So this is ‘job creation’ by foreign ownership?

By
Frank Macskasy
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29
11

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Frank Macskasy - letters to the editor - Frankly Speaking

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This is not the news that towns and regions across the country want to wake up to;

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- Sponsor Promotion -

Shock in Invercargill as meatworks shuts

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The Radio NZ report continues;

Prime Range was taken over 15 months [November 2014] ago by a Chinese-backed company, Lianhua Trading Group, which itself could be troubled.

Its shares had been put into receivership and it had changed directors several times since the deal.

The Meat Workers Union said the firm had run out of money because its investors had been caught up in turmoil on the Chinese stock exchange.

Invercargill MP Sarah Dowie has called on Prime Range to tell its suspended workers what is going on.

Ms Dowie said she had received messages from distraught families and the situation was hard on them.

Work and Income New Zealand was on standby for workers as a safety net, but she hoped issues would be resolved as soon as possible.

No one from the company, nor its directors, returned calls from RNZ News.

I’ll bet that “no one from the company, nor its directors, returned calls from RNZ News“.  Countries like China are not noted for engaging with media and explaining what is happening to their workers.

The fate of Prime Range prompted me to share these observations with The Southland Times;

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from: Frank Macskasy <fmacskasy@gmail.com>
to: The editor <letters@stl.co.nz>
date: Thu, Feb 18, 2016
subject: Letter to the editor

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The editor
Southland Times

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One hundred and thirty workers at Prime Range Meats have been suspended, with no guarantee that they will be able to return to work. This is the fall-out after Prime was purchased by foreign investors in November 2014.

The situation for these 130 workers is dire, with no income, and no money with which to buy food or pay their bills. How they are able to survive is a miracle in itself.

In all this mess, where is Southland’s former MP, Bill English? Despite abdicating his role as MP for Southland, and becoming a sole-List MP in 2014, one would expect that he has at least a moral duty to step in and sort out this mess.

After all, it was Bill English who, in March 2009, said,

“Overseas investment can play an important role in economic recovery and job creation” (Beehive: ‘Government to simplify foreign investment rules’)

In this case, overseas investment has factored in job destruction, putting many Southland families into financial strife.

Bill English needs to step up. He has advocated for foreign investment and takeover of local companies. Now he needs to take responsibility.

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-Frank Macskasy

[address and phone number supplied]

Postscript

In justifying the need for foreign investment, and consequential buy-up of local companies and other assets, Bill English said in Parliament on 13 February 2013;

“…New Zealand has not, for many decades, had sufficient savings to fund all of its own investment.”

Mr English is 100% correct in  this; New Zealand has not had sufficient savings to fund all of its own investment. Not since National abandoned Labour’s superannuation savings scheme in 1975;

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Compulsory super 'would be worth $278b' - fairfax media - National Govt incompetance

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Fortyone years later, we are still paying for National’s short-sightedness and fiscal imprudence.

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References

Radio NZ: Shock in Invercargill as meatworks shuts

Beehive: Hon Bill English

Beehive: Government to simplify foreign investment rules

Parliament: Hansards – Economic Growth and Job Creation – Progress and Foreign Direct Investment

Fairfax media: Compulsory super ‘would be worth $278b’

Additional

Radio NZ: 130 meatworkers wait for news after suspension

Radio NZ: Meat workers in limbo after sudden suspension

Radio NZ: Suspended meatworker’s wife says 130 families are struggling

NZ Herald: Decision lies with farmers, says English

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9-john-key-tenants-in-our-own-country

 

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= fs =

29 COMMENTS

  1. The Smiling Assassin is doing his job well. People continue to vote for their own impoverishment in the short term and an uninhabitable planet a little further down the track..

  3. +100 – welcome to global control by faceless paper companies.

    One day you have a job, next day nobody knows what happened. Might take a while to find out too. Meanwhile what do 130 families do?

    I’m sure the banks won’t be out of pocket, the firm winding up the company, but the workers will and the taxpayers!

  4. “Fortyone years later, we are still paying for National’s short-sightedness and fiscal imprudence.”

    And 41 years later the same sort of arseholes with the same sort of shortsightedness are tell me what’s best for the country.

    And telling me we don’t have the finances for infrastructural development.

    Those like Hosking and Henry operating on the “Key is God” level are the same as the “Muldoon is God” mob. They shat in their nest and our nest yet are moaning that we are in the crap.

  5. I mean Bill English is making a really really really good argument for why working for a company is a bad idea and that the future of work is best described as self employed

  6. Tim Shadbolt should do more than live off the dying embers of his radical youth and take back the plant under council ownership and let the workers run it as a cooperative. Whenever a plant shuts down local bodies should claim back any subsidies used up over the years as equity. There is bound to be some rates rebate or other inducement to set up shop for the sake of employing people. Take Rio Tinto. When this plan fails we want more than our wages we want our ‘backwages’ as ARD Fairburn once put it. We want the plant and machinery as compensation for the value that we produced that went into the owners pockets before they pissed off. This would include no compensation to the company shareholders nor to any bank owed money by the company. This would be a quid pro quo for the 2008 govt guarantee that allowed the Aussie banks to ride out the GFC and pump money out of workers pockets ever since.

    • Couldn’t agree more!

      But the investigation needs to be done by competent people. I have no illusions that Hosking and Henry would know what investigate means.

      I put the idea that our universities could do polling. Combine Statistics departments with Politics, Social Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology Education departments … and so on. They could do a range of social research as well political surveys. Use their students up and down the country to do the polling, analyse and publish results. Make it transparent and open and have the data available for everyone to see and use.

      Independent, peer reviewed, publicly reviewed and open to scrutiny. A really valuable public resource. Also have a system where the public could submit questions for survey. Lots of options!

      Maybe then we might trust the results.

  11. The NZ meatworks, they do all seem to have a bad reputation now, whether it comes to AFFCO, this one Frank writes about, or Alliance. Here is an article showing how they operate, or try to operate, cutting costs where they can, which includes contractors and workers:

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/72116001/Alliances-new-payment-terms-unacceptable

    They may be collectives, some of them, others in private or overseas ownership, they are all trying to get away with practices that have nothing to do with good faith and decent working conditions.

    This incident about a Chinese owned company is just one incident, the New Zealand operators are also no angels, as we know.

  12. It does not matter whether a plant or company is owned by a foreign investor, bound by local law when it comes to employment, or whether it is New Zealand owned. The problem is that we face the global market, which is ruthless, and the more FTAs we sign, the more ruthless it becomes, as it means workers will be forced to compete with lower working and environmental conditions in other competitor countries. That is why we should be concerned about the TPPA.

    We will have workers forced to compete with Mexicans, with Malaysians, Vietnamese, Peruvians, Chileans and where else they come from, as they will be in one major market and operating under similar free trade conditions.

    Local meat works are forced to compete, otherwise they will not make a profit or even break even. We have simply more proof as to how the international working environment is forced to adjust to the lowest common denominator.

    And we have a planet full of desperately willing workers, they are streaming into the US, Europe, the better off places in South East Asia and also Australia and eventually here.

    There is no shortage of workers, and hence local workers should be damned worried about their future. Why do farmers bring in farm workers from the Philippines and now Indonesia, and fruit pickers from the islands and so, I ask?

    The reason is clear, and we can see in suburban Auckland, the middle class does not give much of a shit, whether their shopping bags are filled by low waged workers, whether their meals are prepared by underpaid restaurant workers, they think it is ok, as they do well under such conditions. They vote Key, and he is the one leading us further down the garden path, where the country will become ever more divided, and the rural workers will compete with slave labour.

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