Unions are walking into National’s trap
Isn’t it sad that NZ Unions only seem to have the spine to go on strike when Labour are in power? They were too frightened to fart when John Key was strangling worker rights but up against a PM who is pregnant, suddenly the Unions find a voice and have teeth.
This cowardice is a two edged sword and both blades are bad for the Left.
Not only does it allow the National Party off the hook while they are damaging worker rights, it plays into the narrative that National are trying to whip up amongst the middle that Unions are running amok.
I’ve done a lot of work highlighting these strategies to Unions, and the unions are still not listening…
How does National attack a pregnant Jacinda? Unions! Unions! Unions!
…what we are seeing with National’s attacks now play into the very strategies I’ve outlined above…
…at the moment these attacks are only finding traction amongst National voters, but when the transport strikes, Nurse strikes and teacher strikes occur, that National Party narrative will start to turn.
This will come to a head as National intend to make the Hobbit Law repeal their main target in turning popular opinion against Labour the way it did the first time around. Watch how quickly Simon Bridges will personally lead the attack against Equity while Matthew Hooton whispers into his ear.
The Unions should be spending the time right now rot prepare for the National Party onslaught…
…to date unfortunately the Unions seem to feel their new courage against a pregnant PM is more important than preparing for the counter strike by the right. This is how we lose narrative, this is how we lose the argument, this is how we lose public support.
What’s has Jacinda’s pregnancy got to do with any of this?
I guess Bomber thinks it makes her more vulnerable for union action for reasons? Honestly I have no idea. One minute he’s saying pregnancy makes not a jot of difference (which it obviously doesn’t), and now he’s saying it might make a difference? Bomber, you can chime in any time here to clarify our confusion.
Why should unions not take advantage of a weak Labour coalition?
The union bureaucracy owes its existence to the NZLP. They have a common history since the LP was the creation of the arbitration unions to co-opt the Red Fed away from the General Strike back into parliamentary talkshops.
Praying for 70cents and state handouts is like mates rates to them.
So on that level, the Nats have always wound up their anti-labour Cossacks against Labour and the Unions as commie bed mates.
But reality has moved on. This legal liaison is now dead in bed.
Labour is now a Liberal party, and unions have been declassed as lumpen beggars living off the state minimum wage and Working for Families.
Lumpen because, despite right-wing hysteria, the legislated minimum and ‘social’ wage is not paid for by the rich but by workers’ taxes and recycled workers surplus-value.
So let’s break out of this parliamentary road block and get back to the Red Fed.
The Nurses are about to go on strike. And why not? Who want’s to die for the sake of profits?
But to strike and win what they need to live, nurses have to mobilise against the dead albatross of class compromise and collaboration.
They have to shift the frame of debate away from ‘Reds in Bed’ to ‘Bosses are Parasites’ and ram home the fact that workers are being killed by the run-down state health system sacrificed for the profits of the private health parasites.
Witness the recently departed NACT Minister of Health, Coleman, who personally ran down public health before scuttling like a rat back into the private health sector to enjoy his fruits of his graft.
But to get this seismic shift from state co-option (Labour’s Leg Iron) to unions as the organised power of workers striking against the rotting capitalist system we need more than words, especially words that disappear when the power is turned off.
When the nurses take strike action we as the working majority in NZ must back them, support them to take the action that is necessary to force the ‘weak’ Labour coalition to junk the neo-liberal fiscal responsibility dictated by finance capital.
Either Labour will reclaim its mojo as a workers party, or at least a Savage christian socialism, or be shown up as willing bedmates of the bosses.
Whatever, the working majority will win because it will have rediscoverd it’s mana as the only class that has the power to rescue us from the decline and fall of capitalism, and learning something from history, and humanities near extinction, have the courage to make its own history.
Let’s do it!