NZ Unions finally decide to get serious about strikes and fighting this hard right Government
Massive strike could hit schools, hospitals, health services – all on the same day
Four unions are planning a coordinated strike that will impact schools, hospitals, and other health services for late October.
If members agree to the industrial action, it will be one of the most disruptive days of industrial action seen in decades.
The strike was planned for October 23, and would lead to schools and high schools closing, while many nurses, health workers and in-home carers would also walk off the job on the same day.
Public Service Association national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said that, if it goes ahead, this would be “one of the largest strikes in New Zealand history”.
“We want to see employers and the Government fund health services properly, so that workers have enough money to live and continue to help others,” she said.
She told Stuff that, from the Public Service Association (PSA), more than 15,000 workers were considering the strike. That included allied health staff, social workers, occupational therapists, nurses and mental health workers. Those workers were voting this week on whether to join the coordinated strike.
The four unions who had confirmed they were planning to participate in the coordinated strike were the PSA, two teachers unions, and NZ Nurses Organisation.
But on Tuesday, Council of Trade Unions (CTU) president Richard Wagstaff told Stuff he knew other unions were also considering joining the strike.
“Time will tell. You know other unions are considering how they can do it and how they can support it,” he said.
He said the CTU was also working with the nursing, public service and teaching unions to help with promoting and coordinating the strike.
The NZ Union movement is finally fighting back against a Political Right who are only focused on destroying them
All sectors are now striking and NZCTU have aligned with the National Iwi Chairs Forum alongside working with the Palestinian Rights protest movement and it’s about time.
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?
But protesting isn’t enough, it’s the start.
The reality is that Unions are simply begging to get the little they gained back rather than push for a whole new workers rights policy platform.
it is not enough to merely beg for what this Government have stolen, the Left must fight for more!
The Unions have told themselves law-fare using pay parity legislation is their only strength, well, the Government just destroyed that and all the Unions are now left with is gasping for oxygen using gills like fish flopping on the ground.
I have warned that Crooke Van Velden is different.
I have warned this hard right Government is different.
I have argued the Union movement needs to fight for the right to strike because that is the ONLY power that actually works!
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.
This seems to be a concept the Unions are incapable of comprehending.
EVERY PUBLIC WORKER requires a 15% across the board pay rise ALONGSIDE more holidays ALONGSIDE more benefits so that we build public sector jobs that acknowledge their importance in the running of the State and Society.
To do that we need real political muscle and Union Leaders prepared to use that political muscle.
Our refusal to enact ILO Convention 87 on the right to strike, our lack of true leadership inside the Union movement and the failure to do anything other than perk up bureaucrats in Wellington has meant that when a truly right wing government appears with a radical agenda, there is no Union movement left to fight.
We have almost no rights to strike in this country.
No rights for sympathy strikes, no rights for wildcat strikes, no rights at all because we have a Union movement too frightened to actually fight for them.
I agree with the International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR) and their analysis of our weak union movement:
- Reforms to overturn the legislative undermining of freedom of association and the right to strike
- Amend the right to freedom of association in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 to expressly include the right to collectively bargain and the right to strike in conformity with the law
- Include the right to decent work (including the right to gain one’s living by work which is freely chosen or accepted) in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990
- Include the right to just and favourable conditions of work (as expressed in art 7 of ICESCR) in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990
- Include other economic, social and cultural rights in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990
- Review the role of the courts, and Parliament, in ensuring rights-consistent legislation – remove excessive sanctions from the social welfare system
- Ensure effective implementation of the principle of equal opportunity and treatment in employment, including for Māori workers
- Review immigration policies and regulations to remove barriers to migrant workers seeking assistance and remedies for labour exploitation and other rights abuses
A 10 day nationwide strike would do more for workers than 10 elections ever could.
This anti-Worker Government has pushed for lower wages, weaker safety regulations and deregulation of industry for their donors interests at the cost of those who make capitalism work – the actual workers!
Our economy, community and society are going to be forced into urgent adaptation thanks to global warming and AI.
Late Stage Capitalism is collapsing under the weight of its own greed.
Workers Rights are Human Rights.
We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to corporations.
It is time for the Left to unite and fight back.
The Unions must take a stand!
We either fight back or allow this Government to continue implementing an extreme right wing agenda.
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Van Velden will need to emigrate. This won’t look good on her CV.
One of her many corporate friends will gift her a cushy gig on a board somewhere. These people fail upwards for their entire lives, but once their trajectory levels off they always find a soft place to land. There is little to no accountability for people like Brooke Van Velden.
If one cannot go on strike, it might be a great day to have a “sickie”.
It’s way past time for Union membership to be mandatory for all workers. This in turn will bring balance back to NZ society with the employers being able to be challenged for their absolute control over their workers, their earnings, and their workplace safety. Take a leaf from the Nordic countries where five of the top six are the most unionized in the world. They don’t get much wrong. NZ also needs compulsory voting so everyone has the opportunity to form NZ into a multi-cultural, caring and progressive society which it isn’t at present. Left, you need to promote these changes – they are the “basis of humanity” but sadly missing in NZ.
Milei the President of Argentina a prodigy of the Atlas Network had similar policies to the current COC and he needed a massive bailout from Trump for his failing libertarian ideological economic austerity measures. We need to hold this Coc to account supporting these strikes is imperative to the future and wellbeing to our future tamariki
There is also the right to income support when sick redundant or old. On outdated concepts of marriage many are denied income help because of their ‘partner’s’ income. Yet two people in the household need to work to pay the mortgage