Sealord email campaign

Written By: - Date published: 3:34 pm, March 12th, 2009 - 10 comments
Categories: activism, workers' rights - Tags: ,

The Service and Food Workers Union has launched an online email campaign to urge Sealord Chairman Robin Hapi to reconsider axing 180 workers in Nelson.

The other 400 have have been threatened with pay cuts or else they’ll face the sack as well. And this is after Sealord had the gall to attend the Prime Minister’s Jobs Summit and act like they were interested in protecting Kiwi jobs.

There’s no need for any of this. Sealord is a profitable company, they simply want a higher return on capital at the expense of the workers who created the wealth in the first place.

You can send Sealord a message that their behaviour isn’t good enough by clicking here.

10 comments on “Sealord email campaign ”

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  1. Quoth the Raven 1
    12 March 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Contractual obligations don’t apply to these companies do they. It’s illegal for workers to involve themselves in wildcat strikes or secondary strikes because they’d be breaking their contract yet employers can break contracts and force workers to take lower pay through the threat of job loss. This is the market imbalance that right wingers seem not to get.

    • Tane 1.1
      12 March 2009 at 5:44 pm

      Yep. Workers need the legal right to strike in defence of their terms and conditions.

      Of course you can take illegal wildcat strike action, but when you’re talking about low income workers with families to support who’ll risk losing their redundancy if they company takes them to court, well, it’s not that simple.

  2. Brett Dale 2
    12 March 2009 at 7:58 pm

    Why should people write to sealords who don’t work there? isnt it between the workers and the company and the good people of Nelson.

    • gingercrush 2.1
      12 March 2009 at 8:41 pm

      Sheesh Brett if you don’t agree with it, simple don’t sign it. But there will likely be many people that will sign this and surely agree with such sentiment. Any job losses affects the whole country. One doesn’t have to live in Nelson or be working there to sign it. Sealord affects Maori, wide communities etc etc. I’m sure the Union isn’t naive to think much will happen from this petition. But its doing something. And it gets the message going out.

      I won’t be signing it myself. But I don’t think its fair to criticise efforts people do. In fact one has to admire the fact that even know not much will happen, that they continue to do something.

    • Tane 2.2
      12 March 2009 at 8:45 pm

      It’s called solidarity, Brett.

      • Tigger 2.2.1
        13 March 2009 at 8:29 am

        Brett, using your logic no one would do anything that didn’t directly affect them. Well you know what, that may be NACT’s vision for the future (I say that based on their history and current actions) but it certainly isn’t mine.

  3. higherstandard 3
    12 March 2009 at 8:55 pm

    The SFWU would do better naming the board members and getting their email and letter boxes overflowing, along with a bit of pressure on Nissui.

  4. rave 4
    12 March 2009 at 10:06 pm

    Sealord is half owned by “The Maori People of NZ” via Aotearoa Fisheries, 50/50 with Japanese fish multinational Nissui that advertises on its glossy website like a cult religion talking about “creating value” out of it its Nissui “genes”. Workers do not rate a mention.

    The Sealord workers could take a leaf out of the Japanese best-seller, The Crab Ship a 1929 account of a strike to get their industry unionised, written by Takiji Kobayashi who was then tortured to death at 29 by the secret police, now all the rage in Japan today where it strikes a bitter chord as millions of workers face the dole and worse.

    Is this Maori juvenile capitalism raw in hook and sinker hunted by the Japanese monopoly capital raw in tooth and claw?

    Whatever happened to tinorangatiratanga?
    Is the Maori Party so kupapa that it can’t see that its people are being sucked into global capitalism like the sprat eaten by the shark.

    • Quoth the Raven 4.1
      12 March 2009 at 10:24 pm

      Rave – The Maori party are part of the problem. They represent neo-tribal elitism.

  5. rave 5
    13 March 2009 at 12:45 am

    You mean tribal capitalism?
    Yes I know I just like rhetorically throwing tinorangatiratanga at them. At the time of the Treaty it meant looking after the whole tribe, not lining your own pockets with their sweat and blood. Kite I mean.