Legal battle over sleepover shifts demonstrates union role in women’s pay equity struggle

June 23, 2011 by

Horizontal labour market segregation on the basis of gender has been well-entrenched in New Zealand’s economy, including within the care sector which is majority-comprised of women workers. The following article by Kelly Pope – a member of the Christchurch branch of the Workers Party who works as a mental health support person – demonstrates the continued relevance of the workers’ movement and trade unionism in addressing equal pay issues.

In 2007 the Service and Food Workers’ Union (SFWU) and the Public Service Association (PSA) took cases against two major residential service providers in the intellectual disability sector, attempting to gain minimum wage pay for hours spent on sleepover shifts. After a decision by the Employment Relations Authority that considered sleeping over to be work, the issue was appealed to the Employment Court by IHC in May 2009. A support worker who was employed by IHC’s IDEA Services, Phil Dickson, was the individual applicant in this case.

Since then, the Employment Court has found the existing payment of sleepover rates to be in breach of the Minimum Wage Act, ruling in favour of Mr Dickson and the union. A subsequent case taken to the Court of Appeal by IHC has resulted in the same outcome. Since this decision on 16th February 2011, the case has been taken further by IHC and will now be considered by the Supreme Court with a decision expected sometime after this year’s general election. While this long legal process has been unfolding, the PSA has filed additional legal proceedings against more than thirty health and disability support employers also currently paying below minimum wage sleepover rates, including Barnardos, Hawkes Bay DHB, Spectrum Care and Healthcare NZ. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Women, Workers in Struggle

Most recent figures show women still coming off worse under capitalism

June 22, 2011 by

This article was prepared by The Spark editorial board and first appeared in the June 2011 issue of The Spark.

The most recent Statistics New Zealand figures show slight upward trends in terms of employment, income, and labour force participation. By no means can we equate this to a beginning of the end of the recession, as these are very minimal increases outside of and below the scale required to show recovery. One thing certain from the gendered statistics contained in the March 2011 quarter Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) and the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) is that women are still coming off worse under capitalism and are in fact being disproportionately impacted by the recession. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Women

Revisiting socialism and women’s liberation

March 10, 2011 by

This article is by Kassie Hartendorp, organiser of the Wellington branch of the Workers Party. The article will be printed in three parts, in the new Women’s Liberation section of The Spark.

Historically, one of the most controversial topics within Marxist theory is ‘the woman question’ which continues to create debate and disagreement within socialist politics. August Bebel defines the woman question as dealing “with the position that woman should hold in our social organism, and seeks to determine how she can best develop her powers and her abilities, in order to become a useful member of human society, endowed with equal rights and serving society according to her best capacity.” Because the demand for women’s rights is often seen to conflict with the priority of class struggle, some Marxists have refrained from tackling this topic, as it has not been uncommon for groups to split over disagreements on how to end women’s oppression. In this article we will review four writers; Frederick Engels, August Bebel, Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai and analyse what they have put forward in regards to women’s suffrage, marriage and the family, motherhood and love, and sexuality. This is only a small selection of the plethora of issues within the woman question, but due to word restraints, I will be just discussing these four areas. We choose here to use the term ‘women’s oppression’ rather than the more recently used ‘gender inequality’. While the terms are similar, the former is the historically specific description of the oppression and exploitation of women within the longer trajectory of capitalism. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Women

Capitalist state fails police rape victims

September 10, 2010 by

Marika Pratley, Workers Party, Wellington Branch

The Spark September 2010

Eight women were denied compensation for being raped by police
officers at a recent Police Misconduct Forum. Seven cases proved police
misconduct in court, but only one woman was successful in bringing a
prosecution, against police officers Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton for rape in 2005. She was raped by them and another Tauranga man in 1989.

Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton

An inquiry into Police Misconduct and rape was initiated by Dame Margaret Bazley in which 300 cases of Police Misconduct were identified.

Former Police Minister Annette King began working with the 8 women to set up the forum in 2007. They were pressured into signing confidentiality agreements, meaning the other 300 women in the report were excluded from participation. Although compensation was considered, it was decided that it was not the government’s responsibility to compensate the eight women. This raises the issue of not just whether these survivors should be getting compensation, but how we can stop rape happening to begin with. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Police, Uncategorized, Women

Red & Purple: A Marxist Perspective on Queer Liberation

June 23, 2010 by

by Ian Anderson, adapted from a talk presented at Marxism 2010.

What does queer liberation mean?

This article aims to deal with this question utilising historical materialism, the mode of enquiry pioneered by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Historical materialism explores social relations, such as homosexual oppression, by explaining the productive forces that shape them. With a particular focus on New Zealand history, this analysis aims to sketch the material basis of modern queerness, attempts to control or suppress it, and the politics that have emerged from this contradiction. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Queer
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