Vote Matt McCarten for Mana

Workers Party leaflet
The Workers Party is backing Matt McCarten in the Mana By Election because he’s a genuine working class fighter.

Matt McCarten, leader of Unite union, has hands-on experience promoting workers’ rights. That is a rare thing in politics these days, where parliament is awash with bland, middle-class liberals.
Since founding Unite union in 2003 Matt has been a prominent figure in campaigns for low paid casualised workers. He has shown an absolute commitment to that cause.
Matt is campaigning for the minimum wage to be lifted to $15 an hour, for the rich to pay more tax and an end to GST.
It is good that there is a candidate to the left of Labour because it helps to highlight how similar National and Labour are. Take a look at how both parties have handled GST which  is a tax that raises the cost of living and increases hardship. It was a Labour government that introduced GST in the 1980s, and then put it up to 12.5%. Now National has hiked it up to 15%. Labour say they’ll take GST off fresh fruit and vegetables. That might be enough for monkeys, but workers have other bills besides the green grocer.
The reason there are so many similarities between National and Labour is that the parliamentary parties are in the business of running capitalism.
In this class-divided system workers have the numbers, but the capitalists have the power through their ownership of all the big businesses. That power translates into political power. The Hobbit affair is a great illustration of that. Corporate arm twisting by local and offshore capitalists forced huge tax concessions and an overnight anti union law change.
If we are ever going to tackle the problem of inequality and injustice we need to look beyond the system we live under today. We need to get rid of capitalism.
If that’s something you are interested in contact the Workers Party. We have branches in Wellington, Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch.