisations, had said that the poor are the ones most affected by sanctions imposed by New Zealand. Even when New Zealand sent aid to Fiji (via the Red Cross) in the wake of horrific floods, local Fijians said a better way for the New Zealand Government to help them would be to let them work in New Zealand, rather than give aid money. A petition was circulated asking Prime Minister John Key to issue special directions for one-year work visas for flood victims, and for an equivalent to the Pacific Access Category for Fijian citizens already in New Zealand. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Fiji, National Party, NZ Imperialism
«Previous Page
Next Page»