As a union organiser and a socialist candidate standing for the Mana Movement,
I’d like to welcome the announcement from Labour that they will raise the minimum wage by $2 to $16.25. We’d like to see workers on a Living Wage of $20 an hour, but this is a great start and should be applauded. But without new legislation guaranteeing workers more secure hours, a raise to the minimum wage will not be enough.
We need Guaranteed hours for workers- end Zero Hours contracts. We have a huge problem of underemployment in Aotearoa. Many workers struggle to pay the rent when multinational companies cut their hours from 30 to 20 per week. It’s time to change the law, and force employers to give workers a minimum of guaranteed hours per week, that they can budget around. That legal minimum should be written into a contract at the interview process.
Mana also goes further than Labour when it comes to giving workers their full rights back. Workers should have the right to strike. At the moment, we don’t have our full rights as guaranteed by the ILO to take industrial action. We can only strike if bargaining for a new collective contract has broken down, or if there is a serious risk to health and safety. But we are forbidden to have solidarity strikes, political strikes, or strikes if the companies break our contracts or “restructure” their businesses. The freedom to strike gives workers the power to solve problems themselves at grassroots level, and its a weapon we sorely need.
Joe Carolan, Senior Organiser with Unite Union, writer for www.socialistaotearoa.org, Mana founding member and candidate.
Mmm.
Also, we need to make sure that the 3 month trial for employees doesn’t happen.
This is the policy in Oz, and what happens in the reality for the employee is that the boss can just say to them one day when they get into work “We don’t need you anymore”, or “we’re downsizing”, and they do this to vulnerable employees (those on the 3 month trial contract), when they speak out against sexual harassment on the job, or if they get sick, or if they question anything that they think is wrong, or if they ask for a payrise etc etc.
The 3 month trial only works for the employer – not the employee, and the employee is left wondering every day after work, if they will have a job tomorrow or will they be sent home at the whim of the employer.
This is what happens in Oz, and it would happen here too.
Everyone has the right to strike now if they want to – it’s just that we let the law which is a breach of Human Rights (and therefore cannot actually be a law), supersede our actions. We need to just go for it. Revolutionise our Human Rights Act with action, and make it work the way it was designed and established to ‘be’ in the first place. Strike for our Human Rights, and our Right to everything in the Human Rights Act of NZ.
Same as the gathering in groups larger than 10? is it? meaning that you can be arrested by the police. This is all not on, it is all a breach of basic Human Rights.
Corruption is so rife that we have been shut down, and shut out from our Human Rights, and this in itself is against the law of Human Rights of NZ.
Opinion and belief.
Well it would seem the first port of call is to enable a govt that is sympathetic towards the union movement. Second is to lobby to overturn such laws….which are not laws really because of the reasons already given in the above post.
What they are , in fact , …are a collection of ideas put forward by the Business Roundtable in the 1980’s and progressively embellished. Check out ‘FORTRESS NZ ‘ ..by Ian Fraser from that era.
Sucessively ..as these treasonous neo liberal Mont Pelerin society mongrels have advanced more and more punitive actions against the working people , we have seen the inevitable results. Impoverichment. Poverty . Serfdom.
These characters are NOT our masters…they are NOT royalty ..and they do NOT have the right to influence political parties in the way they have. Thats why I call it treasonous.
Their actions have been nothing short of malevalent, treasonous and destructive to this country with their globalist agendas and their love for foreign ‘investment’.
Smell a rat?…where does the moneyflow go, troopers?…you guessed it…into their offshore banking accounts. ..After being divvied out amongst their little buddies.
The right to strike demonstrates we have democracy not autocracy, freedom of choice , free from any political interfence influenced by unseen groups who prefer to stay in the shadows to avoid direct involvement and public scrutiny.
These characters are anti soveriegnty, have a total distaste of any real concept of nationhood , planning only to advance their globalist agenda and that means among other things the dismanteling and weakening of a nations labour laws… along with such mechanisms that protect our labour and small busineses -such as import tarriffs.
Their modus operandi is always surreptcious….and it is not good enough for unions to let down their guard…it is this group of people who aligned themselves with Douglas, sucessive NZ govt’s, the ABC’s…until they are neutralised through political means….they will continue to bankroll, influence and corrupt our once egalitarian country.
Zero hour contracts suck ass. My friend had this problem when he worked for Dennys. Minimum wage and no guarantee of hours. He used to work lots of overtime and was doing ok, then he got sick and took some time off. When he came back he was down to 1 or 2 days a week and having to beg for extra hours.
He got a new job with a better hourly rate but still no guaranteed hours. He applied for the accommodation supplement but his employer wrote a letter saying they could offer him 30hrs a week until August. Long story short, he never worked 30 hours and when the work dried up he got less than a weeks notice that there was no work. He can’t plan for the future, and hes losing hope.
Something has to change.
Yes RESSA.
Everything needs to change.
And that can happen once the Nats are gone.
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