By Vita Bryant (Fightback Poneke/Wellington).

As National heads into its third term of Government, almost foremost on its legislative agenda will be the implementation of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill, which has already passed its second reading.

This Bill is no more than a thinly-veiled attack on workers, unions and minimum labour standards, and contains a number of provisions that significantly undermine the employment security of the most vulnerable members of our workforce.

The first of these is the removal of an employer’s obligation to conclude collective bargaining in good faith unless there is a genuine reason not to, instead allowing employers to declare that bargaining has reached a “stalemate” and to seek a determination from the Employment Relations Authority that the bargaining has been concluded. Even Peter Dunne, United Future MP and National Party sycophant, raised concerns that such a removal will allow employers to “go through the motions” of collective bargaining without any real intention to form an agreement. This provision discourages the formation of new collective agreements, and has a very real potential to allow employers to claw back the hard won gains fought for by unions through collective bargaining.

Secondly, the Bill removes the provision that new employees are covered by any collective agreement already negotiated for their work for the first 30 days of their employment, a provision expressly designed to give new employees fewer rights than contained in the existing collective agreement, as well as making it more difficult for new employees to understand what is being offered by that collective agreement. Over time, a situation where new employees accept lesser conditions and wages than unionised employees performing the same work incentivises employers to a “race to the bottom” in terms of the wages and conditions offered to each new employee.

Furthermore, the amendments allow employers to opt-out of multi-employer collective agreements where conditions and standards are uniform across workforces (for example DHBs or franchises), removes employees’ rights to scheduled rest and meal breaks, and imposes restrictions on the right to strike, including allowing employers the ability to deduct pay for even small industrial actions. Finally, the Bill removes protections for vulnerable workers in workplaces where the employer frequently changes hands.

Contrary to the National Party’s view that the amendments merely provide ‘clarification’ and extend flexibility, the changes are in fact an effort to claw back workers’ few remaining rights. Both the Human Rights Commission Te Kahui Tika Tangata and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi have submitted that the Bill contravenes New Zealand’s international obligations to protect minimum employment standards and promote collective bargaining, putting us in a similarly embarrassing situation as when we became an international laughing stock with the passing of the Employment Contracts Act 1991.

Such a blatant disregard for international law highlights the true agenda of the recently re-elected National Party Government – union busting and the unapologetic erosion of our most basic labour rights. At a time when collective agreement coverage is at an all-time low (just 17.3% from 2005-2010), it is not merely scare-mongering to say that our Government wants to kill collective bargaining once and for all.

Pleading or appealing to National’s conscience will not stop these attacks. The power of unions and communities lies in taking collective action. Strikes hit union-busting governments and employers the hardest, and wider community mobilisation can also support unions.

Fightback is committed to the MANA Movement, however there are differences in opinion over the nature of the Internet MANA electoral campaign. Ben Peterson (Fightback/MANA Otautahi) offers one perspective.

In the wake of the crushing election defeat, the left in Aotearoa, particularly members of the MANA movement needs to take careful lessons. The Internet Party alliance was a gamble,and it did not pay off. Being open about that is important. But recognising failures cannot be used as an excuse to withdraw into sectarian politics and practices.

The IP alliance was an attempt to share MANA’s political alternative to new layers of people. MANA’s message has a loyal following, but one that is politically isolated from much of the population. The alliance was an attempt to break out of this isolation and to build our movement for change. Unfortunately, this attempt failed. While the vote did slightly increase, and some activists did join Mana who might not have done otherwise, it was not enough. Dotcom was portrayed as a force that discredited MANA’s message. While MANA did not water down its politics, the perception was that a ‘deal’ had been done. This perception combined with the pressure of the entire political establishment combined to defeat Hone in Te Tai Tokerau, and the movement has lost its seat in parliament.

This is a bitter failure, and it is one that we need to reflect on.

But this cannot be used as an excuse to unnecessarily withdraw. Some socialists will use this as an excuse to turn back easier fields, such a small campus groups or activist niches. But this leaves us in exactly the same place as we find ourselves after this failed electoral experiment. One road was not successful in reaching new people and building our movement, the other does not even try to. Both roads will fail to build sustained and articulate movements for change.

Learning the lessons from this campaign will mean doing more, not less. It will mean building stronger and politically clearer projects of the left. The mainstream media played a central role in undermining MANA and distorting our message. We need to build our own media projects to fight the battle of ideas and build our pro people alternatives.

Our pro people message is best shown when people themselves express it. Building movements and taking to the streets articulates the strength of ordinary people. Activists will have to build stronger organisation in our unions and communities. Building larger organisations of fight engaged in struggle can help to build the audience for radical ideas.

The campaign for InternetMANA did show that this is possible. The attendance generated at the roadshows, and the increase in volunteers willing to work for the movement shows there is a basis for an alternative. In hindsight, it was naive to think that this could be translated into an electoral challenge effectively overnight.

But if we can organise and build on these seeds, organisationally and politically, it can be a stepping stone for struggles in the coming months and years. I think socialists need to collectively think about how to respond to these challenges and how we are going to work more effectively, together, going forward.

An initial reaction to the 2014 General Election results from Ian Anderson (Fightback). More analysis to come.

This election was a disaster for the left. Apparently a landslide victory for National, non-votes again matched National votes, underlining the lack of a convincing alternative.

Labour and the Greens lost votes.

The biggest tragedy was Internet MANA’s failure to win any seats as a fighting opposition. Internet MANA was an electoral alliance, designed in part to engage tau iwi and widen the party vote for MANA’s project of rangatiratanga for te pani me te rawakore (formed through betrayals by successive Labour and National governments).

However the electoral campaign was fought and lost not in the party vote campaign, but in MANA’s home turf, Hone’s electorate of Taitokerau.

The establishment parties combined forces to kick Hone out of parliament. Labour chose to run a hard campaign in Taitokerau – happily backed by the Nats, New Zealand First, the Maori Party.

This was the culmination of a  generalised establishment smear campaign against Internet Mana and everyone associated with it. The ‘Mood of the Boardroom’ was that Harawira and Harre are “dangerous radicals,” which as ISO’s Andrew Tait observed, is an endorsement from a socialist perspective. Just as in the Scottish referendum, the boardroom-aligned parties combined to strike fear and terror into voters about the dangers of an alternative which threatened their power.

Make no mistake; the establishment attacked Kim Dotcom because he threatened big studios’ business models, because he backed social democrats and an indigenous-led movement, because he led youth in chanting “Fuck John Key.”

However, the association with Dotcom was also discrediting for legitimate reasons. Dotcom is a profiteer and a misogynist, a man who pays his Filipino workers less than the minimum wage. For any tactical advantages the ‘sugar hit’ seemingly offered, it also sent signals that MANA was engaging in the same old dirty politics. On election night, Dotcom apologised for the impact of his association on MANA.

Those of us who seek to forge a transformative movement of the people have a lot of reflection to do, and a lot of work to do. It was never just about winning seats, and many who hoped for better results knew that perfectly well. Liberation was never going to come through a higher vote, but rather through a combined struggle in every sector. On election day the movement lost a fighter in parliament, but as the only MP arrested fighting for public housing, his mana does not depend on a seat.

Mural in Belfast, photo taken by Sionainn Byrnes.

Poem by Sionainn Byrnes (UC Femsoc, Fightback).

Trigger warning: references to incest

What am I? On A3 sheets of recycled pulp mashed new
Furry ended felts and snapped crayons strewn across the room
I am opportunity, I am hope, I am green ribbons in auburn pigtails

I am marital glue – pasty, gelatinous, salty
I am a human born of expectations failed and fresh
I am what hurting people produce in the temporary solace of their shared dysfunction
I am the love child of belts on skin, welts on skin, wounds melting when skins are shared

Unbeknownst to me I am ‘working class’
I am of terrorist descent
A portent of my danger in years to come
My shrapnel bombs now stained by menses
I am the red scare

And yet if I were a man, I would be more Irish than I am
Because strong men in Belfast – who share my blood – don’t mix real politics with feminism
Don’t take notes from insular girls who live a world away from reality
Green ribbons don’t make you one of us
And what’s this whakapapa you mention?
I hope you know that’s illegal here – cue laughs –
Plus we only speak Gaelic

And somehow I’m the hick?
Because I tried to speak in the language of your own politics
Lesson learnt: don’t try to make struggles and troubles equal

But I am still S – I – O – N – A – I – N – N, Sionainn to you
I am Gaelic on recycled pulp mashed new
True, that in New Zealand I have settled felt-like upon that paper with privilege
Even though spelling errors on official documents erase a part of me I am nonetheless lucky that my face matches the papery palette of power

White craft materials affirm me while sing-song lilts denounce my green ribbons, my lack of sexual inhibitions, my stories that stain the blanket men in ways they never experienced in Long Kesh

I dive into murals, into barbed wire, into taxi drivers who seem only to know the directions to Shankill Road, into the bed of my cousin’s friend Cormac
In order to make whakapapa relevant to me, to them
In order to retrieve something that was lost in emigration
In order to settle the fuck a niece that ensured my mother would never return to Ireland, and which is apparently not illegal

My green ribbons, tied to my lack of sexual inhibitions, tied to my ideological positions

Fuck a niece informed my femininity
To my uncles I say: that’s what I mean by intersectionality
That’s what the return line from Christchurch to Singapore to Frankfurt to Dublin to Belfast means

As a side note I am constantly referred to as Siobhan because it is more recognizable than Sionainn
My mother is Siobhan
I am my mother, and all of her baggage
I am lost in transit
I am running out of room for presents

It occurs to me that I was a child when this began
I was opportunity, I was hope, I was green ribbons in auburn pigtails

What am I? On a pixelated screen some twenty years later
I am a well-read Frankenstina
I am a work in progress, regress, progress, regress
Future, past, Sionainn, Siobhan
Brick by brick by bricolage
Still pasty, glutinous, and salty, though, my glue, my mashed potato mortar, has not yet dried
I am a body politic, and a voice worth hearing in the right context, but one that is trying to learn its place and its limitations

Revelations just five days before the General Election pose serious questions about the nature of the New Zealand government. Whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed details about the GCSB and the rest of the spying apparatus. The revelations on spying reveal that it is a serious threat to the democratic rights of New Zealanders.

Snowden has provided evidence that the NZ ‘intelligence’ (spying) agency, the GCSB, is collecting ‘metadata’. This metadata is collected by the US National Security Agency (NSA) through wiretaps across countries, including in NZ. Records of emails, text messages and phone calls for all NZer’s is kept and can be accessed by X-KEYSCORE, a program developed by the USA.

As such, not only the government and NZ spy agencies, but international spooks, such as Snowden’s former workmates in Hawaii have access to people’s online information.

These revelations are important on several fronts. Firstly, Prime Minister John Key has repeatedly said that mass surveillance is not taking place. Like Dirty Politics, this information raises serious questions about how honest PM Key has been to the NZ people.

Secondly, the GCSB engaged in programs that they knew to be illegal. The law was changed to expand the GCSB’s powers, but this was done after the fact.

This spying hasn’t been used to stop terrorist threats. The surveillance state in NZ hasn’t prevented any terrorist acts. But these powers or similar actions have been used to smash political threats (the Urewera Raids) and economic threats (Dotcom) to the status quo. So while as individuals, the collection of metadata raises concerns about where our personal information may end up, it has documented ramifications for our democratic rights.

Hager’s Dirty Politics showed that National’s strategy is to maintain power through whatever means necessary and increase the influence of big corporations. This right wing agenda seeks to minimise the amount of people involved in politics. National take their place in a long history of big money and their capitalist parliamentary formations working to make everyday people feel disempowered and disconnected from mainstream politics.

Responding to this is necessary. An important part of the fight against the surveillance state will be removing elected representatives. The September 20 election is an important opportunity to both remove the Key government from power, and to elect important fighters into parliament, such as Annette Sykes, John Minto and Hone Harawira.

Giving John Key the arse will be an important start, but it will leave the GCSB in place. Even if we succeed in removing the GCSB, it won’t stop the corporations and monied interests that they serve. But by building the movement against these injustices we can build a power that counters the 1%.

As Laila Harre said at the Moment of Truth, we need to go ‘house by house and street by street’, and convince people to demand greater protections on our democratic rights. When so much power is concentrated in the hands of so few, behind closed doors, only the power of the people can challenge it.

See also

• Mass surveillance and sexual violence: The difference between Snowden and Assange