OUR HISTORY: 1937 – When workers took control

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Source: Unite Union – Press Release/Statement:

Headline: OUR HISTORY: 1937 – When workers took control

By Dean Parker

In the back files of the NZ Herald, Jan 14, 1937, there’s a photo of a crowd standing and seated round a young Maori bloke.

The young bloke is strumming a guitar, grinning and singing away.

Some of the crowd gathered round are draped in blankets. Some wear hats.

The photo was taken inside the Westfield freezing works, just off the Great South Road at Southdown.

The occasion was New Zealand’s first stay-in strike, our first workers’ occupation.

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A Labour government had introduced a 40-hour working week, but freezing workers found they were still doing a 44-hour week without any compensation in pay.

When their grievance was rejected by the freezing companies, the men began a go-slow on the job.

The response from the companies was to threaten to dismiss the work-force.

The response to this, from the men, was unprecedented in New Zealand industrial history.

After attending a morning stop-work meeting, the men returned to work at one in the afternoon.

In the evening, a large number of them went home.

But others stayed on in the canteens.

By nine o’clock that night practically every man had returned to the works, bringing food and blankets.

And then they took over the works.

At Westfield, Southdown, Horotiu and the cool stores on King’s Wharf, they simply locked themselves in, setting themselves up as occupiers.

It made absolute sense. If you strike and walk out, your job can be taken by scab labour. Take over the works lock, stock and barrel and the problem simply doesn’t arise.

The men put up hammocks in the fellmongery, played cards by candlelight in the canteen and were visited by wives and girlfriends—who conversed with them through locked gates.

“Some of the men listened to the gramophone,” reported the Herald from the King’s Wharf cool stores, “others played cards or smoked, and many tried to sleep on tables or the floor, using coats or blankets to soften their hard beds.

“All were cheerful and seemed unworried by the prospect of spending the night in the works.”

The freezing companies demanded the police evict the industrial squatters.

But the Labour government, brand-new to office and rooted solidly in the union movement, declined to march in the police.

With the occupation heading into its third day, Tim Armstrong, the Minister of Labour, was sent up to Auckland to negotiate a deal.

Armstrong was a former miner and union militant.

He’d left school at 11 and taken a job cutting flax.

He’d worked at Waihi where he’d been sacked for organising the mine workers.

In Auckland, he promised the striking freezing workers they would get justice.

The freezing companies, however, were adamant. They would not budge on the matter of the extra hours being worked. They refused to concede either shorter hours or better pay.

So Armstrong simply imposed a settlement. He directed the companies to pay the men overtime for every extra hour worked.

The companies could do nothing but obey. The press was furious.

At the General Election the following year, the Labour Party was returned with an increased majority.

Why does Labour now kow-tow so to business leaders?

Put them in office and the first thing they do is run off to reassure business leaders nothing untoward was going to happen.

It’s time to put up the hammocks in the fellmongery and tell business leaders to get stuffed. They’ve had their snouts in the trough long enough.

(Dean Parker is a New Zealand playwright and labour historian)

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