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Solidarity needed during strikes

Press release

Criticisms of the junior doctors’ strike by Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly are ill timed and highly questionable, says Workers Party national organiser Daphna Whitmore. “Traditionally unions extend solidarity during strike action, not issue public condemnation”.

“Medical staff do not take strike action lightly, and the doctors have been negotiating since May 2007 for renewal of their employment agreement” she said.

“With severe doctor shortages in the public health sector it is not surprising the doctors are taking action” she said. “The CTU would do better to criticise the government for failing to resolve the problems in the health system.”

All life preserving services have been maintained during strike action.

CONTACT: Daphna Whitmore 0294949865 wpnz(at)clear.net.nz

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Industrial Action at Gourmet Mokai Ltd

Workers at Gourmet Mokai Ltd near Taupo walked off the job in disgust at management’s attitude toward their current Collective Agreement negotiations. The company, which produces tomatoes and capsicums, has repeatedly cancelled meetings with the Northern Amalgamated Workers Union who have been trying to meet with bosses since November. At a report-back meeting on Monday 7 April, unionists issued an ultimatum to management: agree to meet us, or we’re out on strike for 48 hours. Bosses replied that they were not prepared to commit to a date there and then, and the workers promptly pulled the pin!

Management responded by threatening to bus workers over from a site in Woodhill, near Auckland to replace striking workers. Undeterred, the workers held a picket line the following day. Far from wanting to scab on their mates, workers at Woodhill asked if the Mokai crew needed any support. In the end, management decided to play ball, and have set a date for further negotiations.

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Venezuela: Orinoco steel industry nationalised

By Community Reporters of Merida for Aporrea.org

(see original report in Spanish here)

Translated by Tim Bowron for The Spark

9/4/08

MERIDA, Venezuela. Steel workers and the trade union Sutiss have won their fight for the nationalisation of the steel industry firm Ternium-Sidor after months of strikes, confrontations and repression by the National Guard. This morning, at 1.22am, vice-president Ramón Carrizales, the envoy of the National Executive, finally opened a way forward to a solution in the conflict between the trade union alliance and the trans-national corporation’s management. During this conflict the workers had denounced before the Minister of Labour the multiple contractual irregularities and the prevailing conditions of capitalist exploitation, but in spite of all this they were not listened to by the Minister.

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Modern New Zealand unions – “fighting blindfold”?

Philip Ferguson

It’s not often that leading trade union officials in New Zealand speak openly about the exploitation of the working class, let alone about the surplus-value created by workers and expropriated by employers. Therefore, when such speeches are made, it’s useful to analyse what is being said, why, and what the political implications are for trade union activism.

Last November, Robert Reid, the national president of the National Distribution Union, one of the few left-leaning unions, made such a speech at a gathering organised by the Trade Union History Project to commemorate the life of the late Rona Bailey, a longtime New Zealand communist.

In the speech, Reid recalled being part of Marxist study groups with Rona Bailey and learning about surplus-value. Reid then rightly noted that “without an appreciation of Marxist economics or political economy, we have no understanding of how wealth is created and expropriated in the 21st century. This leaves, in many cases, the modern trade union movement fighting blindfolded.”

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Redundancy – how do unions measure up?

Don Franks

The article “Who moved my job?” in the April issue of The Spark eloquently voices a worker’s experience of redundancy threats. How can workers fight back against this blight on their lives?

Organised workers threatened with redundancy look to the union they belong to. It would make sense for all the unions in the country to have an agreed overall strategy against redundancy.

Such a document does exist. The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (CTU) policy book, copyright 2006, sets out an approach to redundancy for all unions.

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Who moved my job?

Rachel Tay

2007 did not get off to an auspicious start at Dynamic Controls. Fraud and subsequent law changes in America and the high Kiwi dollar led to low sales. This in turn led to low orders, leaving most of the factory staff in Christchurch with little to do for the first three months.

Staff that had been with the company for a while were aware that with all Invacare’s (the US-based parent company) competitors already in China, and Invacare having shifted respiratory production to China some two years previously, this state of affairs could not continue.

The first blow fell in early April with the announcement of five redundancies from the factory floor. Any job loss is painful, but we thought we’d got off lightly, until May 16.

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Wellington bus drivers’ battles continue

Don Franks

In December 2007 the Workers Party produced a Spark insert, Bus drivers stand up to the boss. It described how Management of Go Wellington imposed shift changes in 2007 that resulted in driver salary reductions of up to $20,000 a year. At the same time, the company introduced an alternative collective to the Tramways Union one, with inferior conditions and, unlike the Tramways collective, no penal rates. In December this contract was being challenged in the courts. This case is still before the employment court at the time of going to press, with a decision due in early February. Watch this space.

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Christchurch support workers strike against 75-hour weeks

Tim Bowron

Between January 11 and 13, around 140 support workers and nurses at Brackenridge Estate near Christchurch took part in a 48-hour strike over issues of severe understaffing and low pay.

The workers there, who look after people with serious intellectual disabilities, are members of the National Union of Public Employees and the NZ Nurses’ Organisation.

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