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The PSA-SFWU non-merger

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:45 am, October 14th, 2009 - 2 comments

Farrar’s published what he calls an ‘internal union email’ about the PSA and the SFWU’s decision not to amalgamate. Considering it was sent out to 70,000 people more than a week ago I wouldn’t get too excited. The amalgamation talks always struck me as an odd idea. The organising cultures and the membership profiles of […]

The Bridgeman Concrete lockout ends successfully

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 11:00 pm, October 8th, 2009 - 14 comments

The Bridgeman Concrete workers locked out for nine days hardened their picket last week. Two concrete trucks couldn’t leave the depo, costing the company $3,000 in ruined concrete. The company responded by caving in, and lifted the lock out. As well as lifting their lockout Bridgeman also conceded to workers’ demands for a fairer redundancy agreement that […]

Infratil / NZ Bus striking for more profits

Written By: lprent - Date published: 9:28 am, October 8th, 2009 - 7 comments

Well the intransigent owners and managers of Infratil / NZ Bus finally went on strike this morning in their quest for higher profits. They locked out the bus drivers for threatening to abide by their contract. This is causing widespread chaos amongst other businesses as their employees are unable to get to work. We just dispatched […]

Pay freeze would cause long-term damage

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:38 am, September 28th, 2009 - 27 comments

While filling his own pockets with our money, Bill ‘Double Dipton’ English is threatening public sevants with a five-year pay freeze – with inflation, that’s a 10% pay cut. The government can afford to give its workers small cost of living adjustments – the cost is relatively trivial. Parliament workers recently rejected an offer that […]

Secret ballots for strikes

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:47 am, September 25th, 2009 - 60 comments

Tau Henare has put a private members’ bill in the ballot that would require ballots by union members on strike action to be held in secret. Henare draws on his memories from the 1980s as a union organiser and reckons that open ballots are used to intimidate workers into toeing the line. Well, maybe it […]

Talking union

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:45 am, September 21st, 2009 - Comments Off on Talking union

Eddie’s piece on the importance of joining your union if you want to avoid a pay cut reminded me of another Peter Seeger classic:

Are you worth less this year?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:40 am, September 21st, 2009 - 42 comments

Right now, spurred on by the hypocritical words of Bill English and John Key, employers in the public and private sectors are saying they can only offer a 0% pay increase this year – and many are trying to cut conditions like redundancy and overtime. 0% is a pay cut. The cost of living went up 1.9% […]

Corporate bully-boys step it up a level

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 6:14 am, September 18th, 2009 - 16 comments

The Open Country Cheese dispute is underway. Workers are striking against the bosses’ attempts to casualise their hours and reduce their conditions. They are not striking for huge pay increases, despite the lies of Open Country. Open Country Cheese, part-owned by the notorious Talleys and tied to various National MPs via the Dairy Investment Fund […]

No good faith from Nats

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:30 pm, September 13th, 2009 - 25 comments

Finance Minister Bill English has told doctors, teachers, and other public servants that they will not be getting pay-raises when their collective contracts come up for renewal. That is constitutionally outrageous and a big political mistake. Ministers are not allowed to direct public sector pay negotiations. It is clearly against the rules of the State Sector […]

Redundancy protection – it’s only fair

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:00 pm, September 11th, 2009 - 20 comments

A coalition of unions, Labour, the Greens, the Maori Party, and community groups has come together to support Darian Fenton’s Redundancy Protection Bill. There’s a website, facebook group, petition, and other ways you can get involved. The Bill, due to be debated later this month, would set a minimum level of redundancy protection for all […]

Battlelines

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:00 pm, September 11th, 2009 - 7 comments

We’re seeing a new pattern in work relations emerging. The big employers, emboldened by having their party in power and using the recession as an excuse, are attacking workers’ pay and conditions. But this isn’t 1991 redux. The unionised workers of today have joined voluntarily and believe in collective action; the unions are no longer […]

Time for Telecom to come to its senses

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:43 am, September 11th, 2009 - 11 comments

Today, 200 Telecom engineers in Auckland and Northland will be fired. Not because there’s no work for them but because Telecom and it’s $7 million CEO want to cut ‘labour costs’ – that’s workers’ incomes, families’ livelihoods to you and me. Here’s how Telecom’s scam goes. Currently, the engineers are employees of Telecom contractors Transfield […]

Who is Kate Wilkinson taking aim at?

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 11:20 am, September 8th, 2009 - 20 comments

By John Ryall, SFWU National Secretary While The Standard readers know that the air traffic controllers were the excuse that Kate Wilkinson used to signal a repeal of parts of the 2008 Employment Relations Act (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Act, they are probably not aware of who is really going to be affected by […]

Shock, Horror – Infratil managers strike for more pay!

Written By: lprent - Date published: 8:12 am, September 8th, 2009 - 7 comments

Yesterday Infratil got their NZ Bus hand-puppets to announce that they will be going on strike. On Wednesday, if the bus-drivers refuse to donate their time freely to increase Infratil returns to investors, the company will remove bus-services from the commuters of Auckland. If the reasonable attempts of the bus drivers to increase their wages […]

Capitalism, it’s not a love-in

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 5:10 am, September 2nd, 2009 - 38 comments

I find the Right’s assumption that the bosses are acting in some greater interest fascinating. There’s this unwillingness to believe that the bosses would be acting in their own interests and that what’s in their interests are often not in the interests of the rest of us. Look at the comments yesterday on the Telecom […]

Who do you think you’re fooling, Kate?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:46 am, August 28th, 2009 - 12 comments

“I’m not going to resign” – Kate Wilkinson It’s one of the truisms of politics that when you’re a minister and you say you’re not resigning, it’s only a matter of time until you are. Kate Wilkinson’s behaviour has been almost universally disgraceful- the Kiwisaver debacle, her vitriol during the Shawn Tan affair, refusing the let […]

NDU catches govt lying

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 7:31 pm, August 26th, 2009 - 15 comments

This morning the National Distribution Union put out a statement saying the Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, had refused to attend an executive meeting on the absurd grounds that Telecom lines engineers belonging to a different union, the EPMU, had recently been on strike. In Question Time today Sue Bradford asked whether the Minister’s refusal […]

Bill sez: ‘pay cuts for youse’

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:20 am, July 3rd, 2009 - 91 comments

Yesterday in Question Time, Bill English sent a message loud and clear to teachers, police, doctors, nurses, and all other public servants (‘frontline’ or not): under National, you’ll be getting pay-cuts, don’t expect cost of living adjustments, watch as your pay-packet buys less and less. Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Government has stated a number of […]

Zeal320 strike underway

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:51 pm, May 7th, 2009 - 26 comments

Zeal320 workers are on strike for four days from today. Ads in every major newspaper explain what they are fighting for – the same pay for doing the same work as other fligh attendants on Air NZ flights. Check out ZealGirl for stories of how management has tried to break the Zeal320 workers’ resolve and […]

Strike at MIT

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 5:37 am, April 28th, 2009 - 12 comments

Members of the Tertiary Education Union at the Manukau Institute of Technology are striking. A TEU member explains the dispute: Basically lecturers at MIT are going on strike this week over workload pressures. Last year the Institute cut all its admin staff, and surprise, everyone else’s workload increased. Then this year, with the recession, heaps […]

Workers stand up to exploitative bosses

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:23 am, April 19th, 2009 - 5 comments

Head of the Unite union, Matt McCarten, writes about the Synovate lockout and how foreign-owned businesses try to exploit New Zealand workers: [The] owners offer workers essentially nothing above the minimum wage then expect everyone to roll over and accept it. The normal threat is to close and go offshore. This is supposed to terrify […]

Explaining the recession

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:06 pm, March 6th, 2009 - 41 comments

The EPMU have released a short film on youtube explaining the recession and their response to it. It features Brian Easton, Gareth Morgan, Pete Conway and EPMU Secretary Andrew Little. It’s sobering viewing.

The idiocy of “glorious defeat”

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 9:52 am, March 2nd, 2009 - 16 comments

Chris Trotter has decided to take umbrage at my post about the 1951 lockout. I wouldn’t usually reply to such criticism but this one provides me with the opportunity to discuss one of my pet grudges: the pointless obsession of some on the left with glorious defeat. I say pointless because defeat is defeat. It’s […]

Nineteen fifty one

Written By: IrishBill - Date published: 10:55 pm, February 27th, 2009 - 18 comments

Today marks the anniversary of Holland’s deployment of the army to break the waterfront union in 1951. The documentary produced for the dispute’s 50th anniversary is available here. Unlike some other commentators on the left I don’t celebrate this. Nor do I celebrate the strike of 1913, despite it’s IWW origins. In both cases a […]