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Shorter work-hours: They say less pay, we say more pay

Jared Phillips The Spark April 2009

Resulting from the Job Summit in February, the government has now announced the introduction of the Job Support Scheme. At the time of writing, between 20-30 companies have taken up the government’s offer. Who benefits from the 9-day working fortnight?

In the past socialists have successfully fought for a shorter working week for the same pay. This has happened in the construction industry in Australia and in the meat industry in New Zealand. We need to raise these arguments again and also raise them at a higher level. Continual productivity gains make it possible for us to move to a society in which workers can consciously organise and limit the amount of time spent working while increasing their leisure time. Oppositely, under the capitalist system, the lives of the working class are organised by the rhythms of production. This is clearly the case when we look at the way hours of work are currently being re-regulated. Continue reading “Shorter work-hours: They say less pay, we say more pay”

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Crowne Plaza hotel strike hits Brisbane Broncos

 

The Brisbane Broncos won’t be experiencing full kiwi hospitality this weekend. The team is staying at Auckland’s plush Crowne Plaza hotel, where room attendants and other staff have gone on strike.crowne-plaza-strike-019

Around twenty members of Unite union are on strike; calling for a pay rise and better working conditions. “We are underpaid and overworked”

says Unite delegate Tapa Jago. “We are fed up with the low pay and heavy workloads”.

The hotel industry is one of the lowest paid sectors, says Unite organiser Daphna Whitmore. “The starting rate is just $13 an hour” she said. “The hotel made a gross profit of $8.5 million in 2008 but claims it cannot afford to lift the wages.”

The 360 room hotel is 100 percent full this weekend with the Waratahs and Brisbane Broncos teams staying.

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Rat Patrol and Workers Rights Campaign – fight unfair sackings

by Michael Ashton

An online survey commissioned by the New Zealand Business Council in February found that 1 in 5 people in the workforce fear that they will lose their jobs in 2009. Thirty-nine percent of those indicating they fear job loss are earners of between $20,001 and $30,000 a year, meaning that this category feels most insecure.

The introduction this month of the 90-day probationary employment legislation will compound the growing anxiety amongst working people and especially the working poor. A stand is being made through the Rat Patrol, a group of people who have undertaken to put pickets and a giant inflatable rat outside the premises of employers who unfairly dismiss workers in their first 90-days. Continue reading “Rat Patrol and Workers Rights Campaign – fight unfair sackings”

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A work in progress

Daphna Whitmore The Spark March 2009  

Auckland airport’s Centra hotel looks stunning. The newly renovated rooms are spotlessly clean; the beds have fresh crisp linen, folded with envelope precision. Many hands created this perfection.centra-housekeepers

Every day a dozen or more women start cleaning the rooms at 8am. Before they begin they have got children out of bed and off to school, dropped husbands at their workplaces and then headed to their own job as a room attendant. They set to work cleaning anywhere between 15 and 20 hotels rooms, stripping beds, scrubbing floors, wiping every surface clean and putting everything in its place. When the guest walks into the room it is as if no one had ever stayed there before. No tell-tale strand of hair or nail clipping must be left behind. Nothing less than perfection will do. Continue reading “A work in progress”

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Picket against new “Fire-at-Will” law in Christchurch

dalek

Press Release: Workers Rights Campaign

Canterbury’s newly-formed Workers Rights Campaign is planning a symbolic picket at the offices of Government M.P. Nicola Wagner to protest at the new “fire-at-will” provisions of New Zealand’s industrial law.

Campaign spokesman Paul Piesse said today that the justification for the new law, which allows employers to sack workers within the first three months of their employment without giving any reason at all, let alone any justification, is a hypocritical sham.

The big lie, Mr Piesse said, is the deceit that the law would encourage employers to take on people they otherwise would not. Employers, he said, only ever employ people when they really need them. Their objective is to maximise their profits – they don’t function as a social service to the unemployed.

Neither do they engage the least appealing applicant; and nor will they because of the new law.

The Workers Rights Campaign says that the law is a breach of civil rights, in that it discriminates against a specific group of citizens – job applicants – distinguishing them from those already employed.

Mr Piesse added that the law is aimed at the most vulnerable: the young; casual and part time workers; those made redundant from their previous employment – likely to be a rapidly increasing number of New Zealanders; anyone changing jobs; and older workers.
The Workers Rights Campaign will picket the premises of any employer availing him/herself of this contemptible new law when it is brought to its attention.

Mr Piesse said that the new law was just the start of an employer-Government campaign to make working people pay the price of the inevitable and cyclic crisis of the capitalist system.

The picket at Wagner’s office, 189 Montreal St Christchurch, will take place on Friday 27th February at 1 p.m.

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Will the Council of Trade Unions put workers first?

-Don Franks

For some weeks now, top union leaders have been muttering about a possible National government attack on unions’ access to worksites. The present law allows union representatives to enter workplaces to visit existing union members and recruit new members. Union officials must produce identification, tell the employer the purpose of their visit and not take up too much time, or enter at very busy times.

These rights were denied by National’s Employment Contracts Act and restored by the last Labour government. Restoration of right of entry was the one big concession Labour made to the union movement. Now, it is increasingly being rumoured, John Key’s lot will remove unions’ right of entry again.

The rumours came out in the open in Council of Trade Unions President Helen Kelly’s Dominion Post column of February 23rd. There, in an article headlined; Will Government put the country first? Kelly claimed:

“National still intends to reduce worker’s rights by making union access to a workplace dependant on employer approval.”

Continue reading “Will the Council of Trade Unions put workers first?”

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Raising the minimum wage

Unite Union is spearheading a new campaign for a decent hike in the minimum wage. The campaign will take to the streets, with a petition for a referendum being the main tool used by activists to start discussions with workers about how we can raise wages and win control in our workplaces.

 The petition calls for the minimum wage to be raised to $15 immediately, and then in steps over the next three years until it reaches two-thirds of the average wage.

 “These steps will increase purchasing power in the economy by directing help to those who need it most,” says Unite’s Mike Treen. “The economic crisis facing the world is the toxic product of insatiable greed at the top and the free-market policies of governments that removed all controls. The end result is a skewing of income and wealth so that the rich got richer and the poor fell off the edge.”

 Look out for the campaign coming soon to a neighbourhood near you!

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McDonald’s workers upsize their pay

-Daphna Whitmore
The Spark February 2009

 
After a series of strikes, Unite union members at McDonald’s restaurants have a new collective agreement with improved wages and conditions. Their actions included 50 strikes in dozens of stores from Whangarei to Hamilton and a protest outside the company’s national conference. There was a real fighting spirit at several stores, and the vote to settle was only passed by a narrow majority.

Improvements won include a one-off bonus payment, and significant pay rises for team leaders and supervisors. Staff are to have more secure hours, which was one of the union’s key claims. When additional work hours are available they will be offered to existing staff, instead of more part-time or casualised positions being created.

While the agreement has been settled, the campaign is not over. The starting rates for frontline staff are linked to the minimum wage. So if the minimum wage, which is currently $12 an hour, goes up in March, then so too will their wages. Unite is campaigning for the minimum wage to go up by a dollar an hour every year until it reaches $15.

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Kindergarten teachers deserve wider support

-Don Franks

The Spark February 2009

Kindergarten teachers are seeking to ensure they don’t cop a 90-day trial period when they start a new job.

The workers’ union, NZEI Te Riu Roa, has lodged the first employment claim in response to the National government’s anti-worker Employment Relations Amendment Act 2008. (Under the new law, rushed through Parliament before Christmas without any public consultation, an employer need give no reason for sacking someone in any work site of less than 20 people within the first 90 days of their employment.)

NZEI’s National Secretary Paul Goulter says the union believes the 90-day probation legislation is unfair and unjust to workers and has serious implications for the education sector where recruitment is a major challenge.

Continue reading “Kindergarten teachers deserve wider support”