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

A work in progress

March 8, 2009 by

Daphna Whitmore The Spark March 2009  

Auckland airport’s Centra hotel looks stunning. The newly renovated rooms are spotlessly clean; the beds have fresh crisp linen, folded with envelope precision. Many hands created this perfection.centra-housekeepers

Every day a dozen or more women start cleaning the rooms at 8am. Before they begin they have got children out of bed and off to school, dropped husbands at their workplaces and then headed to their own job as a room attendant. They set to work cleaning anywhere between 15 and 20 hotels rooms, stripping beds, scrubbing floors, wiping every surface clean and putting everything in its place. When the guest walks into the room it is as if no one had ever stayed there before. No tell-tale strand of hair or nail clipping must be left behind. Nothing less than perfection will do. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Workers in Struggle

Nestle – there’s blood in your coffee

March 6, 2009 by

Around 20 people protested inside Nestle New Zealand’s head
office in down town Auckland, Friday 6 March, against the murder of unionists in the Phillipines and to show solidarity with the 600 Nestle workers in the Philippines who have been on strike for seven years. 4standing.jpg

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Philippines, Workers in Struggle

Picket against new “Fire-at-Will” law in Christchurch

February 26, 2009 by

dalek

Press Release: Workers Rights Campaign

Canterbury’s newly-formed Workers Rights Campaign is planning a symbolic picket at the offices of Government M.P. Nicola Wagner to protest at the new “fire-at-will” provisions of New Zealand’s industrial law.

Campaign spokesman Paul Piesse said today that the justification for the new law, which allows employers to sack workers within the first three months of their employment without giving any reason at all, let alone any justification, is a hypocritical sham.

The big lie, Mr Piesse said, is the deceit that the law would encourage employers to take on people they otherwise would not. Employers, he said, only ever employ people when they really need them. Their objective is to maximise their profits – they don’t function as a social service to the unemployed.

Neither do they engage the least appealing applicant; and nor will they because of the new law.

The Workers Rights Campaign says that the law is a breach of civil rights, in that it discriminates against a specific group of citizens – job applicants – distinguishing them from those already employed.

Mr Piesse added that the law is aimed at the most vulnerable: the young; casual and part time workers; those made redundant from their previous employment – likely to be a rapidly increasing number of New Zealanders; anyone changing jobs; and older workers.
The Workers Rights Campaign will picket the premises of any employer availing him/herself of this contemptible new law when it is brought to its attention.

Mr Piesse said that the new law was just the start of an employer-Government campaign to make working people pay the price of the inevitable and cyclic crisis of the capitalist system.

The picket at Wagner’s office, 189 Montreal St Christchurch, will take place on Friday 27th February at 1 p.m.

Filed Under: Industrial Relations Legislation, National Party, Workers in Struggle Tagged With:

Will the Council of Trade Unions put workers first?

February 23, 2009 by

-Don Franks

For some weeks now, top union leaders have been muttering about a possible National government attack on unions’ access to worksites. The present law allows union representatives to enter workplaces to visit existing union members and recruit new members. Union officials must produce identification, tell the employer the purpose of their visit and not take up too much time, or enter at very busy times.

These rights were denied by National’s Employment Contracts Act and restored by the last Labour government. Restoration of right of entry was the one big concession Labour made to the union movement. Now, it is increasingly being rumoured, John Key’s lot will remove unions’ right of entry again.

The rumours came out in the open in Council of Trade Unions President Helen Kelly’s Dominion Post column of February 23rd. There, in an article headlined; Will Government put the country first? Kelly claimed:

“National still intends to reduce worker’s rights by making union access to a workplace dependant on employer approval.”

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Union movement, Workers in Struggle
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