MUST READ: Marching To Class War
AROUND THIS TIME last week, I was thoroughly enjoying myself, writing a parody of “Onward Christian Soldiers” for Christopher Luxon. My take on the old hymn’s refrain had “Luxon’s soldiers” marching to “class war”. Some readers thought that was an inflammatory characterisation. Class war was soooo Twentieth Century, they insisted. Apparently, my paleo-socialist slip was showing.
Well, maybe not. Today we learn that Business New Zealand has refused to partner with the State and the NZ Council of Trade Unions (CTU) in the roll-out of Labour’s long-awaited – and well-mandated – Fair Pay Agreements.
This decision can only be interpreted as a deliberate attempt by New Zealand’s employers to sabotage the tripartite structure of the FPA model. What the bosses are saying, in effect, is: “We are having none of this. We will not participate in the creation of a minimum set of employment conditions across New Zealand’s industries. If you want Fair Pay Agreements, then you will have to impose them upon the employing class without its consent.”
I don’t know about you, but that sure sounds like a declaration of class war to me.
How have “Luxon’s soldiers” responded to Business New Zealand’s decision. Well, Luxon’s Workplace Relations and Safety spokesperson, the dry-as-dust neoliberal, Paul Goldsmith, doesn’t really do “unbounded joy”, but, in a media statement released earlier today he certainly comes across as a Happy Chappy.
“The Government should ditch its Fair Pay Agreement policy following Business New Zealand’s refusal to be the Government’s preferred partner,” crows Goldsmith. “The agreements would remove the flexibility and autonomy modern workplaces need to grow and flourish.”
Oh boy, it’s been a while since we heard that kind of language. It takes me back thirty years to 1991, the year when the Employment Contracts Act came into force.
Goldsmith would have been 20 years old in 1991. For someone of his ideological inclinations, the ECA must have represented the capstone of the Neoliberal Revolution unleashed by Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson. This crowning achievement, the one big “reform” that Labour dared not undertake, would have struck the young Goldsmith as absolutely sacrosanct. The effective destruction of the trade union movement across the private sector was the critical “reform” that made all the other “reforms” work. Confronted with a unified and confident working-class, Neoliberalism cannot succeed.
Hardly surprising, then, that Goldsmith’s statement included this little gem:
“Business New Zealand’s withdrawal lays bare the fact that the national industry awards would have to be imposed by force – denying workers and businesses the right to sort out pay and conditions for themselves.”
As if the ECA involved nothing at all in the way of imposition. As if the Act did not, with one ruthless stroke of the legislator’s pen, wipe out rights which New Zealand workers had fought for and won, and which had remained entrenched in the country’s laws for close to a century. As if the people controlling the means of production, distribution and exchange; and those with nothing to sell but their labour – economic and social equals that they so obviously are! – were both clamouring for the right to arrive at mutually advantageous agreements without the pesky intervention of a trade union. As if the 500,000 New Zealanders who marched, rallied and struck against the ECA in March-April 1991 had only done so for a lark – because they had nothing better to do.
“Flexible labour markets have been an essential element in New Zealand’s progress in the past 30 years”, Goldsmith continued. “They have enabled consistent economic growth and job creation, which is the only sustainable way to increase living standards in the long-term.”
Umm, no, Paul, that’s not what flexible labour markets brought to New Zealand. The ECA was nothing more, nor less, than an open invitation for New Zealand employers to extract their profits from their workers’ sweat: making them work harder, and longer, for less.
In sophisticated capitalist countries, the state understands the value of an organised labour movement powerful enough to keep workers’ wages high. It is a powerful adjunct to the process of “creative destruction” that allows capitalism to rejuvenate itself. High wages encourage employers to replace workers with machines, or more efficient work practices, thereby lifting productivity – and profits – while building up an increasingly skilled workforce. Win – Win.
The ECA’s “flexible labour markets” – i.e. the destruction of the trade unions – excused the New Zealand capitalist class from doing business better and smarter. It condemned the New Zealand economy to appallingly low and seemingly unimprovable levels of productivity. That made us a low-wage country and sent our best and our brightest across the Tasman to Australia – where the equivalent of FPAs had kept wages high and boosted the productivity of Australian industry.
Though dry-as-dust Neoliberals like Goldsmith are too ideologically blinkered to see it, the ECA – far from being “an essential element in New Zealand’s progress in the past 30 years”, fundamentally weakened both its economy and its society. It drove our best and our brightest offshore, denying the taxpayers who had contributed so much to the making of these highly-skilled workers any hope of ever seeing a return on their investment.
There is, accordingly, considerable irony in Goldsmith’s claim that:
“There should be a relentless focus on improving our productivity and lifting incomes.”
If he was serious about either of those objectives, Goldsmith would be castigating Business New Zealand for undermining what is quite clearly the best hope of improving this country’s appalling productivity, while materially improving the wages of its workforce. Instead, “Luxon’s soldier” offers us this:
“Unions now only represent 16 per cent of the private sector workforce – this is all about strengthening the role of unions.”
He hasn’t even grasped the fact that union density in New Zealand’s private sector workforce long ago fell below 10 percent. In that brutal statistic is contained not only the tragic story of the National Party’s cold-blooded elimination of trade unionism as a mass movement wielding significant political power on behalf of the New Zealand working class; but also the shameful failure of the CTU to either fight for that class when they still possessed the power to bring the state to the negotiating table, or to do what was necessary to rebuild mass unionism when the political climate changed. (The reasons for the CTU’s failure must be left for a future posting.)
What Goldsmith needs no tutoring in, however, is the fundamental elements of class conflict – which achieved their clearest expression in the “flexible labour markets” made possible by the Employment Contracts Act:
“Fair Pay Agreements will take us back to the failed policies of the past and should be scrapped”, says Goldsmith.
With Business New Zealand drawing up their forces alongside the National Party and Act, it is pretty clear that the employers and their political lackeys have already declared the opening of class hostilities.
The real question now, of course, is whether Labour and the CTU have the guts to declare class war right back at them.
Tripartism spurned by National and the Employers–first NZCTU leader Ken Douglas will not like that! (presumably) being a prime advocate of the three way process. Douglas was spotted at a function last year when fellow arch class collaborator Rex Jones of Engineers/EPMU/High Performance Work fame was awarded Life Membership of the NZ Labour Party.
Mr Wagstaff and others at the CTU had a hard enough time getting Fair Pay Agreements actioned to this stage, Labour were not in any hurry at all to do so.
Leave it for another post Chris, but the formation of the NZCTU, and ending of the NZFOL, was surely the biggest class error of the late 20th century in my view. The CTU issues a lot of press releases welcoming this or that and precious little in the way of calls to arms or a class left analysis.
Fair Pay Agreements are likely to increase union density somewhat and possibly create organising opportunities so need to supported. With precarious work so common unions are quite likely on the way out unless there is a left turn at the CTU or something like a lifetime portable membership is arranged so people can stay connected through unemployment, part time or contract work.
The simplest thing is to make the ERA able to hear all workers stories on labour, not just have to prove ’employment’.
The ERA having a criteria of employment, is driving NZ businesses to mostly employ on contracts and gig work and create an insecure work force by their toxic NZ rules. There are clear advantages to employers not to employ people in NZ.
Workers vote with their feet by leaving NZ.
Even if workers return to NZ they struggle to be able to cope with the toxic work environments here led by managers who seem to have little to zero skills and qualifications apart from self advancement and self promotion or ability to make money exploiting others. These businesses are increasingly owed by super rich individuals spending large amounts of time outside NZ or on their hobbies or other business interests, with little to zero interest in their workers and businesses in NZ who are treated as replaceable widgets.
Conditioned by 30 years of Rogernomics NZ business, seem to think that it’s the governments jobs to ensure they can replace their workers at their every whim and over the years have made the NZ taxpayers subsidies their wages and accomodation in our major sectors such as supermarket/hospitality/toursism/ construction.
They are also increasingly going after any credits that the government is giving.
This means that legitimate small businesses have a lot of difficulty starting in NZ as they are quickly over whelmed with big players trying to exploit, buy or put them out of business. At the same time, many small businesses and charities are being used to launder drug and illegal money or labour scams, such as cleaning businesses.
NZ is full of ‘pretend’ workers and ‘pretend’ companies making life harder for everyone else.
This has led the brain drain away from NZ, while encouraging more and more poor and low skilled into NZ.
This is not sustainable and NZ is at a brink where nothing works anymore.
Businesses are so full of nonsensical policy and appalling management that are unable to hire or retain real skills even if they want to.
It is a slide to the bottom and NZ is already there.
Look forward to the few remaining skilled, experts, deciding to reduce their hours. Why bother trying to navigate the current situation as it’s untenable now in many industries.
Makes it even worse when criminals are always getting free money and exemptions and white collar tax criminals like Eric Watson are idolised by the media, who are now paid for promoters.
Yep.
100% in agreement.
We offshored industry and basically have done the same with labour, only the offshore labour can come here.
The offshore can come here and are subsidised by the NZ taxpayers. More than half coming to NZ are not skills based people aka family members young and elderly or relatives of someone with a skill as basic as cooking or being a nurse aid. Or at the other end of the spectrum, zero skills but a lot of money to buy up property and investments, but in reality are taking investments away or increasing the values of it outside of NZ norms so that Kiwis struggle to afford them now.
There is a huge strain on our social systems because the numbers of new people coming or able to come to NZ are so extreme and also people can come in and out of NZ, so it becomes difficult to calibrate, especially when people are on multiple passports and names and our systems and statistics at immigration and customs are woefully inadequate. People in NZ are not very experienced at the levels required or even properly qualified in many cases and increasingly have an agenda more about propaganda than truth.
Example – our government policies are increasingly based on reports not fit for purpose.
“A prediction by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) that increasing the minimum wage to $20 would result in 9000 fewer jobs used modelling that was not robust and included a coding error, says a PhD student studying economics at Harvard.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/127248451/not-robust-flaws-in-mbies-modelling-used-to-predict-impacts-of-minimum-wage-increase-phd-student-says
When students at Harvard are more likely to find errors than those workers in the ministry who paid in NZ to do it, something is very wrong!
Mistakes are literally everywhere in NZ, you literally now can’t trust anything coming out from any where because they have hired so many useless or compromised people who promote junk science and error filled reports.
The swimming coaches are better than the accountants now.
“The Christchurch City Council last week apologised after members of the Wharenui Swim Club discovered the council’s $7.7m estimate to operate and maintain Wharenui Swimming Pool and Sports Centre over the next 10 years was incorrect. The cost was actually closer to $2m.
The council had used the cost to help justify closing the pool once the metro sports facility, now known as Parakiore Recreation and Sports Centre, opened in 2022.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/124879183/councillors-call-for-budget-check-after-5m-swimming-pool-budget-bungle
NZ JUNK SCIENCE and constant mistakes, where few are identified and removed from their jobs, (so they can continue to make these mistakes and destroy community assets and trust of the state), is part of the CLASS war galloping along in NZ.
Construction bungles large and small.
Wellington City Council unsure how cycle lane just inches wide happened
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/01/wellington-city-council-unsure-how-cycle-lane-just-inches-wide-happened.html
Expert says demolition is ‘a horrendous mistake’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/6745652/Expert-says-demolition-is-a-horrendous-mistake
CV misrepresentations and employers who can’t be bothered interviewing and supervising well, on builds that kill hundreds of people in the CTV building. No charges laid.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/ipad-big-picture/7682854/CTV-builders-lies-exposed
Don’t worry the council will pick it up – but graduate engineers raising questions, are working for the council too.
New engineer spotted alleged defects in Christchurch high-rise from the street
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/389755/new-christchurch-office-building-has-serious-flaws-engineers
Nice to see how our bums on seats NZ qualifications are taking us, along with neoliberals large side orders of migrant essential skills that nobody is accountable for, if it turns out they are not capable of doing the job, but continue on their merry way, into OZ and other jobs, the trail of destruction everywhere, a time bomb, that then circles back to check again, and again and results in more and more legal actions.
Increasingly everything takes lengthy times to do and is not fit for purpose and nobody agrees on anything as the standards are radically different.
What about senior management? The biggest problem in many cases as cultural fit of incompetence rises upwards.
Ministry of Transport fraudster Joanne Harrison’s criminal history
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/stuff-circuit/113601464/ministry-of-transport-fraudster-joanne-harrisons-criminal-history-revealed
Just more distraction from both sides (LINO and the Nats) as the entire industrial system progressively unravels due to energy depletion no one in power dares to mention and the build-up of pollutants in the environment, plus the dire consequences of the build-up of those pollutants -that again no on in power dares to mention.
What is also REALLY interesting is the accelerating unravelling of the globalised financial system as a consequence of outrageous levels of money-printing -again an aspect that no one in power dares to mention.
If you are looking for truth about our dire predicament don’t look in the direction of politicians or business leaders: it’s their job to lie, all the time.
Sure, there’s a class war being waged on the financial lower levels of NZ society by the fascistic LINO government and their co-conspirators. But there are much bigger wars being waged, on truth and on the very life-support systems -the ones that make our continued existence possible. And those wars, again, are never get a mention in ‘polite’ society.
All Ponzi schemes have a limited life, and the fascists who inhabit the corridors at the moment happen to be the ones who will be party to the unravelling of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.
Due to a lack of imported workers who are easily exploited, business NZ must be concerned about the upward pressure this will have on wages.Here on Waiheke which depends on a seasonal flow of overseas workers which is not available due to Covid,itis interesting to observe on fb Waiheke work page the pushback to businesses offering only the minimum wage.I thought the ECA treated labour as a commodity and the price paid for it is determined by supply and demand.The supply chain has dried up therefore to address the problem wages should/shall increase until the demand is met.However now the shoe is on the other foot ,business NZ is now crying unfair.
well said
Absolutely agree Chris – a fundamental principle well presented. It is the height of absurdity that in a so-called first world society we can still have people like Goldsmith defending a system that denies the majority the right to bargain collectively, or however they choose, for their labour. But in damning Goldsmith and his ilk, we should not overlook the part played in this charade by other malign influences prevalent in our society that make workers themselves actually believe they are somehow less worthy
I worked, mostly as a manager/company director, with unionised workplaces & staff for 40 years. Unions are always quite happy for bad workers to be paid the same as good ones, in fact they insist on it. The good ones are then dragged down to the lowest common denominator wondering why they bothered. However the dirty little secret is that it also suits large employers to have unionisation much more than smaller ones because their usually significant labour costs are then mostly fixed & predetermined for budgets.
Another case of deja vu all over again!
Well done Chris.
The sad fact is that Labour and the CTU haven’t got any guts at all.
The dancing cossacks ad has always made me want to puke.
It’s like being transported back in time, to 1917 St Petersburg, before socialism became unspeakable…
“Working class”? Who are these people? Our coal miners? They were closed. Our fruit pickers? They were foreign. Anyway, according to Kommissar Trotsky, these people, whoever they are, deserve more…
Back in the day, socialism would lead the way here. Russia had heroes of the Soviet Union, such as Alexey Stakhanov. His records set an example throughout the country and gave birth to the Stakhanovite movement.
Alas, becoming a “Stakhanovite” sounds like desperately hard work. Much easier, I suspect, to become a “Trotskovite”.
The genius of the “Trotskovite” central plan is that it tells us the “working class” characters should earn much, much more. How does Kommissar Trotsky determine this? Its in the central plan devised by Kommissar Trotsky and his comrades on the Politburo! Who is on the Politburo, you ask? Actually, no Politburo exists. In reality, there is just Kommissar Trotsky, alone, shouting at passing cars…
Anyway, this central plan is golden. Everybody would be better off if people were paid more. A lot more. Even the people doing the paying. They can also pay themselves more.
The result is that everyone will be rich, if everyone simply pays themselves twice is much. This is the “Trotskovite” five-year plan. Or is it initially two years? Doesn’t matter! The harvest will be bountiful! Trust me.
If not, the Politburo may come up with plan b. For example, collectivise all the farms. If you still don’t believe in the project, we can take you to the beautiful village of Potemkin. Or we could just shoot everyone.
Vive la révolution!!!
I agree with the ‘must read’ label on your article, Chris. Business New Zealand certainly have an interesting website. I have to say, though, “Class war” kind of conjures visions of the 1930s or something; I call it “the war on the natural world”, as our oligarchs, plutocrats and technocrats rip up the planet, cover it in plastic and suck out all the goodness.
There are no binding international laws even skimming the scummy surface of techno-capitalism.
We now have pundits arguing for two seperate internets, sort of east v. west, which would be incredibly stupid (unless one plans to actually crack the planet open) Our space is full of junk and satellites will command us via the type of brain-computer interface that Elon Musk intends to deploy. (been tested on a pig, yeah right)
5G is interfering with aeroplanes’ flight computers btw so that wasn’t tested very much either. Neither were the electric cars which self combust at a moment’s notice.
“and what had technocracy to do with class war?” you may ask, well pretty much everything, I’d say.
It will be hard for the many working class NZers to overcome mediocracy and become inspirational as stated by Luxon with Pull the tool Goldsmiths views on fair pay.
Class war as described by TDB’s esteemed Mr Trotter is more class contradiction until there is an actual substantial fight back on an organised direct action class basis.
Personally, the highest rated of taxes I’ve paid during my twelve years of employment have been under Labour governments, and this includes full time, part time, and casual work; but the best conditions I’ve faced in the context of employment have also been under Labour governments. This tells me something. Along with the fact that Labour governments traditionally employ more public servants than National governments, it speaks of a party who puts working conditions as a priority and one which does not.
In terms of Labour’s long awaited Fair Pay Agreements, it is not so much as New Zealand employers declaring a class war as it is an expression of frustration amidst current global and national events.
I love how neoliberalism keeps turning out true ideological dinosaurs. Goldsmith and Luxton are relics, hell bent on ramping up the destruction of the country that Key so aptly ran with.
Here is a good assortment of lickarus allsorts I think. Hope it comes out all right. Get it quick.
https://nkerr.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/RogerKerr082.jpg
Chris says: Well, maybe not. Today we learn that Business New Zealand has refused to partner with the State and the NZ Council of Trade Unions (CTU) in the roll-out of Labour’s long-awaited – and well-mandated – Fair Pay Agreements.
This decision can only be interpreted as a deliberate attempt by New Zealand’s employers to sabotage the tripartite structure of the FPA model. What the bosses are saying, in effect, is: “We are having none of this. We will not participate in the creation of a minimum set of employment conditions across New Zealand’s industries. If you want Fair Pay Agreements, then you will have to impose them upon the employing class without its consent.”
I add: We are supposed to be in the role of consumers. If we don’t get enough in our pay to live on, where does the discretionary money, even basics spending come? Out of thin air? We are shooting ourselves in the foot again. Ease the pay up from poverty level and the money flow increases and everyone is better off. Allow for a base inflation rate of 2.2% before dong anything, only depression and stagnant economies have low or no inflation.
Seems a bit Hope-less.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/127229316/businessnz-turns-down-key-role-in-fair-pay-agreements-system