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Unite union has launched a campaign in workplaces and communities for a national referendum on the issue of a $15 minimum wage. In this early stage of the campaign, Workers Party activists and other leftists are hitting the streets and public events to help gather the signatures to force the referendum. Here are some interesting comments, reports, and examples from the campaign on the ground.
Continue reading “Campaigning for living wage reform – ground reports”
John Edmundson
The Spark July 2009
The sub-prime crisis and credit crisis have finally brought an end to the “good times”. As trade has slowed down, unemployment has begun to rise and in some countries, large scale demonstrations have occurred in anger against the collapse of the economy and the attacks on workers that have followed.
If workers do not fight back, the recovery when it comes will leave workers worse off than before. As always, workers’ wages and working conditions will be cut in response to the recession and unemployment. Continue reading “Working class resistance and the economy”
Byron Clark
The Spark July 2009
New Zealand and Australian trade ministers met with their Pacific counterparts in Samoa to negotiate an “enhanced version” of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) dubbed “PACER Plus”. The negotiations have been controversial for two reasons, one is the exclusion of Fiji, which New Zealand and Australia currently have sanctions against. Fiji has been officially suspended from the Pacific Forum but not from PACER, which is a separate treaty.
The other reason is the likely possibility of increased exploitation of the Pacific by the regional powers. As Solomon Islands opposition leader Manasseh Sogavare told the Solomon Star News;
“As far as Solomon Islands is concerned, the arrangement would amount to opening up one-way traffic of trade benefits from here to Australia and New Zealand, which in any case is already in favour of these countries without the PLACER-PLUS arrangement” Continue reading “Pacer Plus:New Zealand and Australian exploitation in the Pacific”
Workers Party-PFLP solidarity blog
Campaign to free Ahmad Sa’adat
“This is your court and you possess the force to celebrate the trial and convict me on the basis of your lists of accusations, the public one and the secret one, and you can dictate a sentence prepared by the political and security apparatuses that are behind this trial. But I too possess a will obtained from the justice of our cause and the determination of our people to reject any decision from this ‘kangaroo court’…” -Ahmad Sa’adat
Currently there are over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli jails. This number is increasing daily as IDF Military Incursions and searches in the West Bank total over 500 separate incidents and 300 arrests each month, mainly targeting political ideology. This is not an unusual part of Palestinian political life and has been a crucial part of the Zionist strategy to eliminate political opposition to the state of Israel. An example of this can be seen when examining the political life of the current General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); Ahmad Sa’adat. Between the years of 1967, when Sa’adat joined the PFLP led Palestine Student Union, and 2002 when he was abducted by the IDF from a jail in Jericho, Sa’adat had been arrested 9 times and jailed for close to ten years for his involvement in the PFLP.
Ahmad Sa‘adat, General Secretary of the PFLP, was arrested again on the 15th of January 2002 by the Palestinian General Intelligence Service. He was then transferred to Force 17 (the Palestinian Presidential bodyguard), and held after that in President Arafat’s compound in connection with the killing of the Israeli Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Ze‘evi, on 17 October 2001. The PFLP claimed responsibility for the killing, although Ahmad Sa‘adat was not formally charged with any recognisable criminal offence. This assassination was a response to the killing of Abu Ali Mustafa, General Secretary of the PFLP, who was killed in a targeted assassination by two rockets fired from an Israeli helicopter as he sat at his desk in Ramallah on August 27, 2001.
A petition was presented to the Palestinian High Court of Justice in Gaza calling for the immediate release of Ahmad Sa‘adat. This caused the High Court of Justice to request that the PA General Intelligence Service bring evidence against him. The Intelligence Service failed to do so and on the 3rd of June 2002 the High Court ordered the immediate release of Ahmad Sa‘adat as he had never been charged or brought before a judge.
by John Edmundson
What is going on in Iran? The recent outbreak of massive demonstrations and subsequent repression by the Iranian state, in particular the Basij militias, has left many people confused. For all of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s faults, he has stood up to US imperialism over the years, refusing to bow to hypocritical US and international pressure over Iran’s nuclear programme. He has established close links with progressive governments in Latin America. Perhaps most importantly, he has stood firm on support for the right of the Palestinian people to fight for their homeland. And now he has become the subject of huge demonstrations, accusing him of rigging this month’s presidential elections, which he won with a landslide vote of over sixty percent.
Supporters of the Iranian regime, both within Iran and around the world, have accused the demonstrators, who have adopted green as the symbol of their movement, of manipulation by Western interests, the same interests who sponsored the other “colour revolutions”, such as the orange revolution in Ukraine and the rose revolution in Georgia. Certainly there is no doubt that the same Western interests that orchestrated those “revolutions” in Eastern Europe would like nothing better than the demise of the Iranian revolution and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They would like nothing better than the replacement of the current theocratic state by a pliable pro-Western leadership that would open up Iran to world capitalism and give imperialism (and Israel) a free rein in the Middle East. So what should the left make of the latest developments? Are we watching the latest case of a CIA engineered “colour revolution”, intended to roll back thirty years of Iranian revolution; are we seeing a new and genuine revolution of the Iranian working class and peasantry; or are we seeing something else?
On Sunday June 28th, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was awoken by the sound of soldiers kicking in the door of the presidential residence. He was abducted, still dressed in his pyjamas, and bundled into a waiting vehicle. The soldiers took him and put him on a flight to Costa Rica. With Zelaya out of the way, his opponents set about justifying their actions and attempting to establish control over the country.
Manuel Zelaya was a strange target for a rightist putsch. A wealthy banker and rancher, he was the preferred candidate of the Liberal Party which, along with the more conservative National Party, formed the political establishment in Honduras, a country which has been ruled by a mix of military dictatorships and right wing governments of the elite; what Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would call the oligarchs. The ruling classes in Honduras was comfortable with his election. Throughout the 1980s, the country had been turned into an armed camp for Reagan’s war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Decades of death squad operations and a stifling political environment had ensured that the left in Honduras was extremely weak. But conditions in Honduras are extremely hard for the poor. It is one of the poorest countries in the Americas; like many Central American countries, its main source of income is income repatriated from workers overseas. The life expectancy is only 66.2 years and literacy languishes at 76.2%. Approximately seventy percent of the population live beneath the poverty line.
After being elected, Zelaya began to shift away from traditional Honduran politics. He raised the ire of his own party by raising the minimum wage by sixty percent. He welcomed Cuban doctors into the country to work amongst the poor majority and applied to join, and was accepted into ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. This put him beyond the pale for the oligarchy in Honduras, including in his own party. Zelaya became an obstacle to business as usual. Continue reading “Coup in Honduras”
In April, we reported on vote for industrial action at VT Fitzroy Devonport, Auckland. Workers were adamant that they could do better than the company’s “best offer”, and put in place an overtime ban. (They are members of the EPMU, PSA and Amalgamated Workers Union). After just two weeks, they recieved an improved offer which was acceptable to the majority of the union membership.
Although there was no change in the pay offer of the first year of the Collective Agreement (3.3%), the second year
offer was increased to 4%. The claim for reinstatement of the historic Confined Space allowance wasn’t won this time,
but there were gains in other areas, such as enhancements to the “Working on ships not along side” allowance.
The lesson is clear: A little bit of militancy gets us a little bit extra!
The Spark June 2009
Alastair Reith
The last time The Spark carried news from Nepal, the story was positive. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had been elected to government with just under forty percent of the seats (more than the next two parties put together). Its leader Prachanda was Prime Minister. Previous to this, it had waged a decade long People’s War that liberated eighty percent of the countryside and radicalised the workers and peasants of the country in support of revolutionary change. Under the slogan of a new Nepal, the Maoist-led government attempted to bring about land reform, build national industry, empower and improve the lives of workers, and fight against the domination of foreign imperialism, and Indian expansionism. However, this article describes events of a much less positive nature.
Over the past months, the Maoist government has been almost completely unable to advance its revolutionary programme due to the resistance of its coalition partners. At every turn, it found its progressive efforts blocked by the non-revolutionary parties it had formed a government with. Continue reading “Presidential coup in Nepal”
The Spark June 2009
Air New Zealand flight attendants working for Zeal 320 Ltd took industrial action beginning in March. After months of unsuccessful negotiations between Zeal and the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU), the 240 union members employed as flight attendants decided they had had enough. The workers, most of whom are young women with no previous union experience, are employed by Zeal 320 Ltd but work for Air New Zealand. They wear the same uniforms, fly on the same aircraft and are in every respect exactly the same as flight attendants employed directly by Air New Zealand – except in their employment contracts.
Zeal 320 Ltd, a wholly Air New Zealand owned subsidiary, was set up to employ staff on the now defunct cut price Freedom Air. When Freedom Air was absorbed into its parent company, the staff were kept on their Zeal contracts, meaning that they earn thousands of dollars less every year than their co-workers employed directly by Air New Zealand. Zeal staff are employed on a lower base rate than Air New Zealand staff. They are denied many basic allowances such as dry cleaning and other clothing related compensation that people on Air New Zealand contracts receive. The allowances they do receive are generally lower than the Air New Zealand equivalents. Continue reading “Flight attendants fight Air NZ”
Workers Party activists collected around 100 signatures for Unite’s campaign for a hike in the Minimum Wage at Auckland’s Otara Flea Market today.
Many of the signers remarked how they would personally benefit from raising the rate to $15 per hour – which would result in a pay increase for some 450,000 workers in New Zealand. It was an encouraging start to the year-long campaign to get the 300,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum on the issue.
Workers Party activists in Christchurch and Wellington have also been collecting hundreds of signatures at stalls and in workplaces.