New NZCTU Leadership – what now for workers?
Sandra Grey elected as new NZCTU President
The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi has announced that its affiliate unions have elected Sandra Grey as the new NZCTU President.
Grey is the National Secretary, and a former president, of the Tertiary Education Union – Te Hautū Kahurangi. She has a long history in the tertiary education sector and served as the spokesperson for the Campaign for MMP.
“We are thrilled that Sandra has been elected as the incoming president of the Council of Trade Unions and look forward to the experience and energy that she will bring to the role,” said NZCTU Secretary Melissa Ansell-Bridges.
“Following on from Richard Wagstaff’s 10 years of dedicated service as president and lifelong commitment to the trade union movement, Sandra is well placed to continue to grow the movement and campaign for working people’s rights.
You gotta give it Van Velden! Girlfriend just wants it more!
The NZ Union movement has never confronted a dead eyed free market acolyte quite like Brooke van Velden before. They have busied themselves with pay equity lawfare (it’s easier to hire lawyers than convince workers to join Unions and far less militant), which is fine and dandy, until it is not.
Brooke is the not.
Fresh from kneecapping Pay Equity, Brooke is back destroying WorkSafe and reducing it from an enforcer to an adviser.
50-60 workers die every year at work and another 700 to 900 from work-related deaths, and what’s the Unions response?
Begging Brooke to give them back Pay Equity!
At what point does the Union movement admit it and call Van Velden out as a bad faith actor who has zero interest in negotiating a deal for worker rights, and instead wants to crush them?
The NZ Union movement have to actually fight back because Van Velden is here to play for keeps, and despite the constant warnings that Van Velden was something far more malicious than the Unions had previously faced (a point TDB has been making monthly since this Government was elected), the Unions are still sitting on their hands!
Look, if the Unions start pushing for the right to strike by citing Van Velden’s extremism as the reason, they move the Overton Window.
The NZ Union movement is more focused on Lawfare for success than actual populist muscle.
Rather than grow the union movement, the status quo is using legislative rulings to force minimal gains.
We need to see more democratic infrastructure, not less.
We need to see Universal Student Membership back at all tertiary institutes and all migrant workers should be immediately enrolled with the Union.
Specific Universal Union membership policies and wider Fair Pay Agreements could take Union membership back to 50% of the entire working population.
We need a response that recognises the need to grow members immediately to counter the political actions of the Billionaire Donor Class.
We need a clear template of what we are promising the people and build the political muscle to force the issue.
A 10 day nationwide strike would achieve more in real terms for the people than a hundred years of elections!
The climate meltdown is here, the plutocrats have taken over your democracy and the economy is plunging while you face another 5.4% rise in cost of living.
A 10 day national strike would force our concerns to the front of the Government’s agenda rather than the corporate donors and Real Estate Pimps who currently own them.
Māori showed us on budget day what the power of strike can do.
It’s time for all those being impacted by this anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-environment, anti-worker, anti-public service and anti-renter agenda to come together if this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government is to be blunted to one term.
A 10 day nationwide strike would achieve more in real terms for the people than a dozen elections!
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How do we expect your bog standard, low info worker to do more that cry in their cornflakes if the/eir unions appear to have not gotten over 1984, still!!! With you on a general strike – do we need to start contacting our unions with the call?
A Ten day strike would effectively wipe many families out financially still need to buy food, pay the power bill, rent and who know what else. All it would succeed in doing is putting people into even deeper hardship.
I wish we could drop a ten-day strike, but I fear that Cricklewood is absolutely correct; many households would be destroyed by losing income for even that short period.
It is a disturbing commentary that many New Zealanders do not have a 10 day financial buffer. A truly precarious way of life.
Yes, and the truth, of so long ago the unbelievable misery of uncaring greed and humanity, that created, people, workers and all disenfranchised to stand up,, not a p[in number care, people care no matter the cost, one day drop tools all, and see the response from those who your employer would never do that to me.
Britain after thatcher, blair, come new labour lets deal, talk to youe employers lets deal lets talk, about no strike, lets deal, so what, the old boss stil has the shotgun to our heads but empty, ye@! lets talk. No Strike. The brit union that thought that was the egalatarian SNOB engineers union, above their snob look at those lesser Trades, they assume to be/.