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Defending public services

2010-05-16T17:53:00.002+12:00

First Published in SFWU magazine Our Voice

Water and electricity provision; road, rail, air and sea transport; hospitals and schools; facilities for sports, leisure and cultural activities; communications networks; police stations, courts and prisons; council and parliament buildings – these are all what is called “public infrastructure”.

These facilities and services are crucial for the well-being and proper functioning of a civilised society and they have mainly been provided by the state in the past.

However, since the 1980s, much of the public infrastructure has been privatised around the world. A global infrastructure market has emerged through which huge private trans-national companies (TNCs) can make massive profits – companies like Macquarie Bank and Goldman Sachs.

In April, the SFWU hosted a visit from Dexter Whitfield, a UK expert on the privatisation of public assets. He has written about, and fights against, the latest version of privatisation that goes under the name of “Public-Private Partnership” (PPP). A PPP can also go under other names like “Private Finance Initiative” (PFI) and “Strategic Service-delivery Partnership” (SSP).

While he was here, Dexter spoke to trade unionists in Auckland, Hamilton and Wellington. His talks were based on his latest book called Global Auction of Public Assets.

PPPs are the latest way finance companies and private equity and pension funds are investing in public infrastructure. The private sector provides finance and management; it designs, builds and operates projects like roads and hospitals. They expect a very healthy return on these investments of 15%-plus profit.

Dexter says the excuse governments make is that the private sector can do things more efficiently and cheaper than the state (i.e. the government). But when you add in the profit margin it is clear that money that could be spent on hospitals and schools is instead going to line the pockets of the super-rich.

It’s not even true that the private sector more often build projects on time and in budget. Dexter’s research shows their record is no better than the public sector. And when private sector projects fail, the public sector has to pick up the tab. He has identified $US500 billion worth of PPP failures internationally.

Helen Clark’s Labour Government had to buy back Air New Zealand and Tranz Rail because the private sector operators were going broke and we could not allow our national air and rail transport infrastructure to collapse.

But this National Government is going to use a PPP model to build the new men’s prison in South Auckland. It is talking about doing the same for school buildings and other public infrastructure here in New Zealand.

Dexter talks about the crazy situation in the UK where a school built and operated under a PPP closed down because no one would go to it, and yet the 35-year contract still has to be paid out to the private investor.

He points out that tax-cutting, low-spending governments can never properly fund infrastructure development. Those promoting PPPs manipulate the figures to make the private option look better and cheaper.

PPPs are funded by raising money against the security of future income streams from service users who, Dexter says, “are saddled with ever-increasing tolls and charges”. The illusion is created that the financing is privately provided when it is only a loan against future spending from taxes and service charges.

Private companies also pick up lucrative consultant contracts to provide analysis and planning of provisions of public needs: analysis that inevitably maximises private profits and minimises private risk. PriceWaterHouseCooper is a good example of these consulting firms.

Workers in the public sector suffer as private contracting replaces secure employment. Pay and conditions come under attack, Dexter says.

Worst of all is the creation of a market in the buying in selling of the public infrastructure loans and shares, in which Dexter says schools and hospitals are sold like commodities to infrastructure and private equity funds and companies.

Infratil is one such company that operates here in New Zealand. It owns the majority of the public-transport bus services in Auckland and Wellington. It owns Wellington Airport and it also recently purchased the chain of Shell service stations. As a private company it can be bought and sold. The Act-National super-city plans for Auckland will open up the Port of Auckland, Auckland Airport and probably Auckland’s water and waste-water services to private investment and ownership.

Dexter argues that vital public needs should be provided for transparently and democratically. There is a public sector alternative to private-profit-making methods of infrastructure development. Public provision needs to be publicly planned, designed, built, financed and operated.

Our union should insist that a public or in-house option is put up whenever a contract comes up for renewal in the public sector, for example for cleaning services in a school or hospital.

He urges unions and other civil and community organisations to mobilise the widespread opposition to PPPs and privatisation.

Dexter works for a non-profit organisation that contracts its services to trade unions and community groups who are fighting against the PPP form of privatisation of public infrastructure. Its website has more information at www.european-services-strategy.org.uk/outsourcing-library .

Seats a Supercity Smokescreen

2009-08-26T07:59:00.002+12:00

The furore about Maori seats on the new Auckland 'supercity' council, while a vital issue in its own right, has served to create a smokescreen around many other equally or even more important issues.
The prime one is the make-up, size and election of councillors overall. If a system of councillors elected from wards based on electorates or areas of even larger size, plus a number of at large councillors elected across the whole supercity is instituted this will lock in a regime of the business and wealthy elite who will rule a third of the country from a virtually unchallengeable position.
The politics of local bodies is well-known with the richer suburbs always turning out in greater numbers than those in the poorer areas. This was recognised with all the councils facing abolition having an existing system of election of councillors by ward and no at large councillors.
The supercity, if it goes ahead in the form that seems likely, will turn the clock back decades with its inherently undemocratic consititution.
This is the issue on which we should be concentrating our political fire. This, and the issue of privatising of the present council-owned assets like the shares in the airport and the port itself, were the main concerns expressed at the public meetings I attended when the supercity was first mooted. These issues have been subsumed under the Maori seats controversy.
In the end the council can decided to incude Maori seats under the existing local-body legislation. The wider questions of the make-up of the council and the sucurity of publicly-owned assets is the one we need to urgently address now.

Long live the commons!

2009-07-03T16:41:00.004+12:00

Tariana Turia believes that Labour’s seabedandforeshore legislation was the "the single biggest land nationalisation statute enacted in New Zealand history". Would that the last Labour government had travelled the nationalisation road even further. Re-nationalisation of ACC, Air New Zealand and the railways could have fruitfully been complemented with full government ownership and/or regulation of the vital telecommunication and energy industries.

But the seabedandforeshore legislation was no nationalisation measure. It was the enshrinement of that which already existed; namely it retained the seabedandforeshore, the beaches and the coastal waters of AotearoaNewZealand, as part of the commons of this country. Our town and city open spaces, the National Parks and marine parks, the rivers, the lakes, our coastal waters and our beaches belong to nobody; that is they belong to us all. The seabedandforeshore legislation passed by the New Zealand parliament ensured that particular part of the commons remained in common ownership. Repeal of that law will be huge step towards the private ownership and commercial exploitation of our beaches and coastal waters.

Maori claim customary rights over the seabedandforeshore. Despite all the declamations and protests about “confiscation”, Labour’s controversial legislation preserved customary rights to the seabedandforeshore. East Coast Maori have already had theirs recognised under the law. What will happen to these rights if the law is repealed?

Despite all the assurances that Maori do not seek private property rights over the seabedandforeshore, the Maori Party and the Ministerial Review Committee that has just reported to the government clearly take the term “customary rights” to mean property rights i.e. privatisation: Or, in lieu of that, massive compensation payments.

Corporate Maoridom cannot wait to get its hands on this potentially lucrative asset. The ramifications of a private-ownership precedent in this arena of the remaining commons will quickly become clear. Other corporate interests will soon get in on the act. The example of the destruction of the New Zealand fishing industry, now largely in those very same hands, provides a stark example. Ask the workers made redundant at Sealords in Nelson as jobs are transferred to cheap-labour, off-shore factory ships what they think of tribal capitalism. Money is no respecter of good intentions. It knows no tribal boundaries.

Long live the public ownership (“nationalisation”, if you will) of the essential economic, social and recreational assets of AotearoaNewZealand!

Skyla - born earlier today

2009-03-13T21:34:00.002+13:00

Skyla - 9lb 8ozs of joy (or trouble) - born 9.15am, March 13, 2009.
First child of my eldest daughter Carissa - 2nd grandchild of Len (proud grandfather).

Join the Internet Blackout - Protest Against Guilt Upon Accusation Laws in NZ — Creative Freedom Foundation (creativefreedom.org.nz)

2009-02-18T10:47:00.002+13:00

Join the Internet Blackout - Protest Against Guilt Upon Accusation Laws in NZ — Creative Freedom Foundation (creativefreedom.org.nz)

Oil company rip-off

2008-12-16T10:29:00.004+13:00

The four major oil companies who jointly own New Zealand’s only oil refinery at Marsden Point use their ‘monopolistic’ position to screw the minority shareholders of the refinery out of half the profits they would otherwise be due.

BP, Mobil, Shell and Caltex own nearly 75% of the shares of the NZ Refining Company. They siphon off millions of dollars from the company in a “discount” arrangement which means last year they paid $286 million in processing fees instead of the "gross fee" of $430 million they should have been liable for: a discount of $144 million or 33%.

Up to August this year they have jointly paid only $US149 million instead of the “gross” amount of $US311.8 million they should have coughed up: that is an even greater discount of 48%.

The gross fee is calculated as the amount it would cost to refine the oil into petrol and diesel in Singapore and ship it to New Zealand from there. The costs of refining in New Zealand would undoubtedly be higher than those in Singapore, with its economies of scale, so even the so-called gross fee would be a cheap rate.

Those that lose out from the oil companies' sweetheart deal for themselves are the minority owners of the refinery shares. The 3,000 small shareholders have found a voice in retired banker Dom Kloosterman who calculated the figures above to quantify the “great injustice” done to them by this siphoning off of profits by the oil companies.

Kloosterman calculated that last year’s pre-tax profits should have been $293 million instead of the $149 million that was actually recorded. The $144 million difference was pocketed by the oil companies.

The processing discount arrangement has been in place since 1995. The oil companies have the refinery literally over a barrel because there are no other customers. Annual reviews to the arrangement have brought no real change.

The anti-competitive, oligarchal behaviour of the oil companies is legendary as witnessed by us all with the convenient price setting mechanisms in operation at the petrol pump. New Zealand once had an independent oil company owned by Todd Brothers which, from the 1930s, imported petrol from Russia. This was marketed under the Europa brand until the 1970s when BP bought the company and shut it down.

SFWU in South Auckland - Election 08

2008-12-15T14:46:00.007+13:00

The election turnout in Mangere was down 3614 from the 2005 figure (which was 3945 up from 2002). Similar results occurred in Manurewa and Manukau East, with the turnout dropping back to the 2002 levels. It was the turnout drop that cost Labour votes. The National vote hardly increased at all in Mangere (3984 in 2005 to 4120 in 2008 - up a mere 226).

In Manurewa the National vote was also static while the drop in turnout of 4669 was reflected in the drop in the Labour party vote (down 4581). Philip Field's Pacific Party took 909 party votes in Manurewa which otherwise would probably gone to Labour (or maybe other 'Christian' Parties).

In Manukau East, boundary changes brought the strong Labour area of Otahuhu into the electorate which ameliorated the Labour drop. Turnout was down 5707 but the Labour vote was only down 1963 votes. The boundary change was also reflected in the drop in National's vote from 10219 to 6579 (down 3640). Most of this difference went to Labour. The Pacific Party scored 1219 party votes.

It is not really worth looking at comparisons of the Maungakiekie vote because of its change in boundary. The vote was up 3822 in 2005 and up again 4591 in 2008, reflecting the greater National territory now included. Carol Beaumont did well to limit National to a 1030-vote win on the party vote. She had a lot of help from the unions.

The biggest drop in the number of party votes for Labour in any electorate was in Mangere. While maintaining the top percentage for Labour of 61%, the number of party votes was down 5,454. This was because the turnout was down by 3614, and on top of that the Pacific Party took 2683 party-votes. Mangere was Field's HQ and his party had a strong presence in the electorate (aided by large amounts of campaign regalia and many hoardings and signs that would have cost a fortune).

If it had not been for the intervention of the SFWU in the Mangere campaign the result could have been much worse. The local Labour Party was having difficulty making an impact in the electorate. The SFWU supported and initiated street actions and cavalcades. It also helped with targeted-mail delivery and leafleting, as did other unions.

The SFWU gave the campaign a visibility to match that of the flags and flea-market presence of Field's supporters. SFWU red flags, as well as campaign signs and red t-shirts, alongside Labour's and Sio's, became the face of Labour in Mangere.

There is a need strengthen the Labour Party in the South Auckland seats. There is an urgent need to organise an effective network of union member volunteers in these seats.

It is apparent from the extensive election phone-survey and work-site visits conducted by the SFWU during its election campaign, that, while its members are by and large instinctively pro-Labour, their level of political consciousness is generally not well developed.

Unions should not “talk politics” with their members only at Election time. The members deserve more respect. Education and participation in the political process should be on-going.

Election result - lesson for Labour

2008-12-15T12:40:00.007+13:00

The problem was two-fold: 5-6% of the middle-ground voters swung back to National, and the Labour message (and record) did not inspire a greater turnout from the working class.

Unsatisfactory Labour Party organisation in many of the working class seats was at least partly responsible for the latter factor.

The 74.7% turnout of all eligible voters in 2008 was down from 76.5% in 2005. This 1.8% drop in turnout represented 56,500 less votes. (The equivalent figures for turnout of enrolled voters were 78.4% in 2008 compared with 80.3% in 2005 - a drop of 1.9%.)

In 2005 it was the extra turnout in the safe Labour seats (like those in South Auckland) that was the difference between winning and losing for Labour. In November's election the slump back to 2002 levels of turnout, combined with the swing to National, meant the end of nine-years of Labour-led government.

Jack Vowles, New Zealand’s pre-eminent election expert, concluded in a 2002 article that the decline in voter turnout evident since the heyday of the 1938-45 period (when over 90% of all eligible voters would get to the polling booths), and the brief revival in 1984 (over 85% turnout), is a result of “weaker party identifications and reduced party campaign contact”.

Political parties, and particularly the Labour Party, have lost their organic connection with the people who make up the electorate that votes them in or out. They no longer have as much direct personal contact with the voters as used to be the case.

The statistical and survey data presented by Vowles revealed that better “organisational mobilisation” by political parties results in higher voter turnout. The “recovery of party organisations and the revival of individual loyalties to political parties” is the key.

I was working on the election campaign as the Political Co-ordinator for the Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) during the months leading up to the election. Our campaign showed that over 80% of SFWU members supported Labour. The SFWU has maintained a sense of loyalty to the Labour Party among its members that is not mirrored elsewhere in society, possibly not even in other Labour-affiliated unions.

The Labour Party needs to revive itself as a grass-roots mass working class party if it wants to increase its voter turnout in its heartland seats. The Party Branch and other organisational structures have to become the means of reaching tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, who need to be brought up to a level of party loyalty and identification that matches that already attained in the SFWU. Unions like the SFWU can be the crucial catalyst that enables this to begin to happen.

What's your bet on the election result?

2008-10-21T19:19:00.002+13:00

I say:
39% Labour (48 seats)
6% Greens (7 seats)
5% NZ1st (6 seats)
1% Progressives (1 seat)
43% National (53 seats)
1.2% Act (1 seat)
0.5% Dunne (1 seat)
2% Maori Party (5 seats)
2.3% Others:
Making a 122 seat Parliament.
Make a government out of that!
Someone will.
Labour could if the Greens and NZ 1st come to the party.

Jill Ovens - speech to combined union rally Manukau - 27 August 2008

2008-09-18T09:10:00.002+12:00

It's great to see so many workers - members of the SFWU and EPMU as well as other unions. We have shown today that when we stand together, when we fight alongside each other, we will be heard!
We're experiencing today the power of workers united; the power of the union and isn't it great?
In the next few weeks the future of New Zealand will be decided by you and all those others who take the time to cast their vote.
The Election this year will be closely fought - much closer than the polls predict, much closer than the media suggests. This is because they represent the interests of big business and they underestimate the power we hold as workers, as family members and as members of our communities.
The choice is stark.
Do we continue with a worker-friendly Government that works for us?
OR do they take control?
Do we entrust John Key with our future, our kids' welfare, our health care, our education system?
Is that what we want?
(NO)
Can we stop that?
(YES WE CAN)
Under Labour we have Kiwi Bank, KiwiSaver, and Kiwi Rail: all owned by us Kiwis, all run for our benefit.
Under National, instead of Kiwi, we will get the "Key Way" which means ALL these will be sold off. They will all end up in the hands of Key's rich mates; to make them even richer.
Is that what we want?
(NO)
Can we stop that?
(YES WE CAN)
This Government works for us. This Government put in $16 million to pay every cleaner, every kitchen worker, every orderly, from Invercargill to Kaitaia at least $14.62 an hour.
That's why when we asked SFWU members at AGMs held all round the country, "Do you want our Union to actively campaign to return a Labour-led Government?", 84% of them said "Yes!"
The Labour Party was built by the trade unions. It is the only mass workers' party in New Zealand. It is our party and it is up to us to make sure it remains our party ... in Government.
That's because, while this Government has delivered much for workers, there is more work to be done.
We need stronger collective bargaining rights across whole industries; like the old Awards.
We need a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
We need to deal with freeloaders.
And we need the right to strike when a Collective Agreement is in force and the employer uses restructuring or the threat of outsourcing to force cuts in conditions, like Air NZ did.
Will National extend our right to strike? Will they stop freeloaders? Will they get us $15 an hour? Will they strengthen collective bargaining?
NO WAY.
National is the party of big business. They want to cut workers' rights, especially the rights of new workers. That's what their 90 Day Bill was about and they still plan to do it.
We have an important duty to do over the next eight or nine weeks. We need to make sure our workmates and our whanau are on the Roll.
We need to talk to everyone we know about why it's important to defend our rights at work and all the gains of this Government. That way you don't just have your vote; you get to multiply your influence. If 5000 workers here today talk to 5 people each, that's 25,000 and if those people speak to 5 each, that's 150,000 votes - and that's an extra 6 MPs in Parliament working for us.
That will make the difference in the election
It is our job to mobilise everyone who wants to keep what we have won in the last nine years, everyone who wants to go forward.
We have to turn out on Election Day in numbers never seen before; in Mangere, in Manukau East, in Manurewa, Maungakiekie, Papakura and Botany; to be there in our hundreds of thousands, to vote for "Fairness at Work", to vote for "Workers' Rights", to vote for OUR Government.
Then this country will see the power of the workers; the power of the people.
Who's got the power?
[We've got the power.]
What kind of power?
[Union power!]
It's in our hands.
When you cast your vote on Election Day, vote for workers' rights!

Which side are the Greens on?

2008-06-08T14:20:00.002+12:00

After the Green Party conference last weekend, workers are entitled to ask: Which side are the Greens on?
The Green conference decided not to decide until later which of the two main parties, Labour and National, they would support in a coalition government after this year’s general election. In other words, they have not ruled-out that they may support National instead of Labour.
Union members, and workers in general, would not agree that this is an issue you can be neutral or undecided about. They want to know which side the Greens are on: the side of the workers and their party, Labour; or the side of the bosses and their party, National.

Labour “disgusting”, says Norman
Russell Norman, the Green Party co-leader, lumped both Labour and National into the same basket and said they were both “disgusting” and working together in a Grand Coalition, at least on the issue of climate change.
Norman told the Green conference that Labour had backed-down on measures to stop global warming “merely to save their skin come election time.” He was referring to the Government’s decision to delay introducing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) for transport and not increase petrol tax at this point in time.
When she announced this, Helen Clark made it clear that the delay in including petrol in the ETS was due to the financial pressures on households and businesses and that rising oil prices were reducing petrol use without the need for further petrol-tax increases.
She said the Government had always said it would do something to assist "vulnerable consumers" when they were hit with higher energy bills due to the ETS.
Russell Norman said that he was “particularly disgusted at Labour, the party that was courageous last century in creating the welfare state, in opposing playing sport with whites-only teams and in standing up to the United States to make New Zealand nuclear free. … Now, with the biggest moral issue of our time, Labour has lost its guts. Principle has surrendered to politics.”
Workers might say that rather than losing “its guts”, Labour has done the right thing by them in not increasing petrol prices any further than they already are. I know of people who are being forced to walk many kilometres to work because they cannot afford petrol for their cars. Their bosses, of course, can still afford to drive.

Oil company profits
A recent article on the internet by Greg Palast, the author of a book on war and oil, showed how the big oil companies have deliberately restricted the flow of oil from Iraq since 1928 in order to keep the world price of oil as high as possible. The American war on Iraq is just another rung in the ladder of this on-going policy.
Oil companies have reaped huge windfall profits from the recent price-hikes. Chevron, America’s second biggest oil company, announced a $US18.7 billion profit for 2007 while Exxon Mobil scored the biggest corporate profit in US history, $US40.6 billion.
In New Zealand, the Automobile Association says the profits made by oil companies BP and Shell are “almost obscene”. BP posted a 48 percent increase in the first quarter of 2008, with a profit of $8.5 billion, while Shell's profit jumped 12 percent to $10.1 billion dollars.
AA spokesman Mike Noon said it does not sit well with motorists to see profits that are bigger than telephone numbers, particularly when motorists in New Zealand are hurting so much.
Are the Greens “disgusted” at this sort of profit-gouging by oil companies? They should be!

Need to see policies before deciding?
Norman said the Greens had decided to assess other parties polices and programmes before determining which parties they will work with after the election to form a government. The Greens say they have not seen all the parties’ policies, so they cannot decide yet.
But this is a cop out!
Labour bought back the railways. Do the Greens support that? Of course they do. Would National have done it? No they would not have: they support private ownership of key economic assets.
Under Labour’s leadership, the government brought in a 4th week of annual leave, time-and-a-half pay and a day-in-lieu for working public holidays, cheaper doctors visits and prescription charges, 14-weeks paid parental leave, zero-interest on student loans, 20-hours free child care for 3 and 4 year-olds, extra sick leave, Kiwi Bank, and Kiwi Saver.
They have also legislated for compulsory meal breaks, protected vulnerable workers when there is a change of employer, and before the recent budget tax-cuts had already given tax-cuts for families with children through the “Working for families” package.
And without Labour in government, would SFWU hospital workers have won their big pay increase? No they would not.
Under Labour, the minimum wage has increased every year and is now $12 an hour. This is a 70% increase in eight years.
Crucial for those of us in the trade union movement, Labour repealed the Employment Contracts Act and gave unions the right to organise and bargain collectively.
Would National have done any of these things? The answer is; “No”.
Are these gains safe under a future National government? The answer is again: “No”.
The Greens have supported most, if not all of the good things Labour-led governments have done for workers over the last nine years. Why would they not continue to support Labour? Why don’t they say they will?

Stand together to defeat National
It is clear that for workers (the poor, and the low-paid especially) there is a big difference between Labour and National.
The Greens say they stand for social justice; if that is true then they cannot support National.
On the environment, it is Labour, not National, that has taken up the global warming issue and done something about reducing carbon emissions; in the face of vehement opposition from National.
The Greens should stop posturing and give Labour the support it deserves and needs. The Greens should take a strong stand against National and its big-business, anti-worker, anti-environment agenda.
We have to stand together to defeat National.

SEIU - Centralism trumps Democracy by Herman Benson

2008-04-11T07:35:00.004+12:00

From Benson's Union Democracy Blog

On "democratic" centralism: Stern's illusion and democracy's nightmare
By Herman Benson
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union and labor's latest celebrity, seems to be resurrecting a neglected ideology: the concept of a militarized "democratic" centralism. For him and his followers, the hope of imposing it upon a newly invigorated labor movement may be a utopian illusion. For union democracy, it is a nightmare. Hints, but only hints, of his underlying philosophy were implicit in his schemes for reorganizing his own SEIU and the whole labor movement. But its trend has become manifest as he is apparently moving to crush critics on the west coast, impose a repressive trusteeship over the 140,000-member United Healthcare Workers-West, and cut down Sal Rosselli, its president.

In February this year, Rosselli resigned from the SEIU International Executive Committee so that he could feel free to criticize what he charged was the "undemocratic practices we have experienced first hand." The SEIU convention was coming up at the end of May. "In good conscience," he wrote, "I can longer allow simple majorities of the Executive Committee to outweigh my responsibility to our members to act out of principle on these critically important matters. I say this with no ill will, but with a deep sense of conviction." [Rosselli to Stern 2/9/08]

They differ over bargaining strategy, over the role of the international and locals, over the right of the membership to veto the merger and dissolution of local unions, over whether to go easy on employers to get a foot in the door for unionism. The issues in dispute are not trivial, and the charges and countercharges are correspondingly harsh. Rosselli accuses the Stern people of "company unionism" and "top-down organizing" to beef up membership statistics by any means whatsoever. They denounce him for sabotaging the SEIU drive to organize, for falsifying the record, for hypocritically benefiting from policies he now derogates.

This is no idle talk at a cocktail party; it is a serious difference over policy. He attacks vigorously; they reply in kind. So far, routine. That's what democracy is for, to allow an outlet even for the bitterest of debates. But the problem is that Rosselli's critics go beyond denouncing him for criticizing. They would make his very right to criticize illicit. And, because they are armed with organizational power, they would resolve the dispute not simply by democratic decision but by suppression. The irony is that they wrap autocratic intentions in the flag of a democratic "majority". Rosselli, they insist, must go along with the "majority." But a majority in power can always take care of itself. The essence of democracy is to preserve an orderly means of opposing a majority.

In replying to its self-posed question, "What is real union democracy?" The SEIU's anti-Rosselli web site, "Fact Checker," pandering to the bias against any genuine spirit of democracy asks, "Is democracy abiding by majority rule just when you like the outcome but ignoring it when you don't?" But democracy, as we practice it in America, cherishes precisely the right of a minority to oppose the majority. "Fact Checker" continues in line with what has become official SEIU ideology, "Is it democracy when 11 out of 12 workers in an industry are not even at the table?" What they mean by this muddle is what they have suggested before more clearly: members must abstain from exercising their union democracy until most workers, now nonunion, are organized. By that standard, union democracy must wait patiently for a long time, perhaps forever.

They use the boilerplate language available to any overbearing union official annoyed anytime by any critical dissident. Mary Kay Henry, international executive SEIU vice president, writes in the course of a long attack on Rosselli [Calitics.com website 3/25/08], "he is giving employers ammunition to use against workers..."

Three members of the SEIU international executive committee found Rosselli's decision to speak out impermissible. "Just as we expect members of our local unions to unite behind a common strategy after there has been a full debate," they wrote, "and a majority has reached a democratic decision, we as leaders must do the same." There it is. Once a "democratic decision" is reached everyone, members and leaders, must swallow their opinions, keep quiet, and toe the line. We discuss, we decide, we unite, you shut up, we remain a fighting force. If you open your mouth against the line we discipline you. (How some might love to apply this principle to the Iraq War! The irony in this case is that, as they wrote, the SEIU was on the eve of an international convention to open in three months. If now is not the time for that democratic discussion, when?) [Regan et al to Rosselli 2/11/08]

That same tone now permeates life in the SEIU. In 2006, as the SEIU was about to run a membership referendum on creating those huge California megalocals, Stern turned the union into one advocacy monolith to guarantee a favorable outcome. He ordered, "All local unions, union officers, and assigned staff must fully cooperate in the implementation and transition process to assure that this decision is carried out in an orderly fashion... No union funds, resources or staff may be used to oppose, interfere or undermine in any way the IEB determination in this matter." (The referendum carried, but according to one report, only 16% of the membership voted.)

In the same spirit, applicants for appointment to the executive board of the new 45,000-member Local 521 had to sign an oath of loyalty to the union administration, including these assurances: "I will not ... engage in personal attacks on other members, staff, or leaders at unions meetings, in the press, or other literature, or venues". Once a decision has been made, I will support that decision to members and others... I will not ... take ... legal action against the union for actions they take in their legal role as leaders as long as I remain a member of this appointed board or committee." Come weal, come woe; high or low, no one can remain in any official union position and ever ever act against any misdeeds by other officials.

Here then is how the labor movement would operate if the system being implanted by Stern could take root and flourish: A policy is adopted, say at the international convention, the union's highest constitutional authority --- for the sake of argument we make the generous assumption that it has been a "democratic" decision. Then for the next five years until the next convention (four years for the SEIU) every union institution and representative, must fall in line. No criticism permitted: every hired staff employee, every elected officer in every local and in the international, every steward appointed or elected, every editor and PR spokesperson, every executive board member of every local must propagate the vaunted "democratic" decision. None can oppose it or publicly express misgivings on pain of swift dismissal. Stern envisions a monolithic disciplined army of thousands, all spouting the politically correct official line. After five years, during which everyone sang the same notes in harmony, comes the next convention; and at last, presumably, democracy's brief moment has arrived.

Proceedings at the convention, as always, are carefully manipulated by the administration. Under the Stern regimen, those in power will already have been safely protected against criticism for the previous five years. If, at the convention, venturesome critics are unusually resilient, if they are not demoralized by five years of deadly uniformity, if they are lucky enough to get the floor and keep it before the question is called, they might get five minutes in the sun, maybe even seven or ten. Then it is all over. The delegates, people who knew how to stay on top during those five silent years, adopt the new official policy. The period for "democratic" debate is over. Time to unite and fight and bite your tongue. Five new silent years loom.

But is this bureaucrat's dream likely to come alive? Perhaps in part, but never in full panoply. By now, websites and the Internet afford too many ways for members and officers alike to evade the proscriptions on democracy. Federal law offers some protection for civil liberties for members in their unions. Stern will never have full scope for the fulfillment of his dream; nevertheless, as we see in California, federal law and the union constitution still provide ample means for chilling dissent.

More resources on Change to Win and SEIU:
See Benson's Union Democracy Blog for several articles
Healthcare leader raps Stern; quits SEIU board
SEIU rearranges 600,000 into mega locals
Debate on Union Democracy and Change to Win
If you can't woo 'em, sue 'em! An ingenious twist in punishing dissent in the SEIU
SEIU's Unite to Win blog reviewed.
Local 509 asks questions about democracy in the SEIU
New Unity Partnership:Sweeney Critics would bureaucratize to organize.
Service Employees: Mass. merger in Local 888.
Benson's Union Democracy blog.
Student Labor Activists support union democracy.
Articles on the Labor Notes site on NUP from various sources.
See UDR articles on the Carpenters (UBCJA) for case studies in merger and bureaucratization.
Several articles on the New Unity Partnership are available on the BC Carpenters website.
Find articles on the consolidation of power in the Carpenters union on the main UDR page.
An exchange on union democracy between Herman Benson and Steve Fraser, on the Laborers.org website (click on Fraser's name for a link to his article)
Links to rank-and-file websites in the NUP unions: Carpenters, Hotel and Restaurant Employees, Laborers, Needle Trades (UNITE), Service Employees (building services, public employees).

Hone's Tangi by Sally James

2008-02-05T16:52:00.000+13:00

Len Richards & I intended to make our way leisurely to Kaikohe to be on the marae for the last night and the funeral the following day on Wednesday but on Tuesday morning it was announced on the 7am news that Hone Tuwhare was to be interred that afternoon, the same day as Ed Hillary's state funeral. We left an hour an a half later after a plate of bacon and eggs. Just as well as it was a long time before we ate again.
It was a sad wee tangi with a LOT of god-bothering. He had four ministers, one made no mention of him specifically, two said they knew nothing about him, only what they had learned the night before from the speeches on the Marae, but there was a Tuhoe guy, Wayne Tekaawa who had trained in Dunedin who knew Hone well. Nice guy.
It said on the news there were 150 people. There may have been before the burial but it was more like sixty after the ceremony.
No one at the marae knew the Tuwhares as they had left such a long time ago. One of the local speakers even said “apparently he was a great poet" and most of them read poems about god that they had written or came from from other sources (like the Psalms).
The house was divided more or less equally: the mainly Pakeha visitors on one side and the local Maori on the other and the family at the end where the body lay in an open casket. It was problems with the body in the heat that apparently prompted the bringing forward of the funeral.
Hone’s son Rob said many times that this was the end of the hikoi (from Dunedin where 500 people farewelled Hone) and that it was his granddaughter Moana that insisted that he come home. It just did not feel like his home though to a mere visitor.
At one point Pat Hohepa welcomed newcomers to the marae but with no waiata and we were told there should have been two speakers. In my mind Hone is as important as Ed Hillary and yet they could not get another speaker for him.
There was no mention of his being a boilermaker or a socialist. The local people concentrated on religion.
It seemed to be the original family taking him home: Jean (McCormack), Hone’s wife from 1948 until around 1970, their three sons (Rewi, and the twins Robert and Andrew) along with their families.
Jean’s younger brother Duncan told Len that he had no time for the arty people and that Jean had not collaborated in the writing of Hone's biography because she wanted to maintain her privacy.
At the graveside Len sprinkled some dirt on the coffin and called out: “Hey Hone, have a beer with Marx, Lenin & Mao when you get there” – a reference to the last verse of Hone’s poem Old Comrade written on the death of Jim Jamieson.
Two women approached the grave together and said: “This is for you Shirley” as they sprinkled ashes, presumably of Shirley Grace, into the grave. “Together at last,” they said.
Ngahuia [previously Volkerling] was probably the only representative of the Maori Writers & Artists. Dun Mihaka was there, as was Tame Iti as a pall bearer although he did not come in for the religious bit.
As we wound towards the cemetery I did notice one woman came out to watch but that night in the pub we spoke to a couple of blokes from Dargaville who work with dairy cows (thousands of them) and they had never heard of Hone.
He did not want to be buried up north and yet there he was taken to be amongst strangers. According to Janet Hunt’s biography, Hone Tuwhare, published in 1998, his wish was to be cremated and his ashes scattered on the waters of the four harbours he had most connection with – Hokianga, Waitemata, Whanganui-a-Tara and Otakou.

Farewell to an old comrade (Hone Tuwhare)

2008-02-04T16:02:00.000+13:00

Len Gale farewells Hone Tuwhare, his old comrade and workmate at the Otahuhu Railway Workshops.

PEOPLE'S POET 1922---2008
Hone Tuwhare was a part of the fragile bridge that exists between workers in struggle, the political left movement and their allies, art workers.
Hone laboured alongside his father on market gardens as a child. He had little schooling, yet he scored well in his trade exams as an apprentice boilermaker at the Otahuhu Railway Workshops.
That’s where he received his grounding in Marxism, where he also met Gorky and Steinbeck as well as Lenin. Otahuhu was his university. Towards the end of WWII Hone and his mates joined the army and eventually served in the J-force, the Western allies' occupation force in Japan, where he found a role as singer/lyric writer.
Hone went on to work and learn on Hydro construction sites in the Waikato. He ventured into the Pacific, teaching fellow Polynesians welding and trade unionism.
Gradually his talents were recognised. The publication of his first book of poems, No Ordinary Sun, put academia on notice. Here was a grass roots talent!
At public functions Hone never felt at ease with the upper crust and he often clowned around to send them up.
Hone severed his membership with the NZ Communist Party at the confusing time of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, yet he remained a Marxist to the end.
Janet Hunt’s biography Hone Tuwhare is a quite wonderful book about a unique man who could laugh in prose and in verse at the trials of a lifetime, who was at home in both the Maori and the Pakeha worlds. Hone was a taonga that comes this way so rarely.
Len Gale.

Backwoods terror?

2007-10-29T09:34:00.000+13:00

Anti-terror laws are a legislative response to a political problem. The New Zealand anti-terror laws seem motivated more by extraneous concerns about mollifying the demands of the US ruling elite (themselves a group responsible for more civilian killings by military violence than any designated terrorist group could ever hope to effect) than by any real threat of terrorism inside our country.
As we all know, the only terrorist bombing that has taken a life within the borders of Aotearoa was the Rainbow Warrior sinking executed by the French secret service. Notoriously, neither our own spy agencies nor our putative allies' spy agencies gave any warning of this outrage.
So what of the "anti-terrorist raids" of recent weeks? Have we developed a home-grown terrorist culture with individuals or groups willing and able to wreak violent destruction on the social and material fabric of our relatively peaceful society? The jury is still out on this, but what is clear is that new anti-terror laws were not necessary to deal with any such real or perceived threat. The police already had sufficient powers to deal with arms and conspiratorial offences.
The greatest threat posed by the new 'anti-terror' laws is to otherwise legitimate political action by opponents (and defenders) of the status quo. The Council of Trade Unions has called for the repeal of the anti-terrorism laws and is right to express its concern. The laws will be able to be used against those taking action to disrupt economic activity to force a government to act in some particular way. This would clearly threaten union strike action against, say, the reintroduction of anti-union laws along the lines of the Employment Contracts Act of the 1990s.
The political groups and individuals targeted in the recent raids are a disparate gaggle of anarchists, Maori-sovereignty campaigners, peace and rights activists along with at least one possibly deranged or disturbed individual. Are they terrorists? Well if we are talking about Al Qaeda or the IRA, the French DGSE or the CIA, then no, there is no comparison. However, was there a likelihood that someone or some sub-group within the targeted and arrested people was capable of and planning armed or violent action that could have injured or killed people? This is, as yet, an open question.
In the relatively recent past, activist groups and individuals have utilised explosive devices for political purposes in New Zealand. Tim Shadbolt relates in his book Bullshit and Jelly Beans the story of "The Bombers" who carried out a campaign of thirteen bomb attacks on "military bases and conservative establishments throughout the country". Their first attack was on the Waitangi flagpole in 1969. This small group centred around the Bower brothers who came from a troubled background. These young politicos, frustrated by the seeming ineffectiveness of more conventional protest action like demonstration marches, sit-ins etc (particularly against the US invasion of Vietnam), turned to 'direct action'. No-one was hurt, and the bombers never intended to hurt anyone, but bombs could obviously do harm to people if they happened upon the scene inadvertently.
The police and justice department did not need special anti-terror powers to deal with these young men. As Shadbolt wrote: "Everyone realised that they were guilty, including themselves, but everyone also realised that they were not really criminals." Nevertheless, not many quibbled with the four to five-year jail sentences that three of them eventually received.
Chris Trotter reminded us in his last Sunday Star-Times column that in 1981 some anti-springbok tour protesters used a bomb to disrupt Wellington's passenger rail system on the day of a rugby match in that city. Other potentially dangerous stunts like the threat of flying a small plane into a packed football stadium were also utilised in the service of this undoubtedly just cause. Serious damage was done to television broadcast equipment on at least one occasion. Mass action of people to block roads and motorways was another tactic utilised by anti-springbok tour protesters in 1981.
Could the perpetrators of the 'direct action' tactics in 1969-70 or in 1981 be called terrorists? Well they could, and some undoubtedly would give them this nomenclature, but it would be stretching the definition of the meaning of "terrorism" to do so.
Bombing and killing or injuring hundreds of innocent holidaymakers in Bali; bombing the tube train and double-decker bus in London; flying hundreds of passengers to their deaths while using jet-planes as flying bombs to kill thousands of others; blowing up drinkers in an English pub; blowing up the Rainbow Warrior with total disregard to the safety of those on board; air-strike and guided missile bombing of civilians with high explosive, napalm and cluster bombs: that is terrorism.
Running around the bush with guns is not terrorism. Thousands of people do this every week in New Zealand - it is usually called "hunting". Nevertheless, if police had solid information that lives were being threatened or endangered by misguided political activists who saw themselves as acting in the tradition of the guerrilla freedom fighter, then no one in New Zealand would expect anything else but that the police would act to stop such threats in their tracks.
Some questions must be asked, however. The first question that arises is; did the police act judiciously in their 'invasion' of the Tuhoe country, given the past history of the Maori of that area? The second question is; are draconian anti-terror laws that could potentially outlaw hitherto legitimate political activities necessary to deal with such a threat, whether real or perceived?
The answer to both questions must be a resounding; No!
The additional question that left and green political activists should be addressing themselves to is; what are the acceptable limits of direct political action? For example; is planning to assassinate leading establishment figures (eg as has been claimed by some; George Bush or Helen Clark) an acceptable political strategy? For the socialist left, terrorism has always been seen as the preserve of the despairing and the disconnected, usually petit-bourgeois, members of society who try to substitute individual action for the action of the masses.
Left-activists must defend democratic rights from erosion by the passage of draconian legislation, but they should also be careful about how far they go down the road of defending the provocative actions of wild-catting individuals who, inadvertently (or possibly deliberately), discredit the just causes we fight for and pave the way for attacks by the right and the state on the hard-won democratic rights we currently have.

Review: No Left Turn by Chris Trotter

2007-08-22T12:46:00.000+12:00

New Zealand society is marked by two great fissures: that between Pakeha and Maori, and that between capital and labour. Any history of New Zealand must portray and explain both. Chris Trotter accomplishes this in his No Left Turn. Trotter's book is a welcome and impressive addition to the ideological armoury of the left.
Unlike historian Michael King who gave priority to the Maori/Pakeha divide in his best-selling History of New Zealand, Trotter concentrates on the class-based struggle between those whose social motivation is wealth and power and those who fight for equality and justice: the on-going battle between right and left.
No Left Turn takes the form of a series of essays canvassing significant events in modern New Zealand’s history, from the days of colonisation up until the end of the twentieth century.
Trotter deals first with E.G. Wakefield’s “systematic colonisation” plans which sought to recreate the class relations of Britain in the last frontier of New Zealand. This land-grabbing, money-grubbing project cost Wakefield's brother Arthur his life in the Wairau “massacre”. This occurred in 1843 as settlers sought to seize the Wairau Plain from the Maori warrior-chief, Te Rauparaha.
The second chapter exposes the role of the banker and land speculator Thomas Russell and his partner-in-crime, lawyer Frederick Whitaker, in provoking the Waikato and Taranaki land war that raged through the 1860s. Trotter calls this the “Sovereignty War” because it was the heroic last stand of Maori in defence of an independent political realm.
Although this period was one of colonisation by Great Britain, settlers from that country came from both the oppressor and oppressed classes: the latter were looking for a better life, the former had less noble motives. The same capitalist imperatives that were behind the colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand drove all subsequent economic, social and political developments. The exploitation of the land was premised on the exploitation of wage-labour.
The working class, like Maori before them, were also warriors – class warriors. After the subordination of Maori resistance, the main battleground shifted to the urban centres. Maori joined this class-struggle as they were urbanised into the working class.
Trotter’s graphic prose does justice to the dramatic battles that ensued, like that in 1912 at Waihi where Frederick George Evans was murdered by a scab lynch-mob as striking miners and their families were violently driven out of town.
The stories of the Great Strike of 1913 and the waterfront Lockout of 1951 are interspersed with chapters on the ANZACs and Auckland as it could have been. Trotter reveals how thousands of young men were sacrificed in WWI in the interests of British imperialist capitalism in order to safeguard New Zealand's butter and meat trade. In 'The Auckland that never was' chapter he exposes the sabotage by the Sid Holland-led National government ("the crudest, most ignorant and bigoted collection of far-right reactionaries by which New Zealand has ever had the misfortune to be governed") of the public transport and urban development plans that would have created a model, human-centred city instead of the car-clogged monstrosity that Auckland is today.
Trotter’s main subject matter is the changing political landscape of the twentieth century, especially the rise and fall of Labour and its latter-day revival. Here we have a left-revisionist, revision of previous versions of New Zealand’s political history.
His assessment of the 1951 Lockout, for example, is that Jock Barnes (the leader of the wharfies and the militant breakaway Trade Union Congress) and F.P. Walsh (the leader of the Federation of Labour) were “never on different sides”. The breach in the working class ranks that they provoked was the result of their irreconcilable differences in strategic approach. They both wanted to maintain and extend the gains that had been made during the fourteen-year term of the first Labour Government (elected in 1935), but Barnes utilised militant industrial struggle while Walsh favoured political rapprochement with the government of the day. In retrospect, a combined industrial and political campaign by the working class would have been most likely to succeed, but entrenched ideological and political positions prevented this.
As Trotter puts it, those generally regarded by many on the left as the “villains” of 1951, the trade union leaders Walsh and Young along with the Labour Party leaders Fraser and Nash, sought to adapt the union movement to the “political and economic realities of corporatism”. “Their unacknowledged and unappreciated role” was, Trotter writes: “To keep the milk of Labour’s social and economic reforms, by separating out and sacrificing the cream of the labour movement.”
The book ends tantalisingly with the coming to power of the Labour-Alliance coalition on 6 December 1999. “The Left was back in power.” The “Epilogue” outlines the right’s reaction to this unwelcome (to them) turn of events. Labour’s conciliatory response showed that: “Though Labour, the Alliance and the Greens had won, New Zealand capitalism had not lost.” The coalition government “would need to emulate the strategy of the Roman general Fabius Maximus, and learn how to ‘make haste slowly’.”
The controversial judgements in No Left Turn will undoubtedly spark much debate on the left. The book will certainly attract critical commentary from the right. It will be interesting to see what labour-historian turned Tory-propagandist, Michael Basset, for one, makes of Trotter’s foray into historiography.
A further book by Chris Trotter on the twenty-first century chapter of the left-right struggle is bound to be in the offing. Let's make sure this will not conclude with a description of the victory of the right in next year’s general election. The lesson of No Left Turn is that the left must be united in struggle if we are to defeat the right.

Who has the power?

2007-07-24T10:57:00.000+12:00

Who has the power?
WE HAVE THE POWER
What kind of power?
UNION POWER!
This was one of the chants that rang out on the picket lines outside many of our public hospitals over the last week.
Hospital cleaners, orderlies and kitchen staff are to be congratulated for staying staunch in the face of the nine-day lockout by their employer, Spotless. The lockout of the 800 Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) members involved was yesterday declared illegal by the Employment Court.
Spotless has now acceded to the terms of the multi-employer collective agreement (MECA) already agreed by the District Health Boards (DHBs) and three other contractors. This is a great victory for the Spotless employees and the more than two thousand other hospital workers who will gain significant pay increases as a result.
The future of contracting-out is now under question by workers, their unions, some DHBs and by Labour MP, Mark Gosche. Why use private multi-national contractors, especially now that DHB service workers are on common pay and conditions across the whole sector?
Contracting out was introduced in the 1990s by a National Government to cut costs in the health sector. This meant wage and job cuts.
It is time to bring health sector workers back into direct employment by the DHBs. Service workers are essential for the healthy and efficient operation of hospitals and deserve decent pay and conditions.

Grace

2007-05-29T15:47:00.000+12:00

RED & GREEN 6 - Out Now!

2007-05-29T15:21:00.000+12:00

The latest issue of RED & GREEN (#6) has just been published. It can be purchased for $12.50 by contacting me (or by emailing redandgreen@actrix.co.nz). Subscriptions (two issues) are also available for $25 ($50 Institutions or International). This NZ Journal of Left Alternatives is 162 pages of essential reading for those on the 'left'.
Note: I am one of the editors of RED & GREEN.

CONTENTS (of Issue 6)
ARTICLES
The CTU and the struggle against the ECA
Brian Roper
The engineer, the Wobbly and the scribe
Len Richards
The post-September 11 AWM in New Zealand
Matthew Stephen
HISTORY
Toby Hill (1915 - 1977)
Gerry Hill and others
Remembrance: Men and Women of ‘51
Len Gale
INTERNATIONAL
Human rights on the agenda in Philippines
Rod Prosser
Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution
Scott Hamilton
BOOK REVIEWS
National exposed. Wayne Hope reviews The Hollow Men by Nicky Hager (2006)
Lest we forget. Len Richards makes additional comments on The Hollow Men
The power of speaking truth. Chris Trotter reviews Speaking Truth to Power
The ‘War on Terror’ and the class war at home. Jason Schulman reviews Blood in the Sand
DISCOURSE
Let the “underclass” roar
Jill Ovens
Swap Treaty rights for human rights
Bernard Gadd
The curse of nationalism
Don Franks
POETRY
Haven on earth?
Don Franks

Comments on The Hollow Men by Nicky Hager

2007-04-12T08:18:00.000+12:00

It is important to put the unprincipled and even unlawful 2005 election campaign tactics of the National Party into the historical context of the last twenty five to thirty years. This period saw the collapse of the "historic compromise" based on an a "long-term reconciliation with capitalism" by the working class represented by the Labour Party and trade unions. According to Bruce Jesson, this compromise had its origins in the first Labour Government elected in 1935.
The compromise had two sides to it and was embedded in a global context. Internationally, after WWII, there was an historical compromise struck between capital and labour. Its economic basis was the ‘Bretton Woods’ agreement that set up the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Its political basis was hammered out between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in talks at Yalta at the end of WWII. The threat of revolution subsided and capitalism was stabilised.
This compromise suffered meltdown from the late 1960s under the pressure of declining profit rates. By 1980, in the words of Senegalese Marxist economist Samir Amin, "the new single thought" of capitalist ideology guiding and justifying government policies all over the world had changed from Keynesian economic interventionism and welfare-statism, to one directing policies aimed at "systematically dismantling the specific rights that had been achieved by the workers and lower classes" .
In New Zealand this took the form of the introduction of neo-liberal ideas and policies by the 1984-1990 Labour Government in a country hitherto rightly considered as a bastion of Keynesian Welfarism. The neo-liberal "New Zealand Experiment", as it is known, is perhaps definitively depicted by Jane Kelsey in her book with that title. Bruce Jesson and others, including myself, have extensively explored the co-option of that Labour Government to the ends of the neo-liberal project.
Wayne Hope's forthcoming review of The Hollow Men in RED & GREEN 6 points out that the 2005 election campaign conducted by National was comparable to the 1987 Labour campaign. They were both based on "new right corporate backing and the construction of a deceptive communications strategy".
The same could also be said of the successful election campaigns of Labour in 1984 and National in 1990. These Governments were both elected on platforms which espoused the conventional class-compromise policies of the post-WWII period, but were Trojan-horse vehicles for the implementation of economic policies that were straight out of the neo-liberal text books.
In 1984 Lange was elected to end the oppressive regime of Muldoon but his finance minister, Roger Douglas, led the charge to corporatise, deregulate and privatise the economy. The electorate was deceived. Similarly, Jim Bolger was elected in 1990 on the slogan of creating a "decent society’, but Ruth Richardson carried on the ‘Rogernomics’ agenda with benefit cuts, the anti-union Employment Contracts Act and the continued sell-out of state-owned assets to her private business backers. Again the voters were betrayed.
In all three cases the electors were conned by clever election campaigns that concealed the real agendas that were to be implemented after the elections. National in 2005 systematically set out to repeat the feat. The fact that they failed (only by a whisker) does not detract from the perfidy involved. Nicky Hager’s book reveals how Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas were intimately involved in the far-right take-over of National by Don Brash.
MMP was supported in 1993 by an electorate who saw proportional parliamentary representation as a way of breaking the treacherous two-party election swindle that they had endured for a decade or more. However, it was one of the MMP parties that next let the voters down (in 1996) with Winston Peters’ NZ First enabling the National Party to continue in office despite having camapigned against National before the election.
The Alliance and a Helen Clark-led Labour Party finally got their game together and began to turn the new-right revolution around with their victory in the 1999 election. But rust and the new-right never sleep.
The far-right cabal of Deane, Shirtcliffe, Richwhite, Fay, Myers, Heatley, Friedlander, Foreman, Colman, Farmer, Trotter (Ron) and others like Kerr, Scott and Brash from Treasury have been actively promoting the Freidman/Hayek, "Washington Consensus" strategy for more than two and a half decades. Their projects include the infiltration of Treasury, the colonisation of the Labour Party, the campaign against MMP, the formation of the Act party to make best advantage of MMP, the Brash coup in the National Party, and support for his surrogate John Key.
Hager exposes the key roles of these and other players like Michael Bassett and the perhaps less known supporting roles of the likes of Margaret Austin and David Caygill. The New Zealand working class public has been subject to the Machiavellien machinations of these political plotters for far too long.
Nicky Hager describes the Brash challenge to be leader of National as "not so much a leadership coup as a political coup, in which a group of ACT Party and others from the radical right succeeded in gaining control of the National leadership... This coup set the stage for a two-year fight in which Brash and his backers from the 1980s and 1990s tried to regain control of government." The revelations of the shadowy intrigue behind the election attack-ads on the Greens and Labour by the Exclusive Brethren cult, and their links with Brash (that are more fully exposed in Hager’s book), probably stymied this attempt in 2005.
But we can be sure this right-wing group who comprise some of the richest and most powerful people in New Zealand, whose agenda is intensely anti-working class (using that term in its broadest sense), is still actively plotting and planning to take power in the next election if they can. It is crucial to stop this happening and the left can thank Nicky Hager for providing, with The Hollow Men, an important tool to help do this.
Brash lost the support of his big-business backers because he failed to win the election and because his cover was blown. Brash’s far-right credentials and support was exposed to the sunlight of public scrutiny.
The myth now being promoted by former Brash supporters like spin-manager Richard Long is that Key is a "centrist". To think that John Key offers a ‘softer’ alternative to Brash would be a mistake. His speech to the 2006 National Party annual conference showed his true politics. He called for lower taxes and attacked public spending, red tape and overly protective labour laws.
Commentator Chris Trotter called this speech "pure Business Roundtable-speak" and noted that Key was the natural successor to Brash – the insurance policy for the right wing.
As Hager comments, National will "continue along the same tracks" under Key. "It would continue with the same strategies, the same political alliances and the same hidden agendas." If Brash is the archetypal Hollow Man, then Key is Hollow Man 2.

Reply to James (2)*

2007-04-04T10:35:00.000+12:00

(*See comment to previous post)
You are, I think, being somewhat disingenuous with your criticism of Jill Ovens and her leadership of the SFWU members in the Air NZ outsourcing dispute. Rather than acting "immaturely and irresponsibly", Jill Ovens showed remarkable courage and strength of purpose in resisting strong pressure to concede to the EPMU/Air NZ-negotiated solution. Her determination reflected that of the members who stood with her.
The SFWU members involved voted five times to reject any attempts to destroy their existing CEA. They opposed accepting cuts in wages and conditions. They also strongly opposed the attempt to separate them from their fellow Air NZ workers who are parties to their collective. They were entitled to expect their CEA to be honoured and to maintain the position that they would renegotiate it when they had the right to take industrial action. This was a perfectly rational and responsible stand to make as workers and trade unionists.
The EPMU is to be congratulated for its democratic processes but democracy, as you well know, is constrained by the choices put before the electorate. The EPMU position was that the choice was between ‘outsourcing’ and ‘an in-house solution’. This thrust the EPMU members into a catch-22 situation where they were damned to accept cuts no matter which choice they made. It was a bit like giving a condemned person the choice of which form of execution they wanted. The dispute was allowed to be framed in the employer's terms. The SFWU chose to fight the dispute under their own terms, as was their right.
This fight included two highly successful mass-mailing campaigns to the Board of Air NZ. One was a postcard campaign. Thousands of signatures were collected from members of the public at places like markets. I helped to collect these and there was huge support for the workers and opposition to outsourcing. The other campaign was an email one organised through the international Labour Start website. This campaign had the biggest response ever recorded by Labour Start.
The SFWU position was simply "no concessions". The only way to stop cuts is to first of all reject the employer's right to make them. Workers of today do not have the right to give-back the hard won gains of workers of the past. Their duty to the class is to fight to retain and improve those past conquests. If this is your frame of reference then you will come up with the course of action that was decided upon by the SFWU members and Jill Ovens as their (elected) regional secretary.
As to some of your other analysis; it is an open question as to whether the Government’s position would have remained fixed. Governments have been known to change their minds under public pressure. A campaign by two of the country’s most powerful private-sector unions, supported by trade-union-backed Labour MPs, could have tested the Clark administration’s resolve. The public could expect a publicly-owned entity like Air NZ to listen to and act upon public concerns.
The argument that the Government cannot legally interfere in the running of state-owned enterprises and companies does not hold water. This is a matter of political will. Government’s can change laws or apply political pressure to appointed boards; it happens all the time. The neo-liberal legislation and assumptions from the 1980s that still underpin social and economic life in New Zealand should be challenged when they conflict with the public interest and the interests of workers.
The point about being in a "far worse" situation under the Swissport deal is also a moot one. The savings and conditions proposed by Swissport look remarkably similar to the in-house deal eventually struck. Before the SFWU pulled out of the process, experts from both unions examined the Swissport proposals as part of the process of developing an "in-house solution". Swissport’s $20 million-per-year claimed savings were shown to be only about $12 million worth: the same amount of saving being made by the EPMU/Air NZ-agreed deal. So workers would not have been "in a far worse position". In fact the Swissport outsourcing would have resulted in all the workers receiving a full redundancy pay-out, whether they were staying or transferring over. Only workers who leave the job in the face of a cut in basic pay rates will now get redundancy. The $3000 sweetener goes nowhere near making up for the lost wages or the forgone redundancy payout.
Similarly, you say that the workers are now not subject to a "retendering process" and are therefore are in a better position to claw the cuts back in the future. Two things: First, the threat of "retendering" in the form of outsourcing has not been permanently removed. It could be argued, as Jill Ovens has in fact done, that it will now be more attractive for the outsourcing to proceed in the future because the transition costs have largely been eliminated by the cuts already made in this current deal. Second, the workers’ position is not stronger but weaker, because, for one thing, they are separated off in a separate CEA from their fellow Air NZ workers who were previously under the same CEA.
The best way to claw back cuts is to not concede them in the first place. The SFWU have not conceded their wages and conditions, they have not been separated off into a different CEA; that is why the SFWU can rightly claim a victory. Of course there is still a fight on to maintain wages and conditions, but not conceding them in the first instance was a pre-condition to engaging in that fight. The SFWU is at least on the front foot, unlike the EPMU members who have a hard slog just to get back to where they were before.

Reply to comment on SFWU, EPMU, Air NZ dispute

2007-03-29T11:04:00.000+12:00

Thanks for putting the EPMU position James. The point is that outsourcing and the deal cooked up in response to this threat by the EPMU and Air NZ both had the same outcome for the workers involved - wage cuts of several thousand dollars per year on average.
The SFWU position was to reject outsourcing (resulting in wage cuts), AND also reject making concessions to Air NZ (resulting in wage cuts).
The EPMU position was that it was better for the union leadership to engineer (excuse the pun) the wage cuts than let Swissport do it. The result was similar for the workers.
EPMU members and non-union workers on IEAs now face taking significant cuts in take-home pay while SFWU members' conditions are protected by their existing CEA up until it expires at the end of June, and for twelve months after that date or until a settlement on a renegotiated CEA is reached.
The point about the publicity campaign is that there wasn't one - not against outsourcing as such - because the EPMU stepped in and offered to negotiate a "competitive in-house solution" to achieve the same or similar labour-cost savings, so outsourcing was removed from the agenda (except as a background threat).
The SFWU opted out of this "in-house" process in January. At this point the EPMU could have done likewise, called the company's bluff on outsourcing and mounted a robust legal, public and political campaign against the company's attacks. After all Air NZ is a publicly-owned company and, despite company law, is vulnerable to public and political pressure. There was nothing to lose and everything to gain from such an approach. The jobs were not able to be outsourced off-shore; they were not under threat of disappearing altogether.
It seems the EPMU's greatest worry (listen to Little on Checkpoint radio) was that many of the members wanted to take redundancy. Even in this respect the negotiated deal lets workers down. If the jobs were outsourced to Swissport every single Air NZ worker leaving the job OR transferred over to the new employer (at least those covered by CEAs) would have stood to gain a redundancy pay-out. Under the EPMU/Air NZ deal only those leaving the job will get the full pay-out. The $3000 (or $4000) incentive payment will not make up for that loss of redundancy pay for many workers who want to stay on.
This is not to say that I am arguing for outsourcing. An inspection of Air NZ board minutes from 18 months ago revealed that the outsourcing bogey was raised precisely and only to extract concessions from workers - one way or another. There was, I believe, an illegal breach of good faith involved in this whole process of deliberately setting out to break an existing CEA. Air NZ should be before the courts on this account, not just on the grounds that they did not provide adequate information etc.
My contention is that the combined legal, political and industrial muscle of the SFWU and EPMU should have been brought to bear on the management. Back room deals with the employer by one union can only undermine workers strength.
Don't forget there are important issues for all unionised workers involved here - not the least the sanctity and value of a negotiated and signed-off CEA.
"An injury to one, is an injury to all", the old Wobblies' slogan, comes to mind.

What's new pussycat?

2007-03-28T18:24:00.000+12:00

Meow!

Bogus polls oppose anti-child-bashing bill

2007-03-28T18:00:00.000+12:00

Bogus polls of the "have you stopped beating you wife?" variety have been rolled in a last gasp deperate bid to stop Sue Bradford's anti-child-bashing bill being passed into law. The question asked in these polls was: "Do you think people should be able to lightly smack their children?" (or words to that effect). This question has next to nothing to do with the effect and intent of the anti-bashing bill.
It is not an anti-smacking bill, although it is repeatedly referred to as such. This is disinformation spread by those who want to have the legal right to use on their kids whatever force they deem necessary.
If the question asked in the polls had been: "Do you think the law should give parents (or presumably, guardians) a legal defence for heavily hitting/ bashing/ whipping their kids?" You would have got 80% saying it shouldn't.
The effect of Sue Bradford's (now the Labour Party's?) bill merely removes the 'section 59' defence of allowable corrective punishment that often prevents successful prosecutions of child-beaters. I am with Helen Clark on this one.
Surely we do not believe in mob-rule led by bible-bashing bigots and reinforced by their "hollow" opinion-creating polls.
A valid point could be made about the violence done by capitalist society to people as a matter of course. The lack of action on the increased levels of severe hardship affecting many thousands of children at the poverty-stricken (and stranded) end of society is inconsistent with the concern shown by the chattering classes and the government over this bill, but still, the change in the law will help create a culture of non-violence towards kids, and that can only be a good thing.

SFWU claims victory over Air NZ outsourcing and cuts

2007-03-28T17:23:00.000+12:00

The Service and Food Workers' Union (SFWU) is claiming victory in its battle with Air NZ . The company has conceded that the 250 SFWU check-in and services workers must remain on their existing contract (and conditions). Despite intense pressure from many quarters, Air NZ has failed to force these workers to accept cuts in their pay and conditiions under threat of outsourcing (which would have meant cuts to their pay and conditions). These workers decided neither option was acceptable, and were willing to fight outsourcing.
Meanwhile the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) is putting to the vote a deal they have negotiated to voluntarily give back conditions of the 1500 Air NZ baggage handlers and frontline staff they represent. If they had stood firm with the SFWU they could have stopped outsourcing (with a public campaign to put pressure on the majority owner, the Government, and the Board) AND held onto their existing Collectve Employment Agreement.
It would be good to see the EPMU members reject the Air NZ/EPMU deal that cuts take-home pay by several thousand dollars per worker (on average) - probably too much to hope for although the SFWU stand has won support from EPMU members.
SFWU northern region secretary, Jill Ovens, and EPMU general secretary, Andrew Little, aired their views on the Checkpoint National Radio programme last Monday. This is the link to the radio broadcast:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ckpt/air_nz_union_disagreement

Outrage at result of police-rape trial

2007-03-07T11:49:00.000+13:00

The outrage over the police-rape case is palpable and almost universal. In one (admittedly unscientific) poll carried out by the Stuff website, 80% do not believe Rickards should get his job back - that is because 80% think he is guilty. The juries were clearly misled and manipulated in the two trials Rickards faced.
Louise Nicholas testified that as a teenager she was forced to have sex with Rickards and his two former associates. The most horrific act she described occurred in a Rotorua flat where the three men serially raped her and then a police baton was forcibly inserted into her vagina and her anus by one of the policemen (Shipton) while Rickards and the other policeman (Schollum) cheered him on from the sidelines.
Rickards admitted having so-called 'group-sex' with the 18 year-old Nicholas. The story the three accused rapists tell is that the the sex was consensual and the baton incident never took place despite two other policemen testifying that such an abhorrent event was boasted about at the time.
She says she was raped, they say she wasn't - it was down to whose word you could take as true, and New Zealand juries, faced with such a choice, will more often than not believe the police.
EXCEPT that two of the accused (Shipton and Schollum) had already been found guilty of a chillingly similar rape and were in jail serving eight-year sentences for that. The rape which Shipton and Schollum were convicted on also involved the use of a police baton to sexually assault their victim. This was legally-suppressed information. How could any jury accept their denials in the Louise Nicholas case, or in the most recent case involving an unnamed women, if the jury members had been made aware of this extremely pertinent fact?
Our rage is due to our perfectly reasonable belief that justice was not done, nor seen to be done, in these trials. The accused got away with, not murder, but a crime equally repugnant - and the people committing the crime were the ones we turn to for help when a crime is committed against us.
Not only women are outraged; all men who have any sense of justice are equally appalled at the actions of these policemen and the "not guilty" verdicts.
The other great concern is that such a man as Rickards could rise so high in the police hierarchy. Police culture needs to change, and change rapidly and thoroughly. Lets hope the current police leadership, the ones who rightly prosecuted Rickards and his mates, clean out the stables with a large broom and a high pressure hose.
The thought of Rickards returning to his job in charge of the Auckland Police District is too deplorable to contemplate. He should be drummed out of the police completely.

Grace - 13 months

2006-11-02T08:39:00.000+13:00

Peek-a-boo

"putting the ‘Labour’ back into the Labour Government"

2006-10-30T14:37:00.000+13:00

Former Alliance President and Co-leader, Jill Ovens, played a pivotal role in opposing state-owned Air New Zealand’s attacks on the jobs of its workers at last weekend’s Labour Party (90th Anniversary) Conference in Rotorua.
Ovens is the Northern Region Secretary of the Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) which represents many of the affected workers, along with the Engineering and Manufacturing Workers Union (EPMU).
On Friday, at the pre-conference meeting of Labour affiliated unions, Ovens acquainted Finance Minister Michael Cullen with the latest Air NZ proposals to outsource the jobs of 1700 frontline and baggage-handling staff to private contractors.
These proposals mean the workers’ existing employment agreements would lapse and they would be forced to accept cuts in wages and conditions on the pain of not being rehired by the outside contractors. Air NZ has told the workers they can only avoid outsourcing by accepting an ‘in house’ solution that would make savings of $20 million a year at the workers’ expense.
This move, along with similar ones in other areas of the company’s operation, threaten to turn this strategic transport asset that is more than eighty per cent owned by the people of New Zealand into what Ovens described as a "virtual company"; just a brand name with very few directly employed workers.
"Unions to Govt: Save our jobs" (front page headline of Monday’s NZ Herald)
At the remit workshop on Saturday, Ovens succeeded in getting an anti-privatisation remit put on the conference floor for discussion. This resolution reaffirmed the Labour Party’s "commitment to the principle of a democratic society’s right to choose public ownership, social goals and non-market answers over market economics answer to economic issues ...".
Ovens was designated to speak in support of the remit at the Sunday plenary session. Her call on behalf of the unions for the Labour-led Government to buy back the remaining small percentage of privately-owned shares in Air NZ was enthusiastically applauded by the seven hundred delegates.
The call she made for the Government to amend the appropriate legislation so that central and local government can directly intervene in the public interest in the management of state and local-government owned enterprises was also supported, as was the appeal for the Government to urge the board of Air NZ to oppose the company management’s contracting-out moves.
Ovens, SFWU National Secretary John Ryall and EPMU head Andrew Little met privately with Prime Minister Helen Clark on Saturday afternoon to communicate their opposition to the outsourcing strategy of Air NZ. It is understood they received a sympathetic hearing.
Labour conference finds its voice
It is somewhat ironic that Ovens, so recently a leader of the Alliance, was instrumental in "putting the ‘Labour’ back into the Labour Government" (as NZ Herald political commentator John Armstrong put it). Armstrong observed that rank-and-file delegates combined with the union affiliates to remind the government that instead of a high-skilled, high wage economy, many workers are experiencing loss of jobs and conditions through restructuring and outsourcing by cost-cutting managers. He said that their frustration was not surprising, but he found it surprising that it was expressed so openly at a Labour Party conference.
"For years," he wrote, "Labour Party conferences have been dead zones when it comes to genuine debate – something sacrificed to preserve an image of complete and utter unity.
"Quite why the party should suddenly find its voice, if only in mild fashion, might have several explanations."
Armstrong surmised that it might be because members were inspired by the celebration of the Labour Party’s 90-year heritage and they felt the need for renewal and/or reaffirmation of ‘core values’. He also thought they might have been emboldened by the fallibility shown by the party leadership over the election spending fiasco.
In my estimation, a more likely reason that conference delegates found their "voice" was that they have been galvanised by the attacks on Labour and the unions by enemies of the working class. The implications of the election of a fundamentalist, far-right, National-led government are too grave to allow to occur. The recent month-long lock-out of 600 distribution workers by Progressive Enterprises is a warning that cannot be ignored.
On the other hand, the support given by fellow unionists and the wider community to the Progressive workers has reminded everyone how strong ‘the people’ are when they are mobilised. What better motivation could there be for Labour members to reclaim their conference and speak out?
It must be said that Ovens clearly helped the Labour conference to "find its voice". Without her determined intervention, the "public ownership" remit would not have been discussed on the conference floor.
From Alliance to Labour
Ovens left the Alliance to join Labour earlier this year at the urging of SFWU delegates who were supporting her in the election for the position SFWU northern region secretary. The issue of public ownership and control of strategic economic assets that Ovens helped advance to the centre stage of the Labour conference would have met with equally strong support at an Alliance gathering. She found that Labour conference delegates shared many of the same concerns as members of the Alliance.
Ovens must be heartened to have found such a strong echo for her ‘Alliance voice’ among Labour activists. What’s more it was an echo that resonated into the highest levels of the Labour Party and the government it leads.

No Tolls!

2006-10-17T11:53:00.000+13:00

Letter to editor; NZ Herald, published Monday, 16 October, '06
Transit NZ says new roads will be delayed for a decade if Aucklanders do not accept tolls. Auckland road users are being held to ransom. Who will be next?
Road building should be funded out of taxes, as it always has been. If road user charges need to be raised, or road taxes increased, then that is a political decision that needs to be faced up to. We do not need to create a whole new private profit-making tolling industry to raise funds for roads.
Transit is planning to spend $150 million to set up toll gantries and other tolling infrastructure in Auckland. This would pay the interest for at least three years on the $800 million loan Transit says is necessary to finish the planned roads by 2015.
Working class people will bear the brunt of road tolls. They often have no choice but to use the roads to get to work, and this is likely to be at times of peak toll rates. Toll avoidance will mean new roads for the rich and traffic jams for the poor.
There needs to be an all-out campaign to stop Transit NZ implementing road tolls.

Oppose mayoral asset grab

2006-09-09T09:44:00.000+12:00

This letter to the editor appeared today (Sat. Sept 9, 2006) in the NZ Herald.
Dear Editor,
The Alliance Party and Pam Corkery campaigned successfully to save the Port of Auckland from being fully privatised in the early 1990s. Mike Lee, chairman of the ARC, completed the job last year by overseeing the buyback of the 20% of shares in the Port that were sold in 1992 by the Waikato Regional Council.
Now the big four mayors of the Auckland isthmus want to grab the $1.3 billion of ARC controlled assets, including the Port, to use to as a short-term fix for municipal spending that should be funded from local body rates and prudent borrowing. This blatant power play by the mayors, seemingly given the stamp of approval by Helen Clark and the Government, must be opposed by a similar campaign to that which saved the Port from sale a decade and a half ago.
The central plank of the mayors' plan is the abolition of the democratically elected ARC and its replacement by a patently undemocratic Greater Auckland Council which the mayors themselves and appointed business cronies will undoubtedly dominate.
The Alliance opposes this move and calls on all Aucklanders to mobilise in support of retaining ARC control of the region’s assets.
Yours etc.
Len Richards
(Alliance Co-leader)

Labour fails supporters

2006-08-28T14:08:00.000+12:00

The failure of the Labour Government to 'close the gaps' over the last six years, as revealed by two recent Ministry of Social Development (MSD) reports, proves the urgent need for a different approach based on the needs of people rather than on the demands of the ‘greedies’ and their quest for more profits.

Hardship
The NZ Living Standards 2004 report reveals that under Labour from 2000 to 2004 the numbers of Maori and Pacific people in severe economic and social hardship has roughly doubled.
Over the four years 57% of Pacific people remained in a degree of hardship, but the numbers in severe hardship jumped from 15% to 27%.
The comparable figures for Maori were 40% in hardship, with 17% in severe hardship, up from 7%.
Overall in New Zealand, 24% of people are living in hardship. Those in severe hardship have jumped from 5% to 8% (that is a 60% increase). It is beneficiary families with children that make up the highest proportion of this group.

Housing costs and overcrowding
According to The Social Report 2006, the number of people living in households paying more than 30% of their income on housing costs has doubled in sixteen years. In 2003/04, 21.4% of people were in this category, up from 10.6% in 1988. For Maori and Pacific people the figure had been as high as 36% and 48% respectively in the late 1990s, and in 2001(the latest figures):

21% of Maori households spent roughly a third or more of their income on housing needs.
23% of Pacific households were in the same situation.
42% of other non-Pakeha households, many of whom are new immigrants, were paying in excess of 30% of their income on housing.

The report also says Pacific people are most likely to be living in overcrowded conditions. In 2001:

43% of Pacific people lived in homes requiring extra bedrooms.
5% of the total population were living in severely overcrowded accommodation. Pacific people and Maori made up 79% of that group (41% and 38% respectively).

The report said there is a clear correlation between poverty and levels of overcrowding, with those unemployed, those locked out of gaining educational qualifications and those in rental accommodation being more likely to live in these adverse and unhealthy conditions.

Little change under Labour
Working class Pacific and Maori voters gave Labour the support it needed for the last General Election. The electorates where these votes came from, like Mangere where 72% voted Labour, remain the poorest in New Zealand and the MSD reports reveal there has been little change since a Labour-led government came to office in 1999. The future for these voters looks just as bleak under the Labour-led Government’s programme.
Some improvements came in the first three years when the Alliance was a junior coalition party to Labour. It was then, for example, that income related rents (no more than 25% of income) were introduced for Housing NZ state houses.
Under the recently introduced "Working for Families" policy the poorest people have lost ground. Beneficiary incomes have never been restored to the levels that existed before the 1991 National Government cuts.
The MSD shows that inequality continues to increase. The gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ has continued to widen from 1988, including during the years from 2001 to 2004 under Labour-led governments.

Grace: 1 Today

2006-08-25T10:00:00.000+12:00

Granddaughter Grace turns one today. Here is a picture taken at her party held last weekend so her Aunty Carissa, home on holiday from the UAE, could attend.

Workers' rally

2006-08-24T09:46:00.000+12:00

The largest gathering of union members seen in Auckland for many years rallied yesterday at Aotea Square against the anti-union, 90-day 'no-rights' bill being promoted by National MP Wayne Mapp. Over 3000 workers were bussed into the central city square by the EPMU, NDU and other unions.
The rally was addressed by Carol Beaumont from the CTU, Andrew Little from the EPMU, Laila Harre from the NDU and Jill Ovens, the new SFWU regional secretary, as well as delegates from worksites.
Union chants rang out across the square drowning out the motorbikes carrying the topless porn stars down Queen St, promoting a porn and sex-toy exhibition 'Erotica'.
Workers responded eagerly to the literature being handed out. The Alliance distributed nearly 1000 copies of its tabloid "The Flame". "Workers Charter" paper was also being handed out.
Workers united, will never be defeated!

Investigate this ...

2006-08-18T09:38:00.000+12:00

Ian Wishart continues his anti-Labour crusade in the latest edition (Issue 68, September 2006) of his Investigate rag with a story purporting to raise "allegations of Labour Government interference, and massive election spending" in connection with the Service and Food Workers’ Union (SFWU). Wishart uses an internal financial report of the SFWU to try and prove impropriety on the part of the SFWU in its spending around the General Election last year.
But, as his article concedes, unions can lawfully donate services in support of the Labour Party during an election campaign. The SFWU accounting of those services is not necessarily proof of anything other than just that: an internal accounting procedure. Only $20,000 is claimed to have been donated directly to the Labour Party campaign, despite Wishart’s inflammatory claims of "nearly $240,000 of members’ funds allegedly siphoned off to help Labour".
Caning a union for supporting Labour is like attacking the nails for supporting a house: the unions built the Labour Party and the SFWU, along with the engineers’, dairy workers’ and meat workers' unions are all affiliated to the Labour Party. That means every member of those unions can be considered to be a member of Labour through that affiliation. It is quite legitimate for these unions to give financial and other support to the Labour Party.
It is another matter altogether, however, when an extremist right-wing outfit like the Exclusive Brethren Church spends over a million dollars to attack Labour and the Greens in order to aid the election of the National Party. By thine friends shall thee be known. How about a full-scale investigation into that spending Mr Wishart!
Wishart’s support for the hard-done-by members of the SFWU rings hollow given his right-wing credentials. Wishart is hardly a friend of the workers.
That said, the 10-page article makes disquieting reading for anyone genuinely supportive of the trade union movement. The question that should perhaps be asked is why there is no worker-friendly forum for debate about the issues raised in this article.

Jill Ovens – Working-class Hero

2006-08-01T11:19:00.000+12:00

Lenin had a phrase for those who throw revolutionary rhetoric around without actually getting their hands dirty in the real work of working class politics; he said such people suffered from "an infantile disorder". Someone anonymously called Jill Ovens "a class traitor" on the NZ-Aotearoa Indymedia site. This is not only the action of a coward who won’t put their name to what they say, but also the pathetic voice of one of the "mere babblers", another apt descriptive phrase of Lenin’s.
Jill’s victory over Darien Fenton’s anointed successor to the Northern region Service and Food Workers’ Union (SFWU) secretary’s position is an extremely important and historical achievement. A socialist in the political tradition of the early Labour Party and the theoretical tradition of Ralph Miliband is now the elected leader of the largest region of the SFWU. Jill will build a model democratic union in the SFWU if she has her way. She has overwhelming support from the organisers and staff, and an impressive mandate from the union membership (via their selected delegates) to do so. This can only be good for the working class.
The SFWU is the largest union of low-paid workers and the Left should get right in behind the project to make it an even more powerful and effective tool to fight for the interests of the most downtrodden workers in NZ. In the process SFWU members will be politicised in ways the current bureaucratic union methods prevent.
For those who condemn her for joining Labour, a little more reading of Lenin might convince you that this was not the actions of a traitor, but rather the actions of a courageous and politically savvy hero of the working class.
It was Jill’s own supporters among the delegates, those who were campaigning on her behalf, who urged her to join Labour. The opposition tactic was to raise the bogey that Jill was not Labour and that it was all an Alliance plot to take over the trade unions.
In her speech to the election conference Jill proudly ‘owned’ her role as the National Council representative on the Alliance caucus and her support for the scrapping of the ECA and the introduction of paid parental leave, both measures that the Alliance had a big hand in implementing. She also said in answer to the ‘Labour’ question from the floor: "I have joined Labour but I don’t want to make a big deal of it. It is of no greater relevance than whether I am Anglican or Catholic, they’re both on the side of God. The Alliance supports workers’ rights after all. The real question is who is the best person for the regional secretary’s job."
The reason for joining Labour was to deflate the opposition tactic of turning the election into one about party affiliation, rather than who was the best person for the job. Lenin would have approved. As he wrote in "Left-wing" Communism, An Infantile Disorder:
"One must use one’s own brains and be able to find one’s bearings in each particular instance. It is, in fact, one of the functions of ... leaders worthy of the name, to acquire ... the knowledge, experience and – in addition to knowledge and experience – the political flair necessary for the speedy and correct solution of complex political problems."
The SFWU election posed multiple complex political problems for the challenger. Success required the most careful attention to tactics (there is no winning strategy without winning tactics).
"It is entirely a matter of knowing how to apply these tactics in order to raise – not lower – the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win" (Lenin again). Note; the "ability to fight and win": this is what raises the consciousness of workers, and the members of the SFWU have gained a major win over the undemocratic, bureaucratic methods of the previous administration of the SFWU.
Lenin hammers home the point in the closing sentence of his chapter entitled "No Compromises?": "... political leaders of the revolutionary class are absolutely useless if they are incapable of ‘changing tack, or offering conciliation and compromise’ in order to take evasive action in a patently disadvantageous battle." The road to political success takes many twists and turns. Sometimes you have turn back temporarily to get around obstacles in your way before you move forward again.
Jill Ovens evaded the battle over party affiliation in order to ensure a win in the battle that mattered; the battle for the delegates’ votes. I supported this course of action. We flew by the seat of our pants a lot, but in the end we did not make any major blunders that would cost Jill the election, nor did we allow our opponents the chance to make much lee-way. Jill won handsomely; that was the testament to her tactical acumen (as well as her working-class politics).
Jill had good reasons to step back from the Alliance, and joining Labour does not mean she thinks there is no place for the Alliance. On the contrary the Alliance has a very important role to play as the socialist and left conscience of the wider labour movement. Many people who are Labour Party members and supporters acknowledge this, and the more the Left maintains a principled, ‘united front’ position with Labour and trade union people, the more credibility our left-of-Labour message will garner.

Jill Ovens Wins SFWU Election - Speech

2006-07-28T10:15:00.000+12:00

Scenes of jubilation and tears of joy greeted the stunning victory by Jill Ovens in yesterday's election for the new Northern Region Secretary of the Service and Food Workers' Union (SFWU). The special delegates conference of 112 voting delegates gave Ms Ovens the clear mandate of a 68 to 44 winning result. Ms Ovens upset success over Lisa Eldret, Darien Fenton's anointed successor, was achieved in spite of repeated and sustained interference in the election process by the new Labour MP.
A Pacific Island woman, a delegate from a hospital in South Auckland, rang me this morning and said; "Shame on her", in reference to Fenton’s attendance at the conference. This delegate rang up all her fellow Pacific Island voting delegates in the week before the election to get them to vote for Jill. She said she supported Jill because she not only talked the talk, she also walked the talk. "Jill was always there for us", she said.
Below is a copy of the speech given by Jill Ovens to the voting delegates. One delegate who works on a well-known food factory site told Jill afterwards that hearing her speech made him feel for the first time what it really meant to "be union".

JILL’S SPEECH
Speech removed by requset of Jill Ovens. Jill wants a "clean start" for the SFWU in the Northern Region and feels her speech should remain internal to the union.

Greens leave Left political space to the Alliance

2006-06-07T09:38:00.000+12:00

Nandor Tanczos may have lost the Green leadership race to Russel Norman, but he re-ignited the "neither left nor right" debate within the Green Party.
The real problem for the Greens is their refusal to acknowledge that we live in a class divided society. The so-called ‘left-right’ political continuum is one with a fracture right through it. ‘Which side are you on?’ is the question the Greens have to answer.
Both the co-leaders elected at the Green’s Queen’s Birthday weekend conference questioned their party’s support for a Labour-led government. Russel Norman, the new male co-leader, attacked the Cullen roading budget and maintained that on some important issues there was "barely a whisker between National and Labour". He rejected the Greens being a "clip- on to Labour" and made it clear they would be willing to work with National or Labour, depending on their position on "unlimited growth ... in a finite world".
Jeanette Fitzsimons expressed a similar view. She said the Greens might support a tax-cutting National budget over a Labour one that spends money on roads. She also said that the Greens reject a "big, all- powerful state" which she acknowledged was a similar position to that of some on the right-wing of politics.
The Green Party’s scramble to keep a position of "independence" leaves a big hole on the left of the political spectrum for a party that openly takes sides with the working and oppressed people of society.
The Alliance comes down firmly on the side of the working classes and openly opposes the domination of big capitalists. The Green concerns with ecological degradation, concerns that the Alliance shares, cannot be solved by the same market mechanisms that create the environmental problems we all face.
It is not a choice between big-state domination versus big- capitalist domination, rather one of a peoples’ democratically controlled and run society versus a market-driven one.
A party to the left of Labour needs to carve out a support base among the working class people that traditionally vote Labour. The Labour Party has adapted all too well to the status quo society over the 70 years of its existence, and only partially, at best, represents the interests of low-income New Zealanders who vote for it.
More than 70 per cent of voters in the deprived electorate of Mangere supported Labour in the last election. They are still suffering from a huge social and economic deficit after more than six years of a Labour government yet this vote was given faithfully in the absence of a more credible left alternative.
Those on the left should work for the defeat of National and other forces of the political right, while building a credible alternative to Labour.
If the Greens stand in the middle of the road, they risk being road- kill.

SFWU members reject rule change

2006-05-26T15:26:00.000+12:00

The northern region Service and Food Workers Union members rejected the rule change up for endorsement at their recently completed round of Annual General Meetings. Over 1500 members voted at the AGMs in the Northern Region of the SFWU. A majority voted against Resolution 1, the resolution that sought retrospective endorsement of the new method of electing the leadership of the union. This method entails elections being held at conferences of selected delegates instead of by an all-up membership vote (note; NOT elected delegates – the "s" makes democracy into demockracy). The re-endorsement of these rules was made necessary because of the inadequacy of the notification given to the members for the meetings they were originally passed at in 2004. [See my previous post on this topic].
Northern region members managed to vote down the rule change despite up to a dozen extra site meetings being convened at short notice by the Acting Regional Secretary, Lisa Eldret. These were held at times and places in a manner that mostly excluded oppositional views. At these improperly notified ‘secret’ extra meetings where only the dubious ‘vote yes’ arguments were put to those attending, the members loyally voted in favour of the resolutions. At other meetings where members opposed to the adoption of the new rules were able to put an alternative view, the vote went overwhelmingly against the rule change.
A complaint to the returning officer about the holding of meetings that were not notified two weeks in advance to every member as specified in the union's rules was brushed off. The reply said that only a "technical breach" of the rules had been committed and because the national result was overwhelmingly in favour of the resolutions, no action needed to be taken.
The rules have been endorsed by the union nationally and therefore all the leadership elections will now be conducted in the way specified; viz conferences of selected delegates will do the voting rather than the whole membership.
An election policy has been drawn up in consultation with (but not necessarily with the agreement of) interested parties such as Jill Ovens who is contesting the northern region secretary position. A random selection process (ie drawing the names out of a hat) will be used to choose the delegates to attend the election conference. The delegates will be chosen proportionately by industry in accordance with the industry spread of the membership. The policy appears to seek to restrict candidate campaigning activities to making contact with the delegates selected to attend the election conference. The selection process will not be completed until about two weeks before the election.

What is to be done?

2006-05-22T12:28:00.000+12:00

Some useful and inspiring quotes from the man who wrote "What is to be done?" in 1901-1902.
Page numbers from the 1973 Progress Publishers pamphlet reprint
Lenin on the need for organisation (Section I A, p11)
We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don't clutch at us and don't besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are "free" to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!
Lenin on the need for alliances (Section I C, p18)
Only those who are not sure of themselves can fear to enter into temporary alliances even with unreliable people; not a single political party could exist without such alliances.
Lenin (and Pisarev) on dreaming (Section V B, pp166-167)
And if indeed we succeeded in reaching the point when all, or at least a considerable majority, of the local committees local groups, and study circles took up active work for the common cause, we could, in the not distant future, establish a weekly newspaper for regular distribution in tens of thousands of copies throughout Russia. This newspaper would become part of an enormous pair of smith's bellows that would fan every spark of the class struggle and of popular indignation into a general conflagration. Around what is in itself still a very innocuous and very small, but regular and common, effort, in the full sense of the word, a regular army of tried fighters would systematically gather and receive their training. On the ladders and scaffolding of this general organisational structure there would soon develop and come to the fore Social-Democratic Zhelyabovs from among our revolutionaries and Russian Bebels from among our workers, who would take their place at the head of the mobilised army and rouse the whole people to settle accounts with the shame and the curse of Russia.
That is what we should dream of!
"We should dream!" I wrote these words and became alarmed. I imagined myself sitting at a "unity conference" and opposite me were the Rabocheye Dyelo editors and contributors. Comrade Martynov rises and, turning to me, says sternly: "Permit me to ask you, has an autonomous editorial board the right to dream without first soliciting the opinion of the Party committees?" He is followed by Comrade Krichevsky; who (philosophically deepening Comrade Martynov, who long ago rendered Comrade Plekhanov more profound) continues even more sternly: "I go further. I ask, has a Marxist any right at all to dream, knowing that according to Marx, mankind always sets itself the tasks it can solve and that tactics is a process of the growth of Party tasks which grow together with the Party?"
The very thought of these stern questions sends a cold shiver down my spine and makes me wish for nothing but a place to hide in. I shall try to hide behind the back of Pisarev.
"There are rifts and rifts," wrote Pisarev of the rift between dreams and reality [Pisarev was a 19th century Russian intellectual and a leading exponent of ‘social utilitarianism’. He held that all art and intellectual endeavour was useless unless it aimed ‘to solve forever the unavoidable question of hungry and naked people’ L.R.]. "My dream may run ahead of the natural march of events or may fly off at a tangent in a direction in which no natural march of events will ever proceed. In the first case my dream will not cause any harm; it may even support and augment the energy of the working men.... There is nothing in such dreams that would distort or paralyse labour-power. On the contrary, if man were completely deprived of the ability to dream in this way, if he could not from time to time run ahead and mentally conceive, in an entire and completed picture, the product to which his hands are only just beginning to lend shape, then I cannot at all imagine what stimulus there would be to induce man to undertake and complete extensive and strenuous work in the sphere of art, science, and practical endeavour.... The rift between dreams and reality causes no harm if only the person dreaming believes seriously in his dream, if he attentively observes life, compares his observations with his castles in the air, and if, generally speaking, he works conscientiously for the achievement of his fantasies. If there is some connection between dreams and life then all is well."
Of this kind of dreaming there is unfortunately too little in our movement. And the people most responsible for this are those who boast of their sober views, their "closeness" to the "concrete" ... .

Government does not go far enough with "unbundling" Telecom

2006-05-05T15:06:00.000+12:00

The Government has not gone far enough with its "unbundling" proposal to deal with Telecom’s monopoly of the telephone lines. I agree with the separation of the telephone lines from Telecom’s broadband business, but the "local loop" lines should then be brought back under public ownership.
Monopoly ownership has allowed Telecom to gouge monopoly profits since it was privatised in 1990 by the infamous Rogernomics Labour Government of the day. When Telecom won the 2004 CAFCA Roger award for the worst multi-national, financial analyst, Sue Newberry, showed that Telecom was making over 25 per cent annual returns on its New Zealand assets year after year.
This is why telephone line and mobile call charges are so high in this country – to keep Telecom’s shareholders rubbing their hands when the $800 million profit is paid out each year. The way to stop this is to put this essential infrastructure asset under public ownership and control so it delivers an efficient, modern service at the cheapest possible cost to its customers.
The National party is defending Telecom’s monopoly position, saying that the "market" should be left to decide if, how and when broadband technology should be delivered.
This is like saying the weather should be left to decide which homes are washed away by floods, or the fox should be left in charge of the chickens. National believes this will deliver the best outcomes for New Zealand. As the ads say – "Yeah right!" Telecom’s success in preventing any real competition, along with its deliberate strategy of paying out maximum dividends rather than investing in the development of modern broadband infrastructure, gives lie to that argument.
Since 1986, when privatisation of state-owned assets began, New Zealand has been gold-rush territory for big capitalist concerns. The strategy of these largely foreign investors is one of ‘pump and dump’ – pump the profits out and dump the asset after the vampire urges of these asset strippers is satiated. Then the next lot moves in to take their share – precious little of the private capital investment that we were promised by the promoters of privatisation has ever occurred. Instead New Zealand’s vital transport, energy, communications and other economic infrastructure has been degraded to crisis point in many cases.

SFWU AGMs Oppose Rule Changes

2006-04-30T22:32:00.000+12:00

Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU) members in Auckland are rejecting the rule changes proposed by their leadership that would deprive them of the right to directly elect their leaders.
The rules being voted on at the round of Annual General Meetings currently under way around the country provide for the national and regional leadership of the SFWU to be elected at delegates’ conferences rather than by the votes of all members. The make-up of these delegates’ conferences is not decided by the members. Rather the delegates who wish to attend are required to submit a written "expression of interest" in attending. The National or Regional executives then determine the size and composition of the delegates’ conference to elect the leaders whose positions are up for election.
At the national level, the elected positions concerned include the National Secretary (a full-time paid position) and the National President (an unpaid, voluntary post). The three Regional Secretaries (full-time paid officials) and Regional Presidents (again, unpaid volunteers) would be elected the same way at the regional level. (The SFWU is essentially a federation of three regions, Northern – with the largest membership – Central, and Southern.) The Secretaries have a four-year term, the Presidents face re-election every two years.
Given that the Regional Secretaries and Presidents sit on (and have a big influence in determining the membership of) their respective Regional Executives, and the National Executive includes the National Secretary and President as well as the six aforementioned regional officers, there are clear conflicts of interest in this arrangement.
The people seeking re-election are effectively in charge of the process of selecting the people who will be voting for (or against) them in the elections held to fill the positions they, as incumbents, currently hold.
The rule changes were rammed through the union’s 2004 Northern Region conference by Darien Fenton, before she won a Labour Party list seat in Parliament in September 2005. The official registration of the new rules took place on September 21, just days after the election result was known.
However, these new rules were required to be re-submitted to the membership this year after the union obtained legal advice that the rule-change meetings held in 2004 had not been properly notified.
This puts the union in a quandary as the current National Secretary was elected under the newly registered rules after the position of National Secretary was vacated by Darien Fenton on her accession (or is that ascension) to parliament.
The four omnibus resolutions being put to the membership seek: (1) the membership’s endorsement of the 2004 rule changes; (2) their acceptance of the result of the elections already held under these rules; (3) their approval of the actions taken by the officers of the union (principally John Ryall) since their election under the faulty 2004 rules; (4) their endorsement of some further (2006) rule changes that seek to make the rules consistent with the intentions of the earlier (2004) changes.
In Auckland, concerned members and delegates have circulated letters and leaflets, exercised their rights to speak at meetings, and otherwise organised to oppose the recommended resolutions. The result is that where there has been debate at the AGMs on the rule changes they have been overwhelmingly rejected in all but one or two meetings. At one stage the votes were running two to one against. Only the late night convening of some factory site-meetings where oppositional voices were not able to be heard has partially rescued the situation for the leadership.
The most startlingly shocking aspect of the AGMs has been the direct intervention of Darien Fenton MP into the voting process. Fenton, whose office is on Auckland’s North Shore, has attended several AGMs and spoken in favour of the Resolutions. Many members see this as inappropriate and an attempt to wield undue influence. Despite Fenton’s best efforts meetings like the large one held at the Papatoetoe Town Hall last week have still voted down the resolutions (134 against, to 92 for, on Resolution 1 at this meeting).
After the Papatoetoe meeting, Fenton was observed haranguing a delegate who had spoken strongly in defence of union democracy and against the resolutions. The delegate was visibly shaken by the vehemence of Fenton’s verbal assault on him.
The rule change debacle has impacted on the election of Fenton’s successor as SFWU Northern Region Secretary (Fenton was a dual office-holder before her departure to Parliament).
The Union’s Rules require an election to be held to fill the vacant Northern Region Secretary position. Nominations were called last December but the election still has not been held. It has been postponed twice; once in February because of improper notification (this seems to be an endemic problem for the SFWU), and secondly in March after the election rules themselves came into question. The election will now not be held until June, after the completion of the round of AGMs and the ratification (or not) of the Rule changes.
Fenton’s anointed successor, one Lisa Eldret (Fenton’s "wing-person" and Assistant Regional Secretary in the Northern office), is being strongly challenged by the experienced and respected trade unionist Jill Ovens. Ovens is the former full-time, paid President of ASTE, the technical teachers’ union, and was until recently the CTU Women’s Convenor and representative on the CTU National Affiliates Council.
Ovens has been a senior organiser with the SFWU in the health and aged-care sectors (Northern Region) for the last year and a half, and now heads the "Healthy Pay, Healthy Hospitals" campaign in the region. She has gained the respect and support of the Northern SFWU office staff and organisers, as well as the members and delegates she has been working with.
A suspicious mind might think the real reason the election has been postponed twice is because the "numbers" were against the chosen one. An old adage of Labour Party politics is that you never hold a vote unless you know in advance that the outcome will be favourable to you.
The SFWU is a living example of the operation of the "iron law of oligarchy" that the sociologist Robert Michels exposed in the German workers’ movement nearly one hundred years ago. Michels examined how large organisations, particularly trade unions and political parties, tend to create structures that perpetuate the status quo and undermine their own internal democracy even though they may be publicly committed to defending democracy in society as a whole. Control of information, resources, staffing, and election processes are the means by which incumbent leaders maintain their power. Michels was extremely pessimistic that anything could be done to combat this tendency (hence his description of it as an "iron law").
Well, members of the SFWU in Auckland (and possibly the rest of the Northern Region) give supporters of union democracy reason for optimism. They are showing at their AGMs that it is not true that "oligarchy" always triumphs. The members have a voice and they are showing that they know how to make it heard.

Grace - some photos - 6-7months

2006-04-30T22:16:00.000+12:00

Police rape trial

2006-04-04T15:05:00.000+12:00

It is inspiring to see brave women standing up against rapists. The police cannot sweep this one under the carpet. Only a police force based on, and in, the community can be relied upon. Bullies and power-trippers have no place in society's internal defence force.

Air NZ workers forced to accept "marriage-breaker" deal

2006-02-28T06:06:00.000+13:00

Under threat of closure of their workshop the Christchurch Air New Zealand engineers voted to accept a union-management deal that one worker described as a "marriage-breaker" because of the onerous weekend shift work involved.
Dennis O’Brien told the NZ Herald business reporter that the sacrifice he and the other workers were being asked to make was "extreme". Under the "job-saving" scheme promoted by the leaders of the EPMU and AMEA unions, he and others will have to work part or all of 47 weekends a year. At the moment they only work one weekend in three. Mr O’Brien said the new shift-roster will put unreasonable strain on family life. Wages will also be cut by about $15,000 a year.
Mr O’Brien originally voted "no" to the deal but last Thursday he changed his vote to "yes" for a slightly modified offer. "There was a small carrot and a very big stick," he said. He thought it was better to live to fight another day.
Air NZ will now keep the wide-body airframe maintenance work in New Zealand, but 200 jobs will go. The unions had previously brokered a deal that saw 110 engine-maintenance jobs lost. The Prime Minister, Helen Clark, had added to the pressure to accept the deal by urging workers to change their vote. Nevertheless, nearly one third of the Christchurch-based workers still voted "no".
The unions’ acquiescence over the engineering job cuts has been taken as a green light by the company for hundreds of other job cuts. Another 500 office-based job losses were immediately announced after the union acceptance of the 200 engineering job cuts. Andrew Little of the EPMU said it was "unbelievable" that these cuts were to be made. But the lack of resolve by himself and other union leaders over taking action to save the engineering jobs, means the company thinks it can do whatever it likes with impunity.
Little could have led a political and industrial campaign to mobilise support from the public to save the jobs. The Government should have stepped in to take full control of Air NZ, a company that is already 80 per cent publicly-owned. The unions could have fought for that to happen instead of selling members pay and conditions to save some of the jobs threatened.
There have now been 900 job cuts involving cleaners, engineers and office workers. More are to come. The cost-cutting plan put forward by former chief executive Ralph Norris more than two years ago was for 1500 jobs to go. Airline analyst, Peter Sigley, from the financial company Goldman Sachs JBWere, praised the new chief executive, Rob Fyfe, for being an aggressive manager of costs and for not being afraid to make difficult decisions. "Fyfe has stepped into the guts of the business in terms of its cost base," he said. Some might say he is ripping the guts out of the business.
Despite fuel cost rises, Air NZ chairman John Palmer announced that the airline balance sheet was in good shape with more than $1.1 billion cash in the bank and a projected profit expected this year of $140 million. The total savings made through the job cuts are less than $50 million.
As the Alliance says, the loss of jobs is completely unnecessary. It is not about the engineering operation or the airline as a whole losing money. It is all about return on capital. The heavy engineering workshops have been one of the main revenue earners for Air NZ for years.
The Government has the responsibility to stop the wanton economic vandalism by Air NZ management. The job cuts are a major blow to our strategically important transport infrastructure. It is a matter of concern for all New Zealanders and should be top priority for this Labour Government.
No jobs should go and no cuts should be made to workers’ pay and conditions. The Government must step in and take control of the situation.
The Alliance believes the cost-cuts are being made to get the airline ready to be sold back into full private ownership.

Thanks from Air NZ worker

2006-02-22T12:11:00.000+13:00

Hi Len,
Thanks for your support on the ANZES (Air NZ Engineering Services) issue. You're one of the few outsiders who can see this disgraceful situation for what it really is. I have attached a document to this email which shows the type of bullying we are expected to endure!
Kind Regards,
John Kooloos

You're welcome John,
You and your fellow workers are being subjected to unwarranted and uncalled-for pressure from all sides. The Government is acting disgracefully. Helen Clark's outburst is tantamount to 'scabbing' on your members' justified fight to retain hard-won conditions in the face of an employer determined to increase profitability at the expense of the workforce.
The Government was elected by a massive turnout of workers in the election. They should put the workers' interests first. As majority shareholder, they should step in and sack the present management if it will not back off from its plans to cut jobs and slash conditions in this vitally important industry.
Andrew Little of the Engineers Union, and even some of the AMEA union officials, are reluctant to put the government on the spot and would rather concede than fight. I still think industrial action based around an occupation of the workshops could mobilise support from the general public against the wanton economic vandalism being proposed by Air NZ.
Good luck and best wishes from myself and the Alliance Party.
Yours in solidarity,
Len Richards
Alliance Co-leader

Helen Clark blames workers for job losses

2006-02-22T12:06:00.000+13:00

Prime Minister Helen Clark has blamed the workers for refusing to accept the wage cuts and loss of conditions involved in the union-management deal that was negotiated to try and save half the 600 threatened Air New Zealand engineering jobs.
It is scandalous that the Government, a majority-shareholder in the company, refused to intervene to overturn the decision to close the Air NZ heavy engineering maintenance workshops. Instead, Ms Clark has said she was disappointed that a "small majority" of workers rejected the brokered deal.
The fact is hundreds of Air NZ workers voted down the deal which would have meant their shifts could be changed with little notice and their pay would be cut. Why should workers have to take cuts to save their own jobs?
The loss of the engineering jobs is completely unnecessary. It is not about the engineering operation losing money. It is all about return on capital.
The heavy engineering workshops have been one of the main revenue earners for Air NZ for years. The projected savings from the workshops' closure are only $20 million a year in a company that made a $250 million profit last year.
It is the Government's responsibility to stop the wanton economic vandalism threatened by Air NZ management. The loss of our country's heavy aircraft repair capacity would be a major blow to our strategically important transport infrastructure. It is a matter of concern for all New Zealanders and should be top priority for this Labour Government.
No jobs should go and no cuts should be made to workers' pay and conditions. The Government must step in and take control of the situation.

Supersize success

2006-02-13T12:25:00.000+13:00

The "Supersize my pay" rally/stopwork meeting held at the Auckland Town Hall yesterday would have to be described as a resounding success. The NZ Herald said 300 attended, but closer to 500 eventually turned up. There were quite big contingents of Maori Party and Green Party supporters: Pita Sharples spoke, as did Sue Bradford. Most of the activist left turned up and of course quite a few (50 -100??) actual fast food workers who were the ones the rally was supporting. Matt McCarten spoke, providing a couple of good quotes for the Herald - "serfs in our own country" and - "There comes a time in everyone’s lives, when we have to make a stand for justice. This is one of those times." The CTU was represented by its vice president, Carol Beaumont. The CTU gave the campaign to raise the wages of the low-paid its full support. Laila Harre spoke from the NDU. She had a delegate with her who told how they organised a supermarket chain. Other unions like the SFWU and AUS had banners or spoke giving support. Child Poverty Action Group had a speaker as well.
The reggae rapper band pumped out the sounds. Rosita Vai of NZ Idol fame (former KFC worker) sang two songs. Michele A'Court and another comedian did their turns and there were some excellent video and slide presentations about the pay campaign.
Sharples spoke strongly against poverty and in support of the low paid and beneficiaries but Sue Bradford said only United Future had so far decided to support her bill to abolish youth rates for 16 and 17 year-olds. She said she hoped Sharples' speech meant the Maori Party would vote for the bill going to the select committee. The word is that Labour will probably support it going to select committee as well. Some Labour MPs and the CTU are backing the bill.
Workers' Charter were distributing their new tabloid newspaper. I congratulated John Minto, its editor, on the quality - 12 pages in colour. Jill Ovens' article about the SFWU pay equity campaign for low-paid hospital workers, with a picture of her on a picket line, was prominent (on page 3). The big question is how the paper will be able to sustain itself, and how frequently they can get it out. Dean Parker wrote a piece in this first edition about the Wharfies Transport Worker paper that was published in the run-up to the 1951 stoush. It was a true worker's paper. It had the social base of an important section of workers.
Workers' Charter might struggle to emulate the popularity of the wharfies' paper; one edition of that paper had a run of 100,000 copies (the union only had 7000 members).
The Workers Charter (draft) features prominently in poster form as the centre-fold. The charter is starting to sound more and more like the Alliance manifesto as it is amended (by whom?) with each new public appearance. It talks of the battle for democracy and human dignity. It calls for a complete transformation of society, with democracy extended into every sphere of the economy and the state. The demands include "The right to public control of assets vital to community well-being" and "The right to organise for the transfer of wealth and power from the haves to the have-nots".

The Alliance is a party for the working class

2006-02-02T10:24:00.000+13:00

by Len Richards – Alliance Co-leader

The Alliance contested the 2005 election as a party for the working class. As such, the Alliance campaigned for the defeat of National and the extreme right-wing elements that supported Brash’s campaign.
It was the large turnout of working class voters, especially in South Auckland, that assured Labour enough seats to form a government. Labour must repay that support with measures to improve the lot of the working class people, many of whom are struggling to survive on pitifully low incomes.
The Government has said it will raise the minimum wage to $12 in 2008 "if economic conditions permit". This is not good enough.
The immediate abolition of youth rates would be start, and Sue Bradford’s private members bill to that effect should be supported by all who claim to be "with the workers", including Labour MPs.
The Greens and Workers’ Charter are pushing for an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $12 an hour. This, the Alliance supports as well. However, if the minimum wage was set at two-thirds of the average wage ($21.13 in November, 2005), in line with the ILO Standard, it would be $14 an hour, and this would make a real difference to hundreds of thousands of workers.
Despite six years of a Labour Government, low hourly rates and the loss of overtime rates mean low-paid workers are worse off in real terms then they were 15 years ago. Workers have to work long hours just to make ends meet.
In real terms, wage rises are barely keeping up with rising prices. Unemployment may well be low by international standards, but many jobs are part-time or casual. Insecurity haunts working class suburbs.
Casual workers often miss out on basic entitlements such as sick leave or parental leave, and they are easily dismissed.
The State has allowed wages and conditions to be driven down by contracting out services such as cleaning in hospitals and doing nothing to ensure workers get a living wage and decent conditions.
The Alliance says we need to:
 Increase the minimum wage: The Alliance policy is for a minimum wage of $15 an hour. We oppose discriminatory youth rates. Everyone (those with jobs and beneficiaries) should get an income they can live on.
 Control excessive hours: We supports the introduction of a 35-hour working week with no loss of pay and immediate introduction of 4 weeks annual leave. Workers should have the right to refuse unreasonable hours or shift work, and mandatory overtime rates.
 Introduce responsible contracting: Where employers get public money to deliver services, we think they should be required to meet national standards in pay and conditions.
 Protect casual workers: We fight for protections for casual and part-time workers and make it possible for them to carry over service from job to job so they qualify for public holidays, sick leave and parental leave.
 Secure a right to redundancy: All workers should have the right to a minimum redundancy payment, but many do not have the power to negotiate this. Our policy is for minimum redundancy of 4 weeks pay, plus 2 weeks pay for every year of service.
 Address pay equity in the private sector: Pay inequities in the private sector as well as the public sector will be reduced when we have free childcare, after-school care and when the work that women commonly do is rewarded with decent pay.
 Extend Paid Parental leave: We fight for 12 months paid parental leave for all women workers, including casual and seasonal workers. We also support 2 weeks paid parental leave for partners.
 Legalise the right to strike: Workers should have the right to strike to enforce their Collective Agreement, to oppose lay-offs, to support other workers, and for political reasons.
 Introduce workplace democracy: Workers should have a say in the way work is organised. The Alliance will push for stronger employment legislation to ensure greater workplace democracy.

Workplace deaths count for nought

2006-01-22T13:38:00.000+13:00

The tragic death of 15-year-old Inia Motu as he worked a school holiday job with his father at the Whitford Landfill near Auckland, the ninth workplace death this year, highlights the inadequacy of Government protection of manual workers on the job in New Zealand. Workers die while reports are written, and nothing changes.
Inia was driving a tractor when it rolled and crushed him. The machine had a roll cage but unless the young man was strapped in, he was at risk. Although a seat belt was fitted, he was not wearing it. The Department of Labour is investigating the training and supervision of the 15-year-old.
Of the nine people killed at work so far this year, seven of them were crushed to death.
The lack of urgency and efficacy of government departments charged with taking action to end the senseless slaughter of workers on the job is epitomised by the inadequacy of the information gathering systems that should be exposing the full extent of the problem.
According to 2002 reports by the Labour and Statistics departments, workplace and work-related deaths are under-reported because of the variety of agencies collecting the information. The Department of Statistics was charged with collating and publishing comprehensive data but this has not happened yet.
OSH investigated an average of 44 fatal workplace accidents per year in the years from 1990 to 1994, a period when a ten year independent joint study by Otago and Auckland university researchers published in 1999 found an average of 67 work related injury deaths of workers actually occurring. If bystanders were included in the tally the average was 74 deaths per year.
Taking just the workers, this means that over 34 per cent of workplace injury deaths were not investigated or counted by OSH. In fact, OSH does include deaths of "members of the public", i.e. bystanders, in its investigations so the under-reporting rate could have been as high as 40 per cent. (Note: There is a six-month overlap in the two sets of figures, but this does not materially affect the result of the comparison.) This under-reporting by OSH continues to this day.
This is because OSH does not deal with all work related injuries. Road deaths of truck drivers, for example, are investigated and counted by the Land Transport Safety Authority (LTSA). Deaths involving aircraft and ships are dealt with by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Maritime Safety Authority (MSA) respectively. And some workplace deaths are just not reported to OSH.
Bob Hill, the then General Manager of OSH, wrote a hard-hitting article in 2002 describing how the cause of the 73 workplace fatalities the previous year varied; "they were strangled, burnt, shot, beaten, decapitated, electrocuted, drowned and crushed to death."
He wrote that: "The true cost of work-related death is under-acknowledged by New Zealanders." He referred to the 1999 university study, saying that it identified 820 work-related deaths from 1985 to 1994. Of these, he said, OSH recorded only 327 i.e. less than half. He says this shortfall was not just because many of the deaths fell out of OSH’s jurisdiction, but also because some deaths that should have been reported, were not.
To overcome this shortcoming in data collection, the Department of Statistics was appointed "Information Manager" under the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act 2001 (IPRC Act) to collect information on workplace injury and death. The Act gives the Information Manager (i.e. the Department of Statistics) the power to require government agencies to provide injury related information. According to the Department of Labour, the Statistics department has the responsibility for compiling comprehensive injury data held by ACC, CAA, MSA, LTSA, NZHIS (New Zealand Health Information Service; a division of the Department of Health) and OSH.
However, the only statistics available from the Department are those from the ACC claims for workplace injury deaths. This data comes with the disclaimer that not all work-related fatalities have claims submitted for them and therefore not all work-related deaths are included. Included in the data, though, are some claims for workplace deaths due to injury caused by occupational disease, a whole other category of under-counted work related deaths.
According to the Statistics Department’s Injury Statistics 2001/2002 Work-related Injuries report, their research the previous year showed:
* No single agency collects information on all the work-related fatal injuries.
* Even when the information from all the relevant agencies is pooled, the total still falls short of the actual total.
* The undercount occurs in part because deaths from occupational diseases are under-represented. As well, some work-related fatal injuries are not identified or reported as such, in part because the element of work-relatedness is not recorded by the agency responsible.
On taking on the responsibility of co-ordinating the workplace fatal injury data collection in 2002, the Department of Statistics said it would take three years to "develop a system to manage injury information". An analyst in the Department told me, however, that "not much progress" had been made with the fatalities. He said a "scoping exercise" was underway to integrate the ACC information with that from the NZHIS and that there were no plans to collect information directly from other agencies like the CAA, the LTSA and the MSA because that information is supposedly available from the NZHIS.
The analyst said the Statistics department hoped to have the integration ACC and NZHIS data "up and running" by the middle of this year so we will have "a better idea" of the number of work-related deaths. However, he said, this information will still be suspect because of the "unreliability of coding" from ACC. The so-called E-Codes used to classify causes of death do not indicate if fatalities occurred at work. This has to be inferred. The independent university study published in 1999 had the same difficulty in utilising the raw NZHIS mortality data.
The lack of urgency in implementing the clear intention of the IPRC Act to collect accurate statistics on workplace injuries and deaths and the inadequacy of the scoping exercise being carried out is a scandal. To prevent accidents and deaths at work, accurate information is the first requirement. The Department of Statistics has been given the legislative power to require the information to be collected but seems reluctant to use that power.
At least six Government departments and agencies are involved in this fiasco; Health, Labour, Transport, Police, the NZ Defence Force and Statistics. The latter should be told by the Government to require the relevant agencies that all work-related injury deaths be recorded as such and the information passed on to the Department of Statistics. In other words "the element of work-relatedness" must be required to be recorded by any agency dealing with fatalities.
As Bob Hill concluded in his 2002 article:
"With ... comprehensive data, we will begin to see the true cost of workplace death and injury to New Zealand, and all parties concerned will have the information to better target action to minimise risks and prevent work-related injuries and deaths.
"Nobody should die in the workplace. The 73 deaths investigated by OSH last year (2001/02) are an appalling waste of life and a source of immense suffering to the victim’s families, friends and workmates, as well as an economic cost both to their employers and to the country as a whole."
In July 2003 the Government established a new independent advisory committee called predictably the National Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Committee (NOHSAC). This committee reports to the Associate Minister of Labour.
In its Second Annual Report in June 2005, NOHSAC estimated that there were 100 deaths from occupational injury and up to 1000 deaths from occupational disease in New Zealand each year. In the year from July 2004 to June 2005 OSH investigated only 46 fatal workplace accidents; again, less than half. The report said: "The Department of Labour and other government agencies do not know how many people die from work-related causes each year. More than 80 per cent of work-related deaths (mostly due to disease rather than injury) are not documented or reported, and are not investigated."
It goes on to describe the limitations of the present data collection methods and holds up Finland as an example New Zealand could follow. There, a separate agency has operated since 1945 collecting and disseminating information on occupational health and safety. It has 900 people either employed by or working for it. NOHSAC calls for a similar agency to be set up in New Zealand.
A 1996 government inquiry slated the "non-existence of meaningful (occupational health and safety) statistics, which has been the case for 20 years, (and) cannot be allowed to continue." Ten years later little has changed, in spite of the trial work done by the Department of Statistics.
NOHSAC says an independent, autonomously functioning and funded agency should operate an Occupational Disease and Surveillance System (ODISSY) that would "ensure that the appropriate data is collected" rather than just relying on data that has been collected by various agencies for other purposes.
Inia Motu’s family, and the families of the hundreds of workers who die from work-related injuries and diseases every year would heartily agree that it is time that those deaths counted for something: that we should learn from these unnecessary tragedies to prevent similar ones in the future.
The Government needs to act with urgency to rectify the present unacceptable situation. Workers continue to be killed while Ministers and bureaucrats sit on their hands.

No room in the Herald

2006-01-06T17:20:00.000+13:00

At the suggestion of another blogger I submitted my piece entitled Little Room for Marx? about Andrew Little and his attutitude to Marx and trade unionism to the NZ Herald for publication in their "Perspectives" pages. I have just got off the phone with John Gardiner, the person who puts those pages together. He told me my piece would not be used because it "did not fit in". He said it was not of "general enough interest" to be published. He claimed to have more than enough submissions and my one "did not make the cut".
It is funny that over the last period the "Perspectives" pages have found room for overseas articles, reprinted from the Independent for example, along with a typically incoherent ramble from Mike Moore, which suggests to me a shortage rather than a surfeit of material.
Is this more a case of the inherent bias of corporate-owned media against radical anti-systemic ideas showing through?
For more on the systematic bias of the media in Britain see Media Lens http://www.medialens.org/

Little Room for Marx?

2005-12-14T16:28:00.000+13:00

In a question and answer column in the NZ Herald (10 Dec. 2005, pC6) Andrew Little, the national secretary of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), said that "unions provide a necessary countervailing force to ensure bad management is challenged and employees’ rights are protected". He continued; "unions that do their job properly play a key role in the labour market by keeping upward pressure on wages, advocating for decent health and safety, providing employees’ perspective on issues like productivity and labour market regulation".
According to Andrew Little, the fatally divided capitalist society that Karl Marx described and analysed in his ground-breaking study, Capital, back in the mid-to-late 19th century, no longer exists. Little admitted Marx’s ideas are among "the most enduring political and economic theories of all time" but he said they were only relevant for Marx’s time "when the excesses and contradictions of powerful capital were at their height". For him, capitalism has "survived fully intact" and Marxist solutions have been proved "not so flash". Therefore capitalism’s existence cannot be challenged in the 21st century.
The six hundred maintenance engineers facing the sack at Air New Zealand might have a different view. For Little it is just a question of setting "bad management" back on the right track. At Air NZ this means cutting a deal by which half the workers lose their jobs and the other half do the same or more work for less pay.
However, it is not "bad management" that is the main problem. At the root of the Air NZ attempt to sack 600 of their engineering workforce are the exigencies of the globalised labour market which pits overseas workers against New Zealand workers. The contradictions of capitalism are still very much alive and kicking.
The French trade unionist, Emile Pouget, explained in his early 20th century pamphlet entitled Sabotage, that workers and capitalists, exploited and exploiters are caught in an "ineradicable antagonism". There is a "fundamental opposition of interests between the two parties" that remains as long as human labour power is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold.
There is nothing more normal in a capitalist society than for the "flesh for toil" to be sought after and bought at the lowest possible price. It is not the labour that the worker supplies that is bought but the very power to work itself, which is then used by the employer to the fullest possible extent while the worker is being paid to be a "wage slave" (to use Karl Marx’s still apt description). The wage paid bears little or no relation to the amount of labour performed. It is supply and demand, bottoming at the lowest possible "necessary" wage to keep a labour supply in existence, that determines the price of labour power: that and the ability of the organised working class to push up wages. Little understands that last part.
Pouget observed that the problem for the capitalists is that "labour power is an integral part of a reasoning being, endowed with a will and the capacity to resist and react". This power to resist has, for as long as people have been exploited by others, led to various forms of revolt. The one that Pouget examined is called "sabotage". This word derives from the French "sabot", meaning wooden shoe, and refers to the clumsy way sabot-clad peasant strike-breakers carried out the work otherwise done by the more skilled and experienced workers who were on strike for better pay and conditions. French workers adopted this word to describe their tactics of simulating such clumsy work in order to put pressure on the capitalist owners to accede to their claims.
Glasgow dockers in 1889 were some the earliest recorded exponents of this form of resistance. Their strike of that year was broken by the employers use of farmhands to load and unload the ships. The scabs worked very inefficiently because of their lack of experience at dock-work. When the strikers were forced to return to work without making any gains in pay they decided to "ca cannie" (ie go slow). They emulated the mistake-ridden work habits of the scab replacements who had now returned to their farms. After a few days of rough cargo handling that led to not a little of it falling overboard or being otherwise damaged, the employers caved in and gave the sought-after pay rise.
The main point being made by Pouget is that workers naturally attempt to restrain the natural exploitative tendencies of their bosses. Other means of direct action, like striking, boycotts, sit-ins and the like are also employed by resisting workers.
No completely "fair" contract is possible between boss and worker because this would eliminate the surplus that makes up the essential profit margin of the capitalist. Only unequal "lion and lamb" contracts exist in this social relationship. From this fact, Pouget explains, "it necessarily follows that in the labour market there are nothing but two belligerent armies in a state of permanent warfare ... between employers and workers there is never, nor ever will be made, a binding and lasting understanding, a contract in the true and loyal sense of the word". Pouget stresses: "Capital and labour are two worlds that violently clash together!"
If Andrew Little started from this inescapable reality of modern society, he might be able to come up with a strategic and tactical response to the proposed closure of the heavy repair facilities by Air NZ that would put workers’ interests first. Instead he clings to the fiction that bosses and workers share a common interest in running efficient work sites, that workers cannot exist without bosses, and that capitalism is the only possible way to organise society.
Air NZ, although it is being run as a profit-making capitalist enterprise, is 82 per cent owned by the government on behalf of the people of New Zealand. Those people, if asked, would, I am sure, rather keep Air NZ running as a safe and essential part of our country’s transport infrastructure than see its existence and safe operation compromised by the requirements of "the market". The main purpose of an airline should be providing safe and reliable air transport, not maximising profits.
The EPMU must mobilise public opinion to force the government to take full control of Air NZ and operate it for the public good. In the event of a shut-down of the repair facilities, workers should stage an occupation of their workplaces until the decision is reversed and their jobs are safeguarded. The Argentinean co-operative movement that grew out of the collapse of capitalism in that country in the 1990s was initiated by worker occupations to prevent the destruction and liquidation of vital manufacturing and transport infrastructure. New Zealand workers should take a leaf out of the Argentineans’ book.
In conclusion: The history of the 20th century was one of wars and revolutions; what has changed in the 21st century? Marxist analysis endures because the conditions it describes endure to this day. While the labour market prevails, the class struggle continues. Denying this can only help perpetuate the destructive capitalist society that daily blights our lives, our environment, and our humanity.

Air NZ unions sell conditons for jobs

2005-12-11T19:45:00.000+13:00

Rather than confront the Government, the EPMU (Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union) and the AMEA (Aviation and Marine Engineers Association) unions have turned to an anti-union accounting firm to come up with a cost-saving scheme at the expense of workers conditions to save only half of the more than 600 jobs that Air NZ plans to slash with the shut-down of its heavy engineering aircraft repair workshops.
Michael Stiassny and Brendon Gibson of the accountancy firm Ferrier Hodgson have produced a plan that will mean, according to the NZ Herald, "far-reaching changes in work conditions" in the hope that enough money can be saved to convince the company to save 300 engineers’ jobs.
Stiassny said it was "phenomenal", an "amazing surprise", to see "how far the delegates and members have moved on labour reform." It is "unusual", he crowed, "to see a union make those ... deliverables". He said that because it is so unusual for a union to make such big concessions Air NZ should take advantage of the situation.
Andrew Little, the national secretary of the EPMU, said the accountants’ plan was "a viable alternative" but in selling workers’ conditions in return for an unenforceable undertaking that some jobs will be saved, Little and the unions are playing right into the company’s hands.
Only a few days before the presentation of the union concessions to Air NZ, the company said that even a 25 per cent cut in labour costs would not be enough to save their jobs. In fact Air NZ said only across the board concessions from all 2100 engineering workers could see some of the heavy engineering jobs saved. Chris Nassenstein, Air NZ’s engineering services general manager, said that even changes in shift patterns, removal of penal rates and an "hours bank" to manage the work load would not be cheaper than outsourcing off-shore.
The unions have buckled under to the blackmail of the company which is cynically using the threat of a complete closure of the repair workshops to extract ‘voluntary’ concessions from the workers. Even with the cuts proposed by Stiassny and Gibson proposal, over 300 jobs will go. The workers that remain will have to take a major wage-cut and yet still be expected to do the same or more work.
The company that Stiassny and Gibson work for is known as a "corporate undertaker", having dealt with several high profile company receiverships. In one, a so-called "phoenix" scheme in 1998, a stevedoring company went into receivership and then arose from its own ashes under a new name. This was done to cheat wharfies, who had been made redundant, out of their holiday and redundancy pay. The wharfies, through the liquidator, successfully sued Ferrier Gibson for nearly $2 million.
To think such a company would act in the interests of Air NZ engineers as Andrew Little obviously does is, at the very least, the height of naivety.
Instead of making concessions, the unions should be waging a campaign to force the government, which owns 82 per cent of Air NZ, to take full control of the airline and ensure the engineering repair facilities are kept open.
Threats of closure should be met with an Argentinean-style occupation of the repair workshops. Privatisation of transport has been a disaster for New Zealand as has been seen with the fiasco’s dogging the railways and bus companies. An integrated, planned transport system is only possible through public ownership and democratic control.
The loss of our country’s heavy aircraft repair capacity would be a major blow to our strategically important transport infrastructure. The Labour-led government should act in the interests of the people who elected it and protect the 600 jobs at risk while ensuring New Zealand continues to have a viable national airline.

Cut Out "Pokie" Cancer

2005-12-09T16:37:00.000+13:00

What absolute rubbish the apologist for pokie machines was spouting on the Jim Mora afternoon show on National radio today. He implied that people could not lose much money in the machines because they are programmed to return 90% of turnover in winnings. However, he neglected to point out that if the return from winnings is 90% or 95% or even 99%; if it is any figure under 100% (which it must be if owners of pokie machines are to make any return at all); then if you keep playing the machines long enough you will eventually lose all the money you started with.
Say, after an hour you have $90 left from your original $100 (it usually goes much quicker than this). Then after another hour you lose another 10% and only have $81 left. Then after another hour you lose another 10%, and so on and so on, you will eventually end up with a very small amount of money – in practice you will lose all your money sooner or later. In the scenario outlined here you would have less than $10 after 22 hours. It is an inescapable mathematical truth that your money will continue to diminish at an average rate of minus 10% each cycle of the machine (not each hour as in my hypothesis). You must end up with nothing if you play long enough.
Such is the addictive quality of these machines that many people who can ill-afford to, lose thousands of dollars. In cases I am personally aware of people have lost tens of thousands of dollars over a period of months and years. People have lost their homes, been driven insane by the destructive results of the pokie gambling habit, and I am sure some have committed suicide.
It is the poor suburbs that are particularly targeted, with the pokie bars typically being sited right next to those other predators of the poor, the loan-shark shops. It is time to end the pokie culture once and for all. The machines should be banned. The community can raise all the money it needs for useful social purposes in other ways , including taxation on those who can most afford it.
The salient fact is that the longer you play a pokie machine the more you lose. You cannot win in the long run, you can only lose. And you will always lose all your money it you play for a sufficient period of time. This why these machines are so pernicious. They are open all hours and there is no limit to how much you can lose. Most other forms of gambling have some cut off points, like the closing of the tote or the time of the draw. In that sense they are less liable to be addictive. All gambling is a blight on a civilised society, but pokies are a social cancer. This cancer must be cut out!

Report From Alliance Conference

2005-12-09T16:32:00.000+13:00

The Alliance annual conference was held in Christchurch last weekend. The conference was small, about 30 delegates compared with closer to 60 last year. Nevertheless, those present were determined to continue with the Alliance project.
The rival project that goes under the nomenclature of "The Workers' Charter" was given a hearing with a presentation by John Minto. We later voted to endorse the Charter as a "minimum programme" (largely) consistent with our own manifesto, but we expressed concern about the lack of democratic process in its establishment and its on-going organisational structure.
Some Alliance members are quite strong supporters of the Workers' Charter, but they see it as a parallel project rather than a rival one. However, the main promoters of the Charter, the Socialist Workers Organisation (SWO), have stated openly that they expect it to lead to the formation of a "mass workers party". Good luck to them.
However, the Alliance showed with its feisty election campaign that it is still a significant force to the left of Labour. Its very existence is an achievement that should not be lightly dismissed. It is better to build on what has already been achieved, and to honour the legacy of past achievements, then to start from scratch again.
Those who want a "mass workers party" to the left of Labour should seriously consider joining the Alliance. We have no objection to people holding joint membership of other compatible organisations while building the Alliance up to again challenge for a place on the electoral scene. Only parties with a serious political agenda will be taken seriously by workers in Aotearoa/ New Zealand.
In her address to the conference, Alliance President, Jill Ovens, confronted the delegates with the reality of the Alliance's present situation. She stressed the need for an urgent party-building and recruitment effort if the Alliance is to survive as a viable electoral force.
Jill was re-elected as President. We had earlier voted to change the constitution, on Jill's initiative, so that the President could not also be a Co-leader. Jill indicated in her speech, and in pre-conference correspondence, that she would be stepping down as a Co-leader. In the event Paul Piesse was nominated again as a Co-leader and a Christchurch delegate, Tom Dowie, nominated me for the other Co-leader position. There were no other nominations, so that was it. The triumvirate is Jill, Paul and me.
We have new people taking over the membership and finance responsibilities. A heartening sign was the fact that some new young people have joined up or become active in the recent period.
We set targets for recruitment and we also agreed to hold a gathering of our youth wing, Staunch, during the year. Linda Boyd (Christchurch) and Sarita Divis (Auckland) are keen to help organise this. The Alliance has atrophied for many years now. An urgent injection of new blood is needed.

Report from Fiji (3)

2005-11-26T16:49:00.000+13:00

Further to Report from Fiji (2): The young fisherman I talked to yesterday also said that he wished the Americans or the British would take Fiji over again. He thought that would enable the Indos to get a fair go. I didn’t get to talk to him about the Labour Party. The tractor arrived to tow his boat up the beach so our conversation was cut short.
A moving account of the plight of the Indo-Fijians over the 120-year history of Indian habitation in Fiji was written by Rajendra Prasad (2004). It is called Tears in Paradise and outlines the “British depravity and the barbarity of the CSR Company against the indentured labourers” brought to Fiji, more often than not, under false pretences.
Over a 37-year period from 1879 to 1916 this “reformed system of slavery” transported 60,553 girmitiyas (indentured labourers) from India. This was part of a programme of systematic utilisation of Indian nationals by the British from 1834 to 1916 to serve as cheap, tied labour in its colonial outposts.
Prasad writes: “Indenture was a system of manipulation, domination, intimidation and exploitation of human labour, and mental and physical violence were mercilessly used to increase productivity and raise the profitability of the white planters.”
Indenture contracts lasted five years, but the girmitiyas had to work another five years for extremely low wages to qualify for a free return trip back home. Most never made it back to India.
Another writer, Hugh Tinkler, quoted by Prasad said of the indentured labourers: “It was their labour, along with British capital and expertise, which created the overseas wealth of Britain.”

Report from Fiji (2)

2005-11-25T23:39:00.000+13:00

I met a young Indo-Fijian fisherman down at the beach at Nadi Bay this (early) morning. We went to buy fish as the fishers arrived back from their sojourn at sea at dawn. Between 6 and 7am is the best time to buy the fresh catch.
The young man we talked to was 31, a Fijian who had no idea which part of India his ancestors hailed from, so long ago had they come, or been transported, to Fiji. All of the fishers were Indo-Fijian. The “Fijians”, he told us, were only interested in having enough to eat and drinking kava or beer.
The fishers pay $12 a year for a license to fish from the Government but they have to pay $500 a year to the local Fijian people for the rights to fish in the sea around the islands where the fish are abundant.
Ironically, those same local people buy much of the catch of the fishers they charge to fish in ‘their’ waters. The young man we met had just returned from a three-day fishing expedition and he had already sold most of his fish to the people on the smaller off-shore islands.
He built his own boat after fishing for others for some years. He studied the design and the construction of the boats he worked on in order to work out how to build his own. As he said, he had no chance of getting a job in the tourist industry because he wasn’t an indigenous Fijian, and he did not have degrees or sufficient education to get a well-paying job elsewhere, so he went fishing.
This young fisherman was a thoroughly pleasant, intelligent and interesting human being, much like most of the other 6 billion of us.
Incidentally, tourism is by far the biggest income earner for Fiji. But the second biggest source of overseas earnings is remittances from troops serving overseas as peace-keepers. Fiji has joined other South Pacific island nations in becoming a remittance country. Remittances have increased by over 500% in the last 10 to 15 years to better all the earnings from clothing, textile, footwear, gold, fish and mineral water exports combined.

Report from Fiji

2005-11-25T12:28:00.000+13:00

Elections are due in Fiji next year. Already the election games are on. The word “games” is not really appropriate given the issues still at stake in this divided country.
The Indo-Fijians and the indigenous Fijians are not going to be “reconciled” any time soon. The Labour opposition led by Mahendra Chaudhry (Indo-Fijian) and his deputy Poseci Bune (indigenous Fijian) are the best hope for the majority of Fijian people: the workers and poor cane farmers.
I am staying at my brother's holiday house/Lockwood show-home on the reclaimed piece of swamp that is the ‘island’ of Denarau. A river crossed by a single causeway through a manned security gate provides a ‘safe haven’ for the tourists and wealthy house-owners who are “Bula-ed” everywhere they go. Other 24/7 guarded gates provide and prevent entry to the subdivisions with names such as “Mariners Reach”, “The Cove” and “the Links”. The massive ‘homes’ behind the gates remain uninhabited much of the time.
Every morning hundreds of workers, both Fijian and Indo-, pour onto the island in ramshackle buses and grossly over-crowded vans and pick-ups to team over the huge Sofratel or Hilton building sites at the end of the road, or to work on the many house building projects in train around the subdivisions. Huge palms, ripped out of the bush, are unceremoniously trucked in every day sweeping the access road with their dragging fronds. These will provide the ‘natural’ em-palmed surroundings for the hotel guests. Denarau is the ‘holiday in the construction site’ destination.
A palm-lined 18-hole golf course is provided for the entertainment of the holiday makers and residents alike; although, the heat seems to limit the numbers taking advantage of it. The swimming pool is a much more welcome amenity.
We strayed down the road from hell the other day, along road works for 11 kilometres from the main, sealed, Nadi-Suva road to a resort under construction with yet another 18-hole golf course. All the works were under the aegis of New Zealand-based companies. The rest of the loop road was even worse, but we rock-hopped our way gingerly around it in our old Toyota rental (Toyotas rule in Fiji!). On the way we passed cane farmers hand loading (over loading) their trucks with the soot-blackened, harvested cane. Passing one of these trucks on the road is a death-defying experience, so wide are their loads. Every so often came a welcome hundred-metres or so of tar-seal outside the local school – sometimes a Fijian school and then an Indian one – separate development is alive and kicking here. Towards the end of trip the road shared the river crossing with one of the cane railways that criss-cross the countryside - no room for error there.
Hundreds of workers are engaged in massive tourist resort projects all around the coast, especially within an hour or two of the international airport at Nadi. They say there will not be enough aircraft capacity through Nadi airport to bring in the numbers of tourists being catered for. Apparently this development is all a spin-off from 9/11 – Fiji is apparently a terror-free zone. Tell that to the Indo-Fijians who cowered in the ditches in fear of their lives during the 2000 ‘crisis’.
In the words of Poseci Bune spoken in the Fijian Parliament recently (reported in the FijiSUN newspaper):
“Terror and lawlessness were unleashed in the suburbs and rural countryside (around Lambasa) when marauding thugs were allowed to roam at will (by the rebel forces at the Lambasa barracks), looting, plundering, raping and beating up residents. Houses were taken over, vehicles, crops and livestock were commandeered and in many cases, wrecked. Scores of frightened families were forced to either flee their homes or hide in drains at night to escape from the thugs.”
Bune was defending the Labour Leader, Chaudhry, for refusing to take part in a sham matanigasau (traditional apology) ceremony organized by the Lands Minister, Ratu Naiqama, who was present at the Sukanaivalu Barracks during 2000 while these attacks took place.

RED & GREEN 5 out now!

2005-11-15T09:29:00.000+13:00

RED & GREEN 5 is out this week. This is the “NZ Journal of Left Alternatives” that I co-edit. The latest 160 page issue is available from me via my email. The cost, including postage, is $12.50 (or purchase an annual $25 sub.). International and institutional annual subscriptions are $50.
Payment can be made by cheque sent to RED & GREEN, 6 Wedgwood Ave, Mangere East, Auckland 1701 OR by direct credit to our WestpacTrust account 030510 0818099 00.
In this issue of RED & GREEN we have several very interesting articles by doctoral students, proving that the future of left – intellectual endeavour in New Zealand is in good hands.
The first is Jeremy Anderson’s lead article about the development of an internationalist strategy by unions against the multi-national “Goliaths” in our globalised world.
Then Toby Boraman views the imposition of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 90s from a working class perspective. He shows that the 1990s, far from being a period of working class passivity, witnessed a multiplicity of largely working class struggles against the imposition of neoliberalism.
In her review of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification (RCGM), Corrina Tucker examines the contamination of democracy inherent in the way the RCGM selected and heard its evidence.
Finally, Matt Russell’s article is an analysis of the development and containment of the Maori protest movement, specifically employing Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and passive revolution.
Regular contributor Jane Kelsey features with a speech to the opening plenary for the Hong Kong People’s Alliance meeting on the WTO Ministerial held in Hong Kong in February this year. It updates the developments in the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) operations in the Pacific.
The trade union movement mourned the loss of veteran activist Bill Andersen earlier this year. RED & GREEN 5 contains a revealing interview conducted with Bill by No’ora Samuela in 1993.
Our Discourse section includes a transcript of a speech by Chico Whitaker, a founding organiser, and member of the International Secretariat, of the World Social Forum (WSF). At an Auckland meeting in May this year he spoke about the history and principles of the WSF.
Scott Hamilton, another doctoral student, exposes the hypocrisy of the pro-war Left in Britain who defend the invasion and occupation of Iraq on the grounds that this is a “socialist war”.
Andrew Sharp is sure to spark up debate with his “argument for monarchy and the Crown in New Zealand”.
Bernard Gadd makes some insightful observations on citizenship and rights. Gadd argues for “rights-based, democratic citizenship”.
Two discussion pieces by Chris Poor and Len Richards on the issue of internal party democracy, with particular reference to the recent history of the Alliance, are included.
A talk given by Jenny Skinner is featured in the History segment. This was on the life of long-time peace and justice campaigner Freda Cook who, among other things, spent some years in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, teaching English.
Len Gale relates a short anecdote about a worker’s escape from the drudgery of the Railway Workshops in 1944.
Two reports, one from Peter Murphy, a left activist in Australia who examines the last federal election in that country, and another from Paul Maunder on his visit to Cuba, make up our International section. Murphy describes a politically polarised Australia, with workers facing attacks from the Howard government. Maunder enjoyed his stint as a ‘brigadista’ in Cuba and found a society that gives him hope for the future.
Once again we feature Poetry. Paul Protheroe has written two thought provoking poems; one inspired by his connection with the Cambodian community in South Auckland, and the other by a recent trip to California. Paul Maunder, in his poetic contribution, muses on the American election from his Blackball bunker.

Chomsky Slandered in Sunday Star-Times

2005-11-09T09:15:00.000+13:00

The article by Emma Brockes in the Sunday Star-Times (Nov. 6, pA17), reprinted from the Guardian about Noam Chomsky, purports in its question-and-answer sub-headline that Chomsky supported "those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated". Chomsky’s affirmative reply printed in the sub-head was actually given in answer to a completely different question.
This vile slander about the man voted the world’s top public intellectual was exposed by the media-watch group Medialens which comments: "Brockes’s headline mis-matching of questions with answers in this way is a genuine scandal - a depth of cynicism to which even mainstream journalism rarely sinks."
The slander is repeated later with Brockes putting quote marks around the word "massacre", saying Chomsky used this device to "undermine things he disagrees with". This was to back up her assertion that Chomsky thought reports about Srebrenica were overstated.
Chomsky told Medialens that he has never used quote marks around the word massacre in any writings about Srebrenica. An audit by Medialens bears this out.
Chomsky protested about the article to the Guardian editor: "Even when the words attributed to me have some resemblance to accuracy, I take no responsibility for them, because of the invented contexts in which they appear."
Medialens concludes that Brockes’s article "is one of the most shocking and appalling media smears we have seen."

Rod Donald’s death – tragedy and farce

2005-11-08T16:54:00.000+13:00

The public responses to Rod Donald’s tragic death range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the tragic to the farcical.
While one’s heart goes out to Rod’s family and his Green Party and other political colleagues on the broad left, it is too much to stomach some of the "tributes" to Rod from his political enemies and "faux" friends.
ACT Leader Rodney Hide was "shocked to learn of Rod Donald's death". "Rod will be sorely missed by the Green Party." Although, clearly, the other Rod(ney) will not be sharing that feeling with the Greens.
Don Brash stated the obvious: "Parliament will not be the same place without him". But at least he was honest and direct when he said: "Despite disagreeing on some policies, I admired Rod as a hugely principled, honest and capable man, with a passion and a drive to represent his beliefs and speak his mind."
Winston Peters said it all, and nothing, with his remark: "Wherever one sits on the political divide, it can’t be denied that Rod Donald was dedicated to his party’s cause and their issues and had been a high profile and effective parliamentarian."
Prime Minister Helen Clark drew attention to the debt Labour owed the Greens: "I have known Rod Donald since he entered Parliament in 1996, and worked with him for the past six years during which Green Party support and goodwill has been indispensable for our government."
It is a shame that debt was not repaid with some Cabinet posts.
And it is true that: "Rod gained a national profile from his work on the electoral referenda in the early 1990s. He was a strong advocate for MMP, and entered Parliament as a Green Party member within the Alliance in 1996."
But heartfelt tributes are in the majority and bear a scan through in the "Politics" section of Scoop.
PS The conspiracy theorists among us, and who at heart is not one, will be curious to find out what did kill Rod if it wasn't a heart attack.

Working class culture is class struggle culture

2005-11-01T15:22:00.000+13:00

Did you know that the tradition of the "singing IWW" (Industrial Workers of the World) grew directly out of the class struggle.
When the IWW organised skidroad meetings of workers to fight the gang-boss "sharks" on the West Coast of the US in 1907, the Salvation Army "ran interference" with their band and its big bass drum which drowned out the IWW speakers. The union organisers, led by J.H. Walsh, "hit upon the device of making parodies to be sung to the music furnished free by the Army".
The refrain "Hallelujah, I’m a Bum" became particularly popular because it was set to one of the Sallies most common tunes. From song cards eventually came the IWW song book.
If the church can have hymn books to rally the faithful, the unions can have song books to rouse the downtrodden.
(See The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years (1905 – 1975) by Fred Thompson and Patrick Murfin, published in 1976 by the IWW)

Musing on Minto

2005-10-30T16:57:00.000+13:00

John Minto wrote an excellent opinion piece in the NZ Herald on Thursday, Oct. 27 about the rise of the juvenile gang culture that has been in the news with the violent attacks over the last couple of weeks. Many of the "street gangs" that are seen as responsible for this violence have been identified in Otara, South Auckland where John teaches, so he would have seen the situation close-up. John blames the violence on "a strong sense of alienation" originating from the poverty rife in places like Otara.
Low income levels result from the low wages many people are paid in casual and insecure employment. The low wage rates mean long hours are worked by parents, exacerbating the situation facing the young in the area. Lack of hope for a better future combined with poor or non-existent parental supervision of, or involvement with, their children (because of work demands), provides a local breeding ground for the imported gang culture celebrated in the music videos, computer games and films many of these kids are exposed to and identify with.
John Minto slates the Labour governments of the last six years for not seriously dealing with poverty. He says that after the introduction of income related rents, "which was a plus", it has been "a long, slow, downhill slide". He says even after the Working for Families package is implemented, 175,000 children will still be living in poverty.
Schools in poor areas are also disadvantaged by up to 25 per cent because of the extra income the schools in wealthy areas can raise from parents and fee-paying students.
He concludes that: "The poor can go to hell in a hand-cart as far as Labour is concerned."
All this is true; to a point. That point is: what would things be like under National? This prospect is disregarded by John.
He does not mention that it was National that cut benefits and smashed-up the unions with the Employment Contracts Act so that non-union low-paid jobs became the norm. Mass poverty was the result.
Of course the Labour administration of the 1984 – 1990 period initiated the neo-liberal reforms that led to massive increases in unemployment through closures and "restructuring" of industries. This was the result of "Rogernomics"; the capitalist-empowerment project that was carried out in the name of "deregulation". That administration, however, flew apart under the weight of the contradiction between the right wing leadership and the working class support-base of the Labour Party. Most of the right-wingers responsible for the 1984-90 betrayal by Labour ended up in the ACT Party or the political wilderness.
Labour has been forced, in words and in some of its practice, to renounce its Rogernomics past. Many of the underpinning neo-liberal legislative changes remain intact (like the Reserve Bank Act) but Labour has repealed and replaced the ECA, for example. Although strike action is still severely restricted by the new law, unions at least have legal recognition and protections they had lost under National.
And no-one could deny that the support of the working class was crucial to Labour's victory in Election 05. This means that a Labour-led government is susceptible to pressure from the working class through its organisations and its independent political action, even if Labour only acts out of a sense of political survival and opportunism. This is why the real masters of the universe on the right want to keep Labour out of governmental power. They want a National-Act government.
A naive or non-political-activist reader could be forgiven for taking from the tenor of John’s Herald article the implication that he must be a National supporter because he comes across as so virulently anti-Labour. Of course this would be a gross misjudgement of John’s politics, but sometimes the anti-Labour vitriol from those to the left of Labour is hard to distinguish from the rantings of those to the right who also wish to destroy Labour.
This is something those of us who wish to build a left alternative to Labour should ponder. The first task of such an alternative is to defend the working class and its organisations from the attacks of the capitalist class enemy and its open agents on the right. Only from that high ground can the genuine left have success in undermining, in the eyes of the working classes, the more insidious support base for capital provided by the mis-leadership of the Labour and trade union bureaucracy.

New Standard article - US 'democracy' - yeah right!

2005-10-28T15:21:00.000+13:00

An example of a New Standard report - worth a look at this site (Click title to go to it) or look under Links

House Passes Bill Discouraging Voter Outreach

by Michelle Chen (bio)

In legislation providing much-needed funds to affordable-housing advocates, lawmakers inserted a clause prohibiting recipients from even remote involvement in any electoral activity.
Oct 27 - The link between moving into an apartment and stepping into a voting booth might not be immediately clear, but it is a cornerstone in the work of many nonprofit housing groups -- and a perceived source of political trouble for some conservative members of Congress. The entanglement between housing and politics is now thickening in a controversial proposal to restrict affordable housing funds for nonprofit groups that promote political participation.
The Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005, which passed the House of Representatives yesterday by a vote of 331-90, contains a provision that establishes a national fund for developing affordable housing, by skimming 5 percent off the profits of the government-sponsored home-finance companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
The funding would be a boon to the nonprofit housing sector – worth up to an estimated $1 billion within two years – but it comes with strings attached: nonprofit organizations would not be able to tap into the fund if they have recently engaged in activities that encourage people to vote.
A product of negotiations between a faction of conservative legislators and the House Financial Services Committee leadership, the clause is supposedly intended to prevent grantees from misusing federal funds, but housing advocates have denounced the so-called "gag rule" as dangerously broad.
"They aren't targeting abuse of anything," said Rick Cohen, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, which advocates on behalf of charitable organizations. "What they're targeting is the activism of organizations that don't think the same way that they do."
Taking Aim at Charity
Under the weight of a nationwide affordable housing crisis, nonprofit groups say the proposed rules paradoxically open doors to equitable housing by restricting access to democracy.
"To build affordable housing and have to sacrifice nonprofit free speech and advocacy rights," said Cohen, "is a bargain that, really, nobody should accept."
The legislation essentially bars nonprofits receiving the government money from spending their own private funds, raised from non-federal sources, on any election-related activity. For instance, grantees could not help people register to vote or host a polling site at a housing facility.
The legislation also restricts grantees from associating with groups engaged in such activities -- a caveat critics fear could break up mutually supportive nonprofit networks through guilt by association. According to a legislative analysis by the government watchdog group OMB Watch, "affiliation" could be defined as funding support that constitutes over 20 percent of a group's yearly budget, overlapping board members, or even a shared computer server.
The proposed restrictions apply to nonprofits for the duration of the grant and are retroactive for a year prior to the funding request. But they would not impact for-profit companies, which already enjoy relatively few limitations on political activities under existing federal statutes. In contrast to their profit-driven counterparts, charitable groups and other nonprofits, are heavily restricted in using their resources to influence government policy, though they can advocate around specific issues.
A broad coalition of nonprofits has argued that the housing fund rules impinge on groups' free expression and association.
Linda Banks, executive director of the housing provider Southwestern Louisiana Homeless Coalition, fears that the restrictions would conflict with her organization's community advocacy work, which involves informing congressional representatives about local housing needs. Moreover, if her organization attended a community gathering where other nonprofits were helping to register voters, she wondered, "does that mean that we'll have to pay back any funds that we were issued because our agency was a participant?"
However, Banks mainly opposed the restriction not out of financial concerns, but on principle. "I'm just afraid that what they're attempting to do with this restriction is to not allow people to practice their constitutional rights," she said.
Nonprofit advocates say the restrictions would cut off a major funding stream for housing groups working to rebuild the physical and civic infrastructure of the devastated Gulf Coast, where the proposed fund would initially be targeted.
Banks said that in the Louisiana communities served by her group, hurricane victims are still stranded in shelters, waiting for homes to be rehabilitated. "Someone needs to be able to build those units," she said. "If we're not allowed to do so, then we won't have the housing inventory to address their needs."
Or, she predicted, the rebuilding effort could be hijacked by "private developers that have no clue -- and no compassion for the very-low- and low-income person."
The housing fund is part of a broader bill that tightens regulations on government-sponsored enterprises, private finance companies established by Congress to facilitate home ownership. After the Financial Services Committee approved the bill in May, a coalition of conservative legislators known as the Republican Study Committee pressured Financial Services Chair Michael Oxley (R-Ohio) to insert the additional housing fund restrictions.
In a letter dated May 25 to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), obtained by The NewStandard, members of the Republican Study Committee warned, "[T]he money from this fund could be used to finance third-party advocacy groups that have agendas… that are antagonistic to the free-market principles we value."
An unsigned memorandum recently circulated among House members contended that the bill "would require the government sponsored enterprises to pump billions into left-wing organizations."
Michael Kane, director of the subsidized-housing advocacy group National Association of HUD Tenants, views the restrictions as part of a conservative agenda to disenfranchise underserved communities.
"They're trying to criminalize democracy," he said, "while allowing unrestrained, government-subsidized… activities by for-profit companies for their own private gain."
More than Bricks and Mortar
Advocates of affordable housing say the connection between political participation and housing work is fundamental to community development.
As community-based institutions, nonprofit housing organizations often serve as a bridge between the advocacy of civil rights groups and low-income and minority constituencies. Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington Bureau, said that housing groups lay the groundwork for political organizing, by helping "to build the involvement of people… so they can protect their communities using the political process."
In voter mobilization drives, Shelton added, housing groups are "strategically positioned" to bring local citizens to the polls.
In the 2004 election season, nonprofit organizations played a major role in promoting voter participation. According to survey data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which has led the opposition to the funding restrictions, housing groups registered an estimated 84,000 new voters.
The proposed restrictions could clash not only with the principles of various groups but with existing state and federal laws as well. According to the OMB Watch analysis, electoral reform laws like the Help America Vote Act facilitate partnerships between nonprofits and government agencies to boost voter participation.
Minnesota state law actually mandates that nonprofits receiving state support "shall provide voter registration services for employees and the public."
Chip Halbach, executive director of the advocacy coalition Minnesota Housing Partnership, noted that "state grant dollars go into pretty much every affordable housing unit that gets developed in this state," which would automatically exclude Minnesota nonprofits from the national fund.
For many nonprofit groups involved with affordable-housing work, their voting-related activities never assumed a partisan taint before the ensuing legislative battle.
In the affordable-housing communities managed by the faith-based charity Volunteers of America, voter registration is provided to residents alongside counseling programs and computer training, as part of an array of services.
A national housing fund could be critical in the group's efforts to rebuild damaged units in the Gulf Coast region, many of which house disabled and elderly adults. "We would hate to be precluded," said President Charles Gould, "if there's something we're doing on a daily basis to help people who need help in exercising their rights."
For the Child Welfare League of America, an association of social service providers that also helps develop supportive housing, voter education is as political as a high school civics class. Ruth White, director of the League's housing program, said the restrictions would undermine programs that teach independent living skills to teenagers transitioning out of foster care. Since the goal is to instill a sense of community responsibility, she said, "we can't, in good conscience, not tell these young people… what it means to be of voting age."
Nonprofit advocates say that the bill mistakenly equates encouraging democracy with manipulating votes. Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, pointed out that, like other citizens, "low-income people do not vote as a monolith. They just don't vote enough."
Dismissing the suspicions of conservative officials, she said, "You're left to conclude that people don't want low-income people to vote."
© 2005 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.

"Creative destruction" by Air New Zealand

2005-10-20T13:58:00.000+13:00

Six hundred workers are to be thrown onto the economic scrapheap by Air New Zealand. The company, which is 82 per cent government-owned, has decided to transfer the heavy maintenance of its aircraft off-shore to Europe and Asia. This is expected to save $100 million over the next five years (ie $20 million a year on average). This is a company that made $250 million profit this year and expects to make $100 million next year. The redundancy costs will be $13 million.

Air New Zealand claims it cannot find enough work for all its maintenance engineers. Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Cullen, washed his hands of the announcement, saying that it is "company business".

This is the government welcomed by the Council of Trade Unions as having a "commitment to an investment approach to economic and social development". The announcement by Air New Zealand of the sacking of a highly skilled workforce is a massive disinvestment in New Zealand. It is reminiscent of the closure of the railway workshops in the early 1990s which destroyed a similarly skilled workforce and dismantled another significant section of this country's industrial infrastructure. The CTU must demand that the government intervenes to prevent this act of economic vandalism.

The early twentieth century economist, Joseph Schumpeter, called closures like this the "process of Creative Destruction, (which) is the essential feature of capitalism". Well he was right about the destruction, but what is creative about it is not so clear. The newly elected Labour-led coalition government should act urgently and "creatively". It must step in to take direct control of Air New Zealand. These jobs can be saved if the government has the will to do so. If the government will not act, the workers can. They should take a leaf out of the Argentinean workers' book and occupy the maintenance hangers to keep them going.

The loss of these engineering jobs is completely unnecessary. It is not about the engineering operation losing money. It is all about return on capital. It is about extracting more profit to ready Air New Zealand for another round of privatisation. The company chairman John Palmer is blatantly promoting a sell-down of the government's shares. The government would do better to take-over the whole company. It could be run as a peoples' co-operative under the control of the workers who, after all, know better than anyone how to operate the enterprise most efficiently.

The need for democracy

2005-10-20T09:05:00.000+13:00

Instead of the mantra; "Discipline, discipline, discipline", unions and other political organisations of the left should march to the beat of; "Discussion, debate and democracy".
True united action by an organisation of people fighting for their rights can only be guaranteed by real agreement and understanding that what is decided is the best way for the organisation to further its aims. Such agreement and understanding cannot be assumed, or imposed from above. Discussion, debate and democratic decision-making is needed to ensure "buy in".
Democracy is not an expensive overhead. It is essential to build progressive mass movements. It is the way an organisation establishes and maintains its links with the people it represents. Without the infusion of energy and enthusiasm from new members and the wider and wider politicisation of the mass of the people with a new vision of the future, left organisations ossify. Without democratic participation, inspiration quickly degenerates into bureaucratism. Organisations are likely to wither and die.
Real strength comes from the support and participation of the mass of the people in the implementation of progressive policies. This is what must be fought for. Who is going to join, or build, an emancipating political movement that does not give its members the right to decide what that organisation does?
What is needed is a form of organisation where the leaders advise and the members decide.