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Jobs should come before profits

– Workers Party Press Release

As the recession bites, workers are again carrying the heaviest burden.

The layoffs just announced at Silver Fern Farms’ Belfast plant are another sign that the current parties have nothing left to offer workers. The Workers Party thinks jobs for all should come before profits for private companies and supports action by workers to keep their jobs, including occupations of workplaces threatened with closure.

As a first step, the Workers Party of New Zealand will abolish GST because it is a regressive tax that hits workers particularly hard.

We are launching our Christchurch Electoral campaign at 7pm on Monday July 28th. The campaign launch will be held in the WEA at 59 Gloucester St.

The Workers Party is standing two candidates in Christchurch electorates: secondary school teacher and former meat worker Paul Hopkinson in Christchurch East and retail worker and student Byron Clark in Christchurch Central. We also have candidates standing in Auckland and Wellington.

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Workers Party applies to register with Electoral Commission

The Workers Party has today made an application to the Electoral Commission to register as a political party able to contest the list vote in the upcoming national elections.

In the 2002 and 2005 elections (standing as the Anti-Capitalist Alliance) it has contested a number of electorate seats in the main centers, and will be doing so again this year.

In the coming election the Workers Party will be campaigning on issues that are of importance to working people, such as abolishing GST (not just on food), jobs for all with a shorter working week and no loss of pay, no restrictions on the right to strike, and scrapping undemocratic laws such as the Electoral Finance Act and the so-called “Terrorism Suppression” Act.

The Workers Party also stands for workers power and a working people’s republic. All Workers Party candidates pledge if elected to parliament to live on the average worker’s wage and to fight for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with an economic system based not on private profit and private ownership, but on human need.

A list of the Workers Party’s 2008 electorate candidates announced to-date is available here.

For more information contact Workers Party national organiser Tim Bowron on 027 715 9178 email tim.bowron(at)gmail.com or Workers Party national secretary and Manukau East candidate Daphna Whitmore on 029 494 9865 email wpnz(at)clear.net.nz.

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No ties to capitalism

This election year the Workers Party is standing candidates in the main centres of the country.

Discussing his candidacy with workmates at smoko time, one of our comrades was challenged:

“If you get into parliament and you’re walking down the road with a suit and tie on and we see you, you might not want to know us any more!”

Our comrade replied: “Mate, there’s not going to be any tie. Look at this publicity photo on my pamphlet. I’m in my overalls like you, and that’s how it’s going to stay. Our party is trying to do something different in this election. We’re not standing for ourselves, and we’re not standing to try and make the system work better. We’re standing 100% for the workers and against the bosses.”

Any Workers Party candidate elected to a position in national or local government will transform their seat into an active organising centre to push workers’ interests. Our members will take a minimum wage sufficient for genuine expenses and put the rest of their parliamentary salary towards the struggle. Successful socialist electoral candidates have already taken this road in Ireland, Australia and other countries.

Socialist parliamentary candidates stand against capitalism, to represent the ideas of the future, and to build the practical struggles of today. Inside this issue of the Spark you can read about some of the ways we’re trying to do that.

If you like the look of our new way with no ties to capitalism, please join us.

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Workers Party talks to union officials

Workers Party Wellington Central candidate Don Franks reports on his recent meeting with NZ Council of Trade Unions representatives.

When the local CTU organiser emailed around to say the Local Affiliates Council was going to discuss General Election strategy, I called back and asked for a few minutes to put our case at one of their monthly meetings. They stalled for weeks and wanted more information in writing before they finally gave me a hearing, at the local AGM.

I explained that the Workers Party is standing several electorate candidates this election and we’re also running on the party list. So, for the first time in New Zealand’s political history, every worker will have the option of voting for a socialist candidate.

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The budget – funded by workers, controlled by the bosses

Jared Phillips reviews some aspects of the 2008 budget and the response to it from a Marxist perspective

The qualification threshold for the top tax bracket has changed from $60,000 to $80,000, which provides some relief for the middle class,which is where Labour draws its support from. The media has seized on the fact that this might help prevent middle-New Zealand’s political migration to National. Those earning an annual $80,000 will have a weekly after-tax increase of $28 in Ocotber. For working people the tax cuts provide little relief. For those earning an annual $20,000- $30,000, after-tax weekly income will increase by $12 in October. Social Issues reporter Simon Collins has noted that in terms of percentage changes, lower income earners are in fact receiving bigger cuts with a 5.7 percent cut at 20,000, a 3.3 percent cut at 50,000, and a 3.6 percent at $80,000. While this percentaging won’t provide any comfort for those living on the hardest incomes and receiving lower dollar-amount tax cuts, it does help illustrate that increased incomes and wages, not tax cuts, have more relevance for the restoration of real incomes, and that this budget has done nothing to lift the abysmal income of beneficiaries.

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Labour’s brightest and best?

– Don Franks

As Labour sinks deeper in the polls, political commentators speculate about the party’s future in opposition. Are there any bright spots shining among the ruins? One very promising ‘new talent’, who, according to columnist Matthew Hooton “should go straight to Labour’s front bench”, is Wellington Central candidate Grant Robertson. You can form some opinion about Grant Robertson by taking a look at his blog. Much of this journal is devoted to descriptions of Grant’s busy social life watching rugby and patronising the cafés of the capital.

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Abolish GST

The Workers Party for many years has said GST has to go. Below is an article originally published in The Spark in July 2005, in which Philip Ferguson explains why the rich favour this tax and why we oppose it:

In recent months the National Party has been pushing for income tax cuts. Although they present this in a populist way, as if it would benefit workers, they vigorously oppose measures such as raising the minimum wage, serious across-the-board wage rises like those sought by Auckland bus drivers and the abolition of GST.

During the upcoming election campaign, one of the minimum platform points of the Anti-Capitalist Alliance [now called the Workers Party] will be demanding the abolition of GST, something that would be done by any government with even a token desire to make life a little easier for workers, especially the poorest workers.

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A letter to our readers

Dear Spark readers and Workers Party supporters,

In the last two years the Workers Party has participated in and supported many campaigns, most notably:

* Against racist detention of Iranian migrants at Mt. Eden prison (taking arrests and legal costs)

* Stop The Killings (in the Philippines) campaign

* Hotel workers unionisation campaign

* Restaurant workers unionisation campaign

* Progressive Distribution Centre workers lockout

* Civil Rights Defence campaign after government raids on Tuhoe and activists

* Box city protests – living allowance for students (Wellington)

* Successful Save the Film School campaign at Victoria (Wellington)

* Campaign against the intervention in Aborigine communities Northern Territory

* Middle-East solidarity campaigns

* Numerous workers strikes and pickets (taking an arrest in Auckland)


We have also:

* Raised working class issues through interventions in local government elections

* Been the only left organisation to produce a monthly socialist publication

* Contributed to the monthly Workers Charter

* Held numerous education forums on topics of importance to the movements of workers and oppressed

* Put our website into an upgrade and initiated a blog

* Maintained healthy links with workers organisations and parties in other countries

* Recruited a number of new party activists

Almost all of these activities have relied totally on WP members donating their own time and hard-earned money.


Now we need your financial support as 2008 is the first time the Workers Party will be standing on the party list in a national general election. Please make a donation in one of the following ways:

* Send cash wrapped in envelope to PO BOX 10-282, Dominion Road, Auckland

* Send a cheque made out to ‘Workers Party’ to POBOX 10-282, Dominion Road, Auckland.

* Transfer money from one of your accounts to 38-9002-0817250-01

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Workers Party submission to the Electoral Commission on the distribution of broadcasting monies

Main points

1.

The previous allocations of broadcasting monies was designed when there were two parties who were keen to make sure that other new parties could not compete effectively with them. A cartel has previously operated in dividing up the broadcast allocation amongst the parliamentary parties. This has previously given only a few crumbs to the parties outside Parliament. The Workers Party welcomes the change in the configuration of the Electoral Commission when determining broadcast funding.

2.

There is a very strong argument to be made that all parties contesting the list vote should receive exactly the same allocation of funding. Any other allocation is contrary to natural justice and notions of democracy and ‘level playing fields’. This is how other countries divide broadcasting funds.

3.

The Workers Party is a new party with over 550 members. We are about to register with the Electoral Commission and intend to contest the party vote and a number of electorate seats throughout the country.

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