TWITTER WATCH UPDATE: Seeing as Jessica Williams has demanded it, let’s look at the criticism of Andrew Little, the EPMU and the Pike River Mine

Jessica Williams from the PSA Wellington Comms Team has fired up on Twitter with this wee charmer…

…this was in reference to the following comment I’d made yesterday regarding how clever Winston’s Pike River ploy had been…

The second reason is that Andrew Little was the Leader of the EPMU right before the Pike River Mine accident. There have been all sorts of quiet angry questions about the role of the EPMU in the lead up to the Pike River Mine accident and if there’s anyone who can research those questions and bring them into the open, it’s Winston.

…which then opened up a deluge of abuse from the Wellington Twitteratti and Wellington Union Comm Identitarians.

For the record I’m  not “Union-hating”, I’m incredibly pro Union! I see the immediate mandatory unionisation of the entire workforce of NZ as an important step forward for social justice in New Zealand. We need more unions, more union power and a far larger unionised work population if we are serious about sharing the harvest of society equally.

What I can’t stand however are Identitarian hyper-Activists who use their role in Unions as a superiority complex to attack others from.

An incredibly unjustified superiority complex I might add.

Normally I just block and mute this crap, but I reflected on this tirade of abuse for merely stating fact, and I thought to myself if progressive voices in social media don’t stand up to these crazy alienating clowns then we’ll all be cowering to them forever.

So ok. Let’s be havin’ ya.

Yes Wellington Twitteratti I said…

The second reason is that Andrew Little was the Leader of the EPMU right before the Pike River Mine accident. There have been all sorts of quiet angry questions about the role of the EPMU in the lead up to the Pike River Mine accident and if there’s anyone who can research those questions and bring them into the open, it’s Winston.

…I simply said “quiet angry questions about the role of the EPMU in the lead up to the Pike River Mine accident”, while your responses were the usual viciously tribal and alienating pile-ons that make voting for Trump look preferable.

Here’s one…

…right. So only rabid right wing voices have any criticism of Andrew Little and the EPMU at the time of the Pike River Mine Disaster and my daring to mention it meant I was using right wing attack lines?

Is that the insinuation?

Well allow me to respond Alex.

How does Against the Current sound Alex? The hard core, marxist blog site. Are they fucking card carrying members of the Cameron Slater and David Farrar right wing hate cult?

They are a very left, very critical voice in the NZ blogosphere who have made damning case after damning case of the role of Little and the EPMU. Allow me to quote at length…

We look back at the role of Andrew Little and the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union in the Pike River mining disaster.

I don’t usually repost my own posts and, in fact, this is the first repost I’ve ever done. But I think it is worth giving this story another airing given the rise in political prominence of Andrew Little. I considered rewriting the story but I think the original post speaks for itself. It outlines the role of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) in the Pike River mining disaster, which saw 29 men lose their lives.

Labour Party leader Andrew Little was national secretary of the EPMU at the time. This story was first published on 8 November, 2012.

Last month Andrew Little went to Pike River to attend the memorial to mark the fourth anniversary of the tragedy. He told the media that he attended the commemorations to stand alongside the families.

WHEN THE Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Pike River mining disaster issued its report this week, the response of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) was immediate. It issued a press statement welcoming the report and is encouraging the Government to implement the recommended changes as soon as possible.

The statement quoted EPMU assistant national secretary Ged O’Connell who declared that the report should mark a turning point for mine safety in New Zealand:

This report is a damning indictment of New Zealand’s deregulated health and safety regime. Pike River Coal Ltd should never have been allowed to operate in the way it did, and in other countries it wouldn’t have been allowed to.

The report makes clear that the tragic loss of life at Pike River could have been prevented with stronger regulations, an independent and well-resourced mine safety inspectorate and genuine worker involvement in health and safety.

We hope the failings exposed in this report spell the end of the deregulated health and safety regime of the last 20 years. This vindicates the union’s repeated calls for improvements in mine safety and for the reintroduction of check inspectors.

This statement represents a complete change of heart by the EPMU officialdom because it was never critical of Pike River Coal (PRC) during the time that the mine was open. The EPMU represented approximately half of the 140 miners on the site.

After the first explosion the EPMU strongly defended the management of PRC.

EPMU National secretary Andrew Little (now a Labour MP) told the New Zealand Herald on November 22 2010 that there was “nothing unusual about Pike River or this mine that we’ve been particularly concerned about”.

He then appeared on TVNZ’s Close Up to again defend PRC management.

He told Close Up that underground mining was inherently unsafe and the risk of gas explosions, particularly on the West Coast, was high.

While the industry was aware of the risks and took the necessary precautions, unfortunately these kinds of incidents still happened, he argued.

On November 26, 2010 the Dominion Post ran an article that denounced ‘wild’ rumours that the mine was not safe. It declared that “Any suggestion of obvious or known safety lapses does not find traction with unionised staff or union leader Andrew Little.”

Andrew Little’s conciliatory views toward PRC management were echoed by Labour MP Damien O’Connor. He suggested that no one was responsible for the accident and that the disaster was “just one of these things that the West Coast unfortunately has had to get used to over the years”.

Little and O’Connor’s views would of found favour with the Minister for Energy and Resources, Gerry Brownlee. He insisted that PRC had “an absolute focus on health and safety”.

So here we had the Government, the Labour Party and the EPMU all lining up to defend the management of PRC.

At the time this writer commented: “All workers at the mining site should be seriously concerned that the EPMU has such a benevolent view of its safety standards.”

The views of Andrew Little and the EPMU flew in the face of expert opinion.

While Andrew Little was defending PRC an Australian gas drainage engineer, who wished to remain anonymous because he feared ‘recriminations’, said he visited Pike River in 2009 and observed that its operating standards were “extremely poor”.

He said that he had been told by miners that the mine was flooded with methane gas about three weeks before the first explosion.

He said miners had bored through ‘high flow methane holes’ without any risk assessment conducted or procedure on how to manage gas flow from the hole in place. He was critical that PRC has not yet implemented a gas drainage drilling regime that could relieve the pressure when there was a build up of gas by drilling a hole in the coal seam.

The New Zealand Herald, also in November 2010, quoted Gerry Morris of Greymouth, a former writer for Coal magazine, who said he had heard regularly from contractors at the mine “over the last two or three years that this mine is unsafe, there’s far too much gas, there’s going to be a disaster here one day”.

But despite the overwhelming evidence that there was something seriously and dangerously wrong at the Pike Rive mine, the officials of the EPMU did nothing.

The mine opened in November 2008 and on not one occasion did the EPMU initiate industrial action or even criticise PRC’S safety standards, even after a group of workers walked off the job to protest the lack of basic emergency equipment.

The walk out by miners was revealed by miner Brent Forrester. He told TVNZ’s Sunday on December 5 2010 that he once helped organise a walkout of about 10 miners to protest the lack of basic emergency equipment, including stretchers and an emergency transport vehicle. They received no support from the EPMU. Andrew Little even insisted that PRC “had a good health and safety committee that’s been very active.”

It was exactly this benevolent attitude by the EPMU that allowed PRC – and the Department of Labour – to continue as if it was just ‘business a usual’. It appears that no-one was protecting the interests and concerns of the workers on the mining site. The EMPU failed to organise industrial action to address safety concerns at the mine in favour of ‘cooperating’ with management, what it and the CTU sometimes refer to as ‘modern unionism’.

There won’t be any resignations from within the EPMU for dereliction of duty and, of course, Andrew Little has escaped to Parliament.

…so yes, there are quiet angry voices that are critical of the EPMU and Little that are not right wing fanatics!

For stating this fact I’m Wellington Twitteratti cat nip am I?

Now were the EPMU victims of a weakened Union movement or accepting of it – that’s a point you can argue to death with the Marxists, but to suggest no one on the left has criticised Little or the EPMU is a demonstrably false one. The Socialist’s also attacked the Union.

These bullshit social media pile ons for stating things that are actually true are alienating to everyone outside their echo chamber.

 

UPDATE: These people are incredible. Instead of pausing and reflecting on their own issues here, they double down with this bullshit…

…you’ll note this was published in the raw news feed of TDB, that’s where TDB automatically posts press releases from a  range of different groups. Publishing a press release is not even close to endorsing or supporting that post, it’s done as a service to the news reading audience of TDB to see what different press releases are saying that day. Bloody Scoop, their cherished Wellington Media Bastion of Journalism PUBLISHED THE SAME BLOODY PRESS RELEASE. Are these Wellington Twitteratti screaming at Scoop?

To attempt to make this proof that The Daily Blog is not Left Wing says more about their need to avoid the criticisms made than any claim TDB is anti-abortion. It’s a nasty smear by people who are being manipulative and know that they are purposely misleading people.

They are just unbelievable!