Labour Day 2024 and what Unions who protested should be thinking

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. Kiwi workers work an average of 43.5hours a week with no penal rates. 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 54 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.

When we ‘celebrated’ Labour Day weekend this week, there really wasn’t a hell of a lot to praise.

The disgusting right myth spread by right wing liars is that NZ is an over taxed, over regulated economy when that is total bullshit!

Max Rashbrooke highlighted the horror of NZs under regulated market…

The bad news is that, to investigate 200,000-300,000 terrible rentals, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has employed a frontline inspectorate numbering … 37. Each inspector will have to check somewhere between 5000 and 8000 rentals.

…there is only 37 inspectors of rental properties for 300 000 terrible rentals?

Similar poorly funded regulation is apparent in the 82 labour inspectorates who are supposed to police hundreds of thousands of migrant worker exploitations!

Time and time and time again in New Zealand we see an old boy matrix of vested interests who occupy market dominance and act like a monopoly, duopoly or oligopoly raking in vast wealth while leaving the local small and medium sized operators outside the cosy relationships!

We are not an over taxed, over regulated economy!

Our top tax rate is the 39th highest in the world behind all the Scandinavian countries plus Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and South Africa!

Australia’s top tax rate is 47cents!

Our GST rate doesn’t even get us into the top 50 and our corporate tax rate is 40th while Government spending against GDP ranks 56th!

And we are voted easiest to do business by the World Bank!

I’m not looking for socialism here folks, just basic garden variety regulated capitalism!

Samuel Duncan Parnell would be ashamed of how we’ve allowed the bosses to rule with such impunity.

Personally, I’ve always believed that public holidays should be mandatory.

I think that it is incredibly important for the fabric of our society for us all to put down tools as citizens on specific days and all of us venture out into our amazing public spaces and be friendly with one another.

The importance of our civility in public towards each other, the importance of being tolerant while sharing the same space and the importance to actually stop working and enjoy doing nothing but spend time with our family, friends and whanau would do more to building that sense of nationhood than any other thing.

As citizens, we have earned the right to have days off, and we need to hold onto this right and understand it through its universal application that is so important. It’s the need to share our beaches and out door spaces together on these days that builds bonds between families and groups of people who would never otherwise meet in their busy 9-5, 5-9 plus the odd late shift lives.

For those public servants forced to work while the rest of us play, the media should be full of ‘spare a thought for’ type stories so that our public servants who must continue to staff essential services while the rest of us relax are given the respect and admiration they deserve for their selfless functions.

I would even go as far as demanding a new holiday – New Zealand Volunteers day. The idea being that there is one day a year we all universally have off to help volunteer in society all on the same day. It could be a mass planting, or cleaning up, or helping reach out to the elderly or migrant communities or anyone whose a bit different so we can all feel included.

I would also suggest that we make the date of the election a Wednesday and also make it a public holiday. We bitch so much in this country about not having a day we can celebrate as NZers because Pakeha feel so guilty about Waitangi Day, so why not search for that which binds us and celebrate that? Election Day should be a celebration because we are one of the few privileged countries around the planet that allows political leadership to change minus violence and repression. Our exercising of the right to vote peacefully is celebration in itself and making it a mid week public holiday would do more for participation rates than easily hacked online voting.

That sense of self identity and nationhood that we always whine about not being present during Waitangi Day takes effort and can’t simply be left up to the ‘free market’. The space where that national identity can take shape has to be universally applied in the form of mandatory public holidays and not left to be traded in by unscrupulous employers who if given half a chance would make ‘Hi Ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go’ the new National anthem.

The thousands of different interactions generated by us all respectfully sharing the same space together on set days would do more for our understanding of each other than a million disagreements ever could.

What is the point of being a citizen in a democracy if we can’t enjoy the leisure of spending time outside in this glorious country? Are we really all wage slaves? Is that what a modern democracy has been denigrated too?

‘I have a dream to work every hour of the day by a boss who is screwing me over’ isn’t particularly inspirational is it?

If we appreciated the importance of actually resting for the sake of our mental, emotional and physical health, we could hold our heads up on Labour Day once again with some pride.

We need to focus on how to combat this terrible racist, anti-worker, anti-Treaty, anti-renter, anti-beneficiary, anti-environment Government who are selling out the common good for the interests of their donor friends.

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.

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.

 

Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.