Community comes together to call for halt to proposed lockout – E Tu
E tū members, whānau and community supporters are coming together on the picket line in a final attempt to win improved working conditions as promised and to halt a proposed lockout, as Lifewise members head into mediation with their employer.
Lifewise, an Auckland faith-based organisation which is a part of the Methodist Mission, is threatening its homecare workers with a lockout in February.
Tomorrow is the final day of picket and strike action before the parties head into mediation on Thursday.
Since mid-2019, E tū Lifewise members have been asking for increased sick and bereavement leave to be incorporated into a first-time collective agreement, along with more secure jobs with decent hours so workers aren’t left struggling to pay their bills from week to week.
Lifewise is refusing to negotiate with E tū members and has issued them with a lockout notice for 10 days in February.
The lockout would force workers into poverty with 10 days without pay.
E tū Lifewise homecare workers have been standing together for change for more than 18 months of bargaining, and they began taking industrial action as a last resort in December 2020.
Originally Lifewise agreed to add additional leave, plus other improved provisions, into a proposed collective agreement, but then reneged on their promises.
Members will be striking and picketing outside the Lifewise offices in Mount Eden tomorrow from 11am-4pm with their communities and whānau.
Supporters and Methodist Church members are invited to join them to unite in sending a final pre-mediation message to Lifewise: stop the lockout of homecare workers, negotiate a fair deal and treat them with respect.
Who is actually calling the shots in this refusal to negotiate? Because if you look on the Lifewise website and read the “about our team page”, it’s full of wonderful claims of being wonderful reasonable intelligent compromising understanding and just generally godly people. So it can’t be any of those people, not the accountants or construction company owners, or property agent bigwigs or international management high flyers, including the Chief Executive. How could a whole page of words be plain lies? There goes the Lifewise brand. Surely it can’t be them positioning themselves, ideologically, with a government interested in privatising welfare? Traders in the House of the Lord? Goodness me, what would Jesus say. Probably they should support Hate speech laws so no one can ever oppose their evil.
While they’re wondering about forcing people (especially ethnic women) into poverty for their own gain, they should look up the Deutoromic Laws. In getting rid of slaves, God has instructed them not to complain about what they have to pay, since slaves come at half the price of free workers; and it says they should not try to weasel around their responsibilities, since God will see them and know what they are up to, and that will stuff them up “working out their own salvation”. Seriously Lifewise, you have crossed the line: stop being lying hypocrites and either set your slaves free with their legitimate reward, or if they freely choose to remain your slave (as set out in the Bible), follow your own laws. Deuteronomy is in the Old Testament – you know, the part of the Bible Methodists claim is still relevent and not to be excluded in favour of the touchy feely New testament. It has some quite barbaric ideas, yet somehow they are more civilised than the ideology at Lifewise. Failing that, Lifewise need to be honest and courageous and remove all reference to relgious claims in their clearly commercial dealings, so as not to drag genuine followers into the mire.