Labour Day has become a tragic farce.
Labour Day became a national holiday in New Zealand in 1899. It was to commemorate and celebrate the rise of worker powers and how the earliest Pakeha settlers coming to New Zealand fought to create a fair balance of power between the boss and the worker.
Samuel Duncan Parnell came to New Zealand on the ship Duke of Roxburgh in 1839. He was a carpenter who was deeply impacted by the arguments of the day that people should be allowed 8 hours sleep, 8 hours to live their lives and 8 hours to the boss to work. He refused to join his Union in England because they refused to make an 8 hour working day a priority.
Once in New Zealand, Parnell refused to work for anyone who wouldn’t accept his 8 hour working rule and actively went and met new workers coming off the ships arriving in NZ to tell them of the 8 hour working culture he was trying to create.
The bosses tried to resist and tried to force workers to work later, but it became standard working hours in NZ after workers began simply walking off the job if a boss tried to force longer hours.
Fast forward to the NZ working environment of today and we see that Parnell would weep at how workers have been beaten into neo-feudalism. Many workers are over worked and many others are under worked. Many have a precarious working arrangement and have zero job security while health and safety in this country remains one of the worst in the developed would.
There have already been 63 deaths last year and the shadow of the Pike River Mine disaster hangs over industrial relations.
The Right wings war on Unions in NZ have successfully crushed most into irrelevance and this has happened while worker rights and safety has gone backwards.
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi will hold its 20th Biennial Conference next week, 29-30 October, at Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington and for the first time since Helen Kelly’s death, the NZ Union movement has direction.
Instead of lawfare to progress Worker rights, they have had to learn that Mega Strikes are the only force left to them when facing a Right Wing Government this extreme.
That’s the reality Union Members and Union Leaders have had to comprehend when facing a Government led by ACT Party lunatics who have no interest in good faith relationships with Unions.
They are here to destroy Worker Rights, not protect them.
This Government represents a full scale attack on public services, and the Unions and their menbers need to understand that they are NOT on the streets simply demanding their interests, they are on the streets fighting for an egalitarian NZ whose infrastructure is built upon those well funded public services.
They are fighting for a NZ that stand for the many, not the few!
They are fighting for a NZ that is not led by right wing astro turf organisations!
They are fighting for a NZ beyond the thrall of corporations, speculators and polluters!
They are fighting for OUR NZ and they need to be ready to step up that battle in the election year because this fight IS political, cultural and economic!
Judith, Luxon, Simeon, Erica all cry out the Unions are being political OF COURSE THEY ARE!
They are the last line of defence for a public service that has been neutered and robbed and underfunded as a political decision.
This idea that Unions aren’t supposed rot be political is a noose put on us by the Right as they actively engage in political hit jobs.
Stand at the 20th Biennial Conference!
Stand up for the values of Labour Day!
Stand for an egalitarian NZ!
There is no negotiating with this…
…and when they tell you they don’t have the money to properly fund our Public Service, remember this…
…and remember this…
…stand and make Helen Kelly proud!
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“This idea that Unions aren’t supposed rot be political is a noose put on us by the Right as they actively engage in political hit jobs.” Martyn Bradbury
‘Don’t make it political’ is an ACT Party mantra.
What the ACT Party really mean when they say don’t make it political, is don’t make it democratic.
Ever since their founding, ACT have always recited this mantra everytime at anything they don’t like. And they don’t like unions.
What the ACT Party mean when they say don’t make it political, is let their tiny cabal of increasingly monstrous billionaire backers run the show.
The time to call Taihoa has arrived.
We have too many holidays.
We are seeing, not a cosmetic cost cutting exercise, but the systematic gross underfunding of every key public service, with a view to destroying it. There is no fat left, except in Treasury, and between the ears of Willis & Bishop.
What the public need is a kernel around which to form a movement that will thrust neoliberals out of every public situation that allows them to misdirect public money, and reclaims public property and the attendant responsibilities of our communities and state.
I expect violence – the thieves who are ruining NZ feel very entitled.
Those last two captions need to be on billboards 3 months leading up to the next election. MP’s 20 % KiwiSaver, get the fuck out of here! How is that palatable when No boats Willis has cut government KiwiSaver contributions? I f that is not the height of hypocrisy, what is?
“Bring out the banners once again,
You union women, union men,
That all around may plainly see
The power of our unity.”
‘This idea that Unions aren’t supposed to be political is a noose put on us by the Right as they actively engage in political hit jobs.’
‘Politics (from Ancient Greek πολιτικά (politiká) ‘affairs of the cities’) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources.’
(A Greek English lexicon, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott)
‘Making decisions in groups’ = Union meetings. ‘Power Relations between individuals’ = wage playing employers versus wage receiving employees ‘Distribution of status or resources’ = demand for living wages and decent working conditions.
Of course it is political and so it fucking well should be.
RESTORE STATE SOCIALISM IN AOTEAROA! DEATH TO CAPITALISM!