NZCTU have given us their vision for Workers in NZ…
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi has launched a new policy platform, Aotearoa Reimagined, which has been developed by engaging workers, community leaders and policy experts over the past year.
“Today we are announcing a transformative policy vision that reimagines our society and economy to ensure that Aotearoa New Zealand works for the many, not just the few. We challenge political parties to make a strong commitment to working people by adopting these policies in the lead up to the next general election,” said NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff.
“Our country is heading in the wrong direction. We have a broken economy, rising inequality and poverty, soaring unemployment, and stagnating wages. The rich keep getting richer at the expense of ordinary people. We need to do things differently. It’s time for bold change.
“We’ve spent the last year listening to workers who have told us that they are angry at a system that doesn’t meet their needs or aspirations. They fear their children are facing a future of increasing hardship.
“Everyone deserves security, dignity, and to have enough to thrive. Changing the country’s trajectory is possible—we just need to make different choices. We have listened to working people and created a plan to build a society that works for everyone.
“Our plan would ensure everyone can have good, well-paid jobs underpinned by strong workers’ rights.
“It will deliver world-leading public health and education, a cradle-to-grave care and support system, modern infrastructure, warm dry, affordable homes, clean and publicly owned energy, and low-cost transport.
“The plan would ensure that Aotearoa meets its climate obligations and guarantees a just transition for the workers and communities who will bear the brunt of the climate crisis and technological change.
“We are also calling on politicians to reject the politics of division and honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi by implementing it in law and in our constitutional frameworks.
“We can fund the transformative change we desperately need by rebalancing the tax system, taxing capital gains and ensuring that the wealthy pay their fair share.
“The union movement is challenging political parties to make this vision a reality and create an Aotearoa that works for the many, not just the few. It’s time for a new approach,” said Wagstaff.
…the details are all very broad and general and it feels like something Jacinda would have done in that it’s a perpetual ‘first good step’ that doesn’t really go anywhere.
CTUs vision is like vegan muesli vs a bacon sandwich in that it’s good for you but lacks the sales pitch.
When you consider this hard right, anti-Treaty, anti-Māori, anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-renter, anti-beneficiary Government is strangling off the common good for corporate donors interests, you would have thought the CTUs vision would recognise that, but we are left with a first good step rather than the sprint required.
We have to re-establish the egalitarian mission by promoting policy that directly challenges the capitalist status quo in meaningful ways.
Without vision, the Union movement is lost.
I think Craig Renney’s new podcast will do more than this vision statement.
There are 4 magical pillars of the NZ economic ‘success’
1 – Stealing Indigenous land and never paying back the full value.
2 – Selling basic milk powder to China
3 – Selling each other houses and pretending that makes us rich.
4 – Addiction to a low wage economy.
The migration exploitation rules are garbage because NZ loves exploiting migrant labour!
We are addicted to it.
We say locals are too lazy for these jobs when really what we say is locals won’t allow themselves to be exploited as easily as migrant workers.
There is of course a solution here.
Universals Union membership for every migrant worker crossing the border.
That way domestic workers know they are not competing against exploited labour.
That way migrant labour can’t be exploited without the Union stepping.
That way the migrant worker and domestic worker are all protected by the solidarity of the Union.
We don’t want a solution to exploited labour, that’s why Universal Union Membership for migrant workers is ignored and non-solutions like this are promoted.
This Wednesday the CTU are holding hui all over the country to speak out against this Governments attack on worker rights.
We need economic resilience, we need community resilience, we need radical reform to strengthen sustainability.
We need more Left Universalism.
We need to lift the tax yoke off working people, beneficiaries and the middle classes and we need to put it on the Banks, the Corporations, the Billionaires and the mega wealthy.
We need more Democratic Infrastructure, not less!
Why do we need these things?
Because the climate is shutting down and we face a bleak future where Billions will suffer and die thanks to catastrophic climate change.
This change will be forced upon us whether we like it or not.
This demands more connections, more bonds that bind us together to emotionally, socially, economically and politically survive what is coming.
Māori communalism is going to teach us a lot.
Here are some thoughts on what the CTU hui should be considering:
The Right to Strike: A 10 day nation wide national strike would achieve more for working people than a dozen elections. We don’t have the right to strike in this country for God’s sakes, stand on your feet or live on your knees!
Iwi backed new Supermarket: Bring in a 3rd player into the supermarket duopoly that is Iwi backed with a focus on cheap prices for consumers, best prices for producers and high wages and work conditions for workers. Take 30% of the Supermarket Industry by force (allowed under the Commerce Commission powers) and use this as the backbone for a new food security system.
Mārae Civil Defence: Use Marae as the backbone of Civil Defence throughout NZ with resources based there alongside new building grants to strengthen those Marae.
Ministry of Green Works: We need to be able to build our own sustainable infrastructure, we need social housing builds and we need vast upgrading of the existing infrastructure to be adaptable to climate change.
New Mental Health First Responders: A whole new branch of first responders to deal specifically with mental health issues to talk people down and seek help rather than calling then Police and arresting people.
Artist Benefit: As part of a degrowth Capitalism model, pay Artists to make public art, use that art as a means to deal with the wondrous grief caused by the destruction of the planet.
Māori Parliament: An indigenous Parliament that amplifies Māori political voices.
Universal Student Union: Allow Student Unions to be the incubators for tomorrows politicians and stop students simply being cash cows for corporate education.
Universal Migrant Union: Stop migrant worker exploitation with universal student membership.
Retirement Village Unions: These scumbag retirement villages abuse their elderly and sick clients, universal Retirement Village Unions would stop them being exploited.
Pensioner Unions: Give our elderly a voice!
Sugar Tax to fund free dental.
Financial Transaction Tax to target speculators
Free Public Transport to lower emissions and make an impact on the wallets of the poor.
Wealth Tax aimed at the super wealthy
Inheritance Tax only realised after death
First $20 000 tax free for everyone
Lower GST to 10% to take the tax burden off the poor
Nationalise Early Childhood Education to lower the cost for working mothers and fathers
Without vision the Union Movement is dead.
Solidarity Comrades.
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A new vision involving mass-murderers partying up?
This deliberately ignores millions killed/displaced by continuous American military and political coup activity since it first slaughtered Native Americans to enforce its creation and right up to it’s present day global aggression.
And we’re also not taking account of the significant US domestic population who died either through participating in those military interventions/adventures/invasions or just had the misfortune to be born in the “land of the free home of the brave” where lynchings, gun violence, environmental poisoning are all just additional facets of it’s ‘colourful’ history.
Stalin & Mao ain’t got nothing on the last 45 US Presidents.
A bloke called Xenophon speaking for Athens in the Peloponnesian War.
‘The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.’
The subject of this speech being the people of Melos who were subjected to mass murder and enslavement because they resisted Athens.
Why do you only select communist and socialist mass murderers when ALL societies are capable of it including your own?
Here’s another vision. Put on your goggles because here comes a shit storm.
Also, btw and etc
A book by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison
The Invisible Doctrine
The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life)
https://guardianbookshop.com/the-invisible-doctrine-9781802062694/
“How can you fight something if you don’t know it exists?”
“We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives: our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; the planet we inhabit – the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most people, it has no name. It seems unavoidable, like a natural law.
But trace it back to its roots, and we discover that it is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived, propagated, and then concealed by the powerful few. Our task is to bring it into the light—and to build a new system that is worth fighting for.”
“Neoliberalism. Do you know what it is? ”
When douglas slithered out from up Labour with his ideas about privatisation and of selling our taxes paid for stuff and things to private corporations and individuals now nearly forty years ago I freaked the fuck out. I knew what the little shit was up to and I was right.
Unless we begin to look at our lives in different ways and repair the damage done to our political/social/economic environment we’re going to hand our kids lives over to tyrants and monsters who will be their ruination. The destruction and dysfunction they’ve caused us for their private wealth theft by psychological stealth is otherwise unimaginable which is how they’ve got away with it thus far.
douglas and his minions should be in jail.
Madoff investment scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal
Seem familiar?
” The Right to Strike: A 10 day nation wide national strike would achieve more for working people than a dozen elections. We don’t have the right to strike in this country for God’s sakes, stand on your feet or live on your knees! ”
I agree but its too little to late. Wagstaff would never sanction being responsible for a general strike let alone threatening one. The union leaders of today are more comfortable with noisy words than actual action. And the longer it stays that way the less pressure on the current government and the LINO party to have to confront the effect of thirty years of neo liberal orthodoxy.
The governing parties including LINO , their donors and vested interests know damn well that there is no fight or desire by most working kiwis or the unions that remain to do anything except winge and keep voting for the current status quo.
At least the Americans have Bernie , Cortez and many supporters and unions who are standing up and making it clear they aren’t going to tolerate this bullshit anymore.
We capitulated a long time ago and are more interested in how much capital gains we will make when we sell our land and houses to each other.
The status quo don’t have to confront a Jim Knox , Helen Kelly , Tom Skinner to name a few including Matt Mc Carten who has faded from view.
Visions are easy until you have to work to sell them or implement them with political support.
so communism…. martin wants full blown communism.
No, Martyn is a Marxist Socialist…as opposed to the Trotskyists and communists, but splitting hairs between them all is pointless.
want to make nz a better place?
work hard, dont rely/bludge off the state, make your kids go to school, feed your bloody kids, dont blow your money on booze and drugs, dont blame others for your failings, dont vote labour greens or tpm, dont belive msm or politicians.
“Want to make NZ a better place for your owners?”
FIFY