Brooke Van Velden has declared war on workers – the Unions must fight back

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
71
1059

Brooke’s war on workers continues after she ignored Treasury advice that repealing the Fair Pay Agreements will be damaging to the most vulnerable workers and she gave bosses the right to sack before 90 days.

This is a glimpse of just how ideologically right wing ACT really are!

When the Treasury Nazgûl’s are warning against free market union busting, you know the policy is a fucking nightmare!

Destroying the Fair Pay Agreements is a direct attack on working people, we are witnessing a class war with none of the political vocabulary to fight it because the middle class woke activists have sucked out all the oxygen for their identity politic virtue signals!

So what are the Unions doing.

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Sigh.

This.

Broadly, there is a general consensus that working people in Aotearoa New Zealand want secure, well-paid jobs, better working conditions and fairer economic policies.

At the NZCTU, we are focused on developing a suite of policies that can be picked up by any political party that keeps the needs and voices of working people at the core.

The feedback we’ve heard so far for how we can achieve this included:

    • Protection of pay equity
    • Need for increased flexible work arrangements
    • Calls for rent control and capital gains tax
    • Fairer taxation to address wealth disparities
    • Accessible education on employment rights
    • Housing affordability and instability as critical issues
    • Advocacy for climate action and investment in public infrastructure
    • Stronger worker participation in industry planning
    • Fostering union awareness and addressing workplace inequality.

I love how ensuring wealthy white women gain the same perks as the boys do at the corporate level is number one.

All very worthy and good for you like vegan tofu, but zero spark, passion or vision, which I suppose for a movement that keeps getting smaller is the grim mercy of low expectations.

We face the most extreme hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government with an extremist anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-Worker, anti-Renter, anti-Beneficiary, anti-Environment agenda and the best the CTU has is ‘Reimagine Aotearoa Together’???

What are you going to fight Brooke with? Cuddles snd a motion from the Hui?

Yeah.

Look, we are in real fucking danger from this extreme hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government and I’m not sure anything as toothless as this will excite anyone top defend the Left.

We need bold vision on actual policy.

We need the CTU to be demanding that the Greens, Māori Party and Labour sign up to a shared policy platform that the CTU itself develops.

The CTU should be hiring Max Harris to put together a 10 point shared policy platform that they then heavy Labour, Greens and Māori Party to adopt and then start using for the 3 to use MMP strategically the way the French Left just did in France.

We need more democratic infrastructure, we need universal union membership for every migrant worker with a 30%-70% cut in membership fees to CTU and the Migrant Unions so that every Migrant Worker is covered by a union to ensure there is zero exploitation of these migrant workers.

We need universal union membership at Universities and tertiary Institutes so that young people have an access route to politics.

We need universal left policies.

We need a new taxation structure that taxes the rich and not the poor! Financial Transaction Tax, Wealth Tax, Sugar Tax, Ghost House Tax.

We need to lower GST.

We need Renters Rights.

We need free public transport.

We need free dental.

We need a national economic strategy towards total electrification from renewables and a food security infrastructure.

We need far bigger ideas and vision to bring a people together who felt betrayed by Labour’s incremental bullshit which the fucking Unions blessed and did nothing about.

Voters handed Labour an unprecedented political majority under MMP and that was squandered, so they now want to see solutions that will be forced upon the political establishment.

A wish list from a national hui seems terribly underwhelming of the challenge in front of us.

This Government represents an existential level threat to our political and economic agenda and this is the response?

Wow.

We have some way to go to get this Revolution moving Comrades.

Meanwhile, this unhinged right wing Government plunder and destroy the incremental steps Labour did manage.

71 COMMENTS

  1. The policies of the Coalition will benefit “workers” through growth in the economy.

    • fuck off nobby .What the fuck did national do for workers ever.You cunts forget that with out the workers you are fucked .As I used to say to my employers rat arsed spoilt kids ,it was my hard yards that paid for your over priced education .Then one day the son agreed with me saying that us boomers have raised a bunch os spoiled entitled little fuckers .These are the entitled fuckers that you are now worshiping you cock .

      • Their over-priced education didn’t teach them much in many cases. If it weren’t for being born wealthy, they’d be down at the bottom of the heap with the lowliest workers because of having no obvious talent.

      • If you thought you were being underpaid, why didn’t you go and get another job that paid better?

        Or set yourself up as a contractor where your hard work and long hours would really pay off?

        • Did I say anything about how much I was paid .And every employee is a contractor ,that why its called an employment contract .What dont you right wing scavengers understand about that .All workers are contractors .

      • ‘As I used to say to my employers rat arsed spoilt kids ,it was my hard yards that paid for your over priced education’
        You were paid for your Labour Gordon (or did you work for free?), you could have said no and walked away!
        Typical socialist/Marxist outlook in life, such a sad man Gordon, I hope your son doesn’t end up as bitter and twisted as you in his old age.

        • “you could have said no and walked away”

          it’s usually people with capital and means that trot this one out – you might as well have said “why aren’t you as rich as me, you loser”.
          easier said than done when you’re trying to provide for your family and the only other option in this pimple on the arse end of the world sized market is a worse arsehole lord baron wannabe down the road.

      • Right on the button gordan, National have a track record for kicking the working class in the guts and propping up the rich. They pump money into private schools and run down our public ones. The wealthy moan we pay taxes but it’s there choice to send their kids to a private school. They use to get a tax rebate for the school fees not sure if they still do. The CoC are destroying the social fabric of our country and the eight percent and 6percent parties are going to destroy our environments and more transfer of wealth.

      • Bob TF is good value, proof even those with the lowest IQ, poor grammar and unintelligent comments can find a home after Whale Oil was shut down.

        • Yes Gordon, slow down, Bob tf has a miniscule intellect, so it will take some time before he understands.

    • Please tell me how economic growth will help workers? Don’t you dare suggest a trickle down!

      Apart from generally improved economy – this leads to increases in prices and maybe more poorly paid jobs in a low pay economy. The benefits of economic growth rarely reach those who actually enable the growth through their efforts for their employers who pocket any growth (or sometimes even re-invest – but only after taking their “share”)

      • Have you noticed how Bob the first with no friends can never offer any proof or substance in his posts? To use an old analogy, he is simple.

      • Trickle down doesn’t work??? Then why are we giving large Maori Tribes Waitangi Treaty payments?

        You just said it doesn’t work.

        • Then why are we seeing so many public servants being axed if it does work Bg?

        • If someone steals your car and sells it on then you see it driving down the road – yeah nah mate – she’ll be right – it wasn’t you that stole it.

        • In the whole scheme of things they haven’t had a lot of money. When is compensation ever really enough. Lets face it this government hates the bottom feeders and the public service, they don’t even want to give pay equity to the workers who are looking after the elderly. It’s obvious they don’t want to pay the police , they are not giving new graduate nurses jobs . There is a job freeze in our hospitals. The workers provide the wealth for their employers they are the employers most important asset but all many of them do is want to take workers rights away . This from a 30 year old minister who has never done a hard day’s work in her life. She is eroding workers rights just because she can with only 8% of the vote and they think they have the democratic mandate with this very small number of votes. Corruption at its best.

      • Well if it doesn’t work, how come we all know the opposite ie recessions see the end of employment?

    • Without secure jobs, nothing is secure, and that includes the economy. Short term thinking benefits only politicians focused on electoral cycles, then they’re off.

    • The disease that ‘grows cancer-like economies’ is a fiscal disease called neo-liberalism aka rogernomics. The trick is to clamp down basic costs like electricity, public transport and housing so’s they can’t be used to rort us by mafia like monopolies hiding behind the logical fallacy aka ‘privatization’ which is where individuals make billions from those they’ve literally enslaved. How do we know that bob the first isn’t in fact roger the douglas? Is that you roger? You’ve wrecked and ruined our AO/NZ, you know that right? Your piggy greed has fucked us. You’ve wasted forty years of our lives by the creation of 14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires each with a start-up $50 million after tax and you’ve let in four foreign banks to take over our economy and they now steal $180.00 a second 24/7/365 net.
      Bob the Roger. I like it. Roger the Bob. Even better.

  2. Martyn’s right – the CTU and its touring ‘post-it note and butcher paper report-backs’ initiative will not shift the dial for better living standards for wage and salary workers.

    The CTU never changes and what it delivers never changes. Being wedded to Labour means it is crippled.

    What would really change the game for the CTU – give it real political impact – would be to publicly back the Bishop housing reforms as good for workers and NZ.

    • Bish the crayfish just want’s to fire up the housing ponzi – he doesn’t care about the price – it’s all about the sales – his is purely a RE sponsored play

  3. The vast majority of ‘workers’ are unaffected by this because they’re not in a union.
    Outside of the state run organizations and a handful of reasonable sized private companies, NZ is a company of small or micro businesses, which won’t ever unionize for the simple reason that most of the employees own the business or are relatives of the owner.
    The other consequence of this employment profile is that the vast majority of union members are middle class state employees. Over 50% are teachers and most of them are women.

  4. Right on the button gordan, National have a track record for kicking the working class in the guts and propping up the rich. They pump money into private schools and run down our public ones. The wealthy moan we pay taxes but it’s there choice to send their kids to a private school. They use to get a tax rebate for the school fees not sure if they still do. The CoC are destroying the social fabric of our country and the eight percent and 6percent parties are going to destroy our environments and more transfer of wealth.

    • Ironically the last Labour Govt made me (as a worker) worse off than any govt in history. Firstly I had my pay cut to 80% for 6 months while continuing to work and then they drove inflation through the roof, so what I did have was worth less.

      No one in Labour had even met a worker.

      • so your employer was ripping you off not the government .If you were working you should have been paid as normal .If you were self employed you could have claimed on the covid fund .so I dont see your comment as true .

      • Bg mine went up 20 % under Labour. Perhaps because I was worth it and you weren’t.

    • They aren’t growing the pie for a long time when it comes to salaries. They are adding significant numbers, relative to the type of roles, of worker through cuts that make 1000’s unemployed. The fast bastards who at all the pies are back for a larger helping under this dog turd of a government.

  6. Ms van Velden is of the Pinochet/Reagan/Thatcher/Chicago Boys school of Labour relations–a vicious, smug, union buster to put it accurately. The 70s and 80s neo libs are obviously long gone–but their politics, political economy and international capital control live on. Brooke will not give interviews or talk with workers organisations and representatives–a gutless ruling class rep.

    This Minister has proposed the most significant attacks on the NZ working class since the 1991 Employment Contracts Act and Lord Jackson and Sirkey’s “Hobbit Law”. Unite, Etū and Maritime unions are doing their bit, time for PSA to step up and drop the bogus political neutrality position in favour of direct industrial action.

  9. More bullshit bob the unions are weak because of the ruling parties and too much neo lib policies and too many people like you only care about themselves.

    • exactly – they took one leg out from the tripartite and gave the employers a big slab of wood to keep the stool upright (and to bash workers with). weak government puppets cajoled by capitalist masters. Conservatives are the weakest because, like muppets with someones hand up their arse, they aspire to regaining the status of being real people. (and it gives them comfort, when we all know they’re just frightened little shadows playing at conservativism)

  10. WHAT to say, Jim knox, Muldoon, rule, walking doon manner st, waving a huge t, bone steak, want one of these, join the Union.

  11. Anything workers get today would not have been achieved without unions, fact.
    Only an idiot would argue against that.

  12. once again an ideology that’s just as much a fail as soviet communism is pushed by a crew of illiterate dim bulbs….when will they understand neo lib ideology DOES NOT WORK….if you disagree examples required…forget the us and uk their failure is self evident…we need KIWI solutrions not worn out tattered foriegn voodoo t-shirt slogans

  13. once again an ideology that’s just as much a fail as soviet communism is pushed by a crew of illiterate dim bulbs….when will they understand neo lib ideology DOES NOT WORK….if you disagree examples required…forget the us and uk their failure is self evident…we need KIWI solutrions not worn out tattered foriegn voodoo t-shirt slogans

  14. ” Brooke’s war on workers continues after she ignored Treasury advice that repealing the Fair Pay Agreements will be damaging to the most vulnerable workers and she gave bosses the right to sack before 90 days ”

    ” This is a glimpse of just how ideologically right wing ACT really are! ”

    Its not a glimpse Bomber they have been advocating this since Roger and Derek formed their party to take advantage of MMP and ensuring if their support was needed the Nasty party would have to implement their agenda as part of coalition give aways that the National party would love to do but don’t have the guts since Ruth and Birch. Now they can get pleasure from an all out assault on working people and see where that ends up. Then they ( depending on the direction of the wind ) can say they were never that cruel and its all David’s and Brook’s agenda with Winston and Shane staying silent in the background as our vulnerable people are viciously exploited by the the same enemy that the NZLP has joined to attack our families and friends and their children all in the name of greed and unregulated capitalism that all MP’s in the New Zealand parliament prosper from.

  16. Wages are too high for the output. We’re a lazy nation that doesn’t want to work hard. Minimum wage needs to drop to $5.50 per day. Union members should be on $4.85 per day. You’ll see economy boom!

    • You clearly didn’t read that ridiculous statement twice. The economy suffers from being set up for free loaders who park capital in nonproductive assets like houses.

    • Finally, a right wing National supporter who admits that wages should be slashed!

      I was right

      And Anker, I know you are out there. You are a traitor to the workers of this nation, and will always be a traitor.

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