A far left reply to Chris Trotter

December 21, 2008 by

– Don Franks, Workers Party candidate for Wellington Central 2008

The Dominion Post warns of a malicious workers’ enemy currently lurking in New Zealand.

What “it” supposedly “wants to see (on workers tables) are scraps of stale bread and cups of cold water.” Along with “the power and the phone cut off, holes in the roof, and the car up on blocks in the front yard.”

“Nothing delights it more than the sight of padlocked factory gates, and the sobbing of laid-off workers is music to its ears.”

According to Dominion Post columnist Chris Trotter, this inhumanity embodies none other than the revolutionary component of the political left.  He specifically cites the Workers Party as an example.

According to Trotter:

“The more the National Party cuts back and hacks away at the workers’ economic and social rights the better the revolutionaries like it.

“The far Left is always at its unhappiest when Labour is in power. In no time at all they’ve got the power and the phone reconnected, filled up the fridge, got a bit of a fire going in the grate, slipped a couple of pizzas in the oven, and cracked open a few cool ones.” (From The Left, Dominion Post 12/12/2008)

Chris may have forgotten that it was under Labour that Mrs Folole Muliaga tragically lost her life when her power was cut off.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: NZ Labour Party, Revolutionary History, Revolutionary Strategy Tagged With:

The 90-day bill – us and them

December 10, 2008 by

-Jared Phillips

Continuing with the New Zealand employers’ labour-flexibilisation drive, Prime Minister John Key has announced the introduction of a 90-day probationary employment bill that will allow new workers to be sacked without appeal, and it will come into force in March 2009.

What it means for workers

Those whose conditions will be directly attacked are the employees who are or will be in their first 90 days of employment at firms employing less than 20 people.

Slightly more than 30% of employees are employed in firms with less than 20 employees. The Council of Trade Unions has observed that of all employees, approximately 100,000 are in the first 90 days of employment, with a small employer, at any one time.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Industrial Relations Legislation, NZ Labour Party, Union movement, Workers in Struggle

Solidarity to rebuild unions

December 3, 2008 by

-Daphna Whitmore

During the 1990s under the National government union membership fell by 50 percent. In 2000 just after Labour came in to office 69 percent of the public sector workers were covered by collective agreements and 21 percent of workers in private sector jobs.

Did that situation improve during nine years of “a worker-friendly government”, as the CTU leadership describe Labour?

Not at all. This year 59 percent of public sector workers have collective agreements, and a mere 10 percent of private sector workers.

The table below shows the grim reality.

union-membership-2008

And while the public sector collective agreement coverage declined, it is still significantly higher than the private sector.

A really serious trade union movement would look at assisting the private sector through subsidies from the much better off public sector. We need a union movement that takes the interests of the whole of the working class. That’s the sort of solidarity that would help build up unions in the private sector, which is where exploitation of the working class originates.

Filed Under: National Party, NZ Labour Party, Union movement, Workers in Struggle

The reign of Helen Clark

November 29, 2008 by

– Daphna Whitmore
The Spark December 2008 – January 2009

The end was swift. Stepping down on election night Helen Clark ended 16 years as the Labour Party’s leader and nine years as Prime Minister. As Labour’s longest serving head, she was one of its most capable and helped shape the organisation into an urban liberal capitalist party.

Clark personified the new type of Labour politician. She came from a middle class farming background and was university educated. She studied politics and lectured for a few years at Auckland University, then headed straight to parliament in 1981.

In 1984 Labour won the elections and launched Rogernomics. There was not a peep of opposition to this rabidly neo-liberal programme from Clark. Later on she would try to distance herself from that period but as David Lange once quipped, Clark “was so dry she was combustible”. According to Michael Basset, who was a minister in that government, Clark begged Roger Douglas to return to the finance minister’s role in January 1990 when the party was rife with internal divisions over Rogernomics.

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Filed Under: 2008 Election, NZ Labour Party, Workers in Struggle Tagged With:

Silence of the Lambs

November 19, 2008 by

– 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?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: 2008 Election, NZ Labour Party, Union movement, Workers in Struggle
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