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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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New Zealand’s Imperialist attitude toward Fiji

Byron Clark The Spark March 2009

In what John Key has described as sending “a strong message” Pacific Forum leaders voted earlier this year to suspend Fiji from the Forum unless the interim government sets an election date before May 1. The suspension means that Fiji cannot attend meetings between forum leaders, ministers or officials; it will also be excluded from benefiting from any regional initiatives run under the forum. Both Mr Key and forum chairman Toke Talagi said the decision was made by consensus, a surprising result given smaller Pacific nations were expected to vote against suspension, with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare stating in his speech (released to the media before the meeting) “I am of the strong view that adopting an isolationist approach would be unhelpful.”

Fiji has already lost the benefits of one “regional initative” – participation in the seasonal work scheme allowing Pacific Islanders to work in New Zealand. Fiji was suspended from the scheme by the previous Labour government. So far this sanction has done little – if anything – to destabilise the military regime, instead it has effected ordinary Fijians. The Fiji based Coalition for Democracy and Peace, consisting of citizens’ groups and non-governmental organisations, had said that the poor are the ones most affected by sanctions imposed by New Zealand. Even when New Zealand sent aid to Fiji (via the Red Cross) in the wake of horrific floods, local Fijians said a better way for the New Zealand Government to help them would be to let them work in New Zealand, rather than give aid money. A petition was circulated asking Prime Minister John Key to issue special directions for one-year work visas for flood victims, and for an equivalent to the Pacific Access Category for Fijian citizens already in New Zealand. Continue reading “New Zealand’s Imperialist attitude toward Fiji”

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“Guilt by accusation” law stalled

Byron Clark The Spark March 2009

The government has stalled a controversial change to copyright law that would have seen Internet Service Providers removing Internet access from anyone accused (not convicted) of violating intellectual property laws though downloading pirated music or video. The controversial clause was removed by a parliamentary select committee last year, but was put back into the legislation by then-Labour Government minister Judith Tizard – with National’s support. Prime Minister John Key has conceded however that this change to the Copyright Act could be “problematic”, and suggested it could be thrown out. In the week leading up to the original implementation date a web based campaign organised by the Creative Freedom Foundation saw people ‘black out’ content on their websites in protest against the law, culminating on February 23rd when most of the country’s major blogs (and a number of other websites) took down front page content for the day and replaced it with a black page.

Continue reading ““Guilt by accusation” law stalled”

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DVD Review: The Counterfeiters

The Counterfeiters is a fictionalised account of an astonishing true story: Nazi Germany’s Operation Bernhard, the largest counterfeiting undertaking in history. The operation forced Jewish concentration camp prisoners to produce forged banknotes, passports and even postage stamps for the benefit of the Third Reich.counterfeiters

The movie is based on the memoirs of one of the participants, Adolf Burger. A communist printer, Burger urges his fellow inmates to sabotage the project of forging the American Dollar, in order to undermine the Nazi war effort.

The central character is a professional forger, Saloman Solowich. In the early scenes of the film we see, Solowich, “the most charming scoundrel in Berlin”, quaffing Champagne in the bohemian decadence of Weimar Germany. When he ends up in a concentration camp, his strategy is simple: adapt and survive. Continue reading “DVD Review: The Counterfeiters”

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For a real summit

Don Franks

The worth of the recent Jobs Summit can be summed up in one word – Sealord.

The first major employment incident after the government sponsored summit was an announcement of imminent job losses from the aptly feudally titled company.

Sealord, owned jointly by Nippon Suisan Kaisha of Japan and Maori tribes via Aotearoa Fisheries, intends to cut 180 land-based jobs in Nelson and is not ruling out the closure of its plant there.

The Service & Food Workers Union (SFWU) said the company wanted to cut the pay of remaining workers by $70 a week.

Prime Minister John Key said:

“I think in the case of Sealords they’re actually restructuring their business.

“One thing we have to be realistic about is the recession will ultimately drive some of those changes, it’s not to say we’re not hugely sympathetic to those who have lost their job, we understand that there will be change,” Mr Key told TV3’s Sunrise.

In other words, when it comes to day to day business decisions, the summit means zilch. Continue reading “For a real summit”

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Film review: MILK

milk

Gus Vant Sant’s new film “Milk”, is a biopic of the 1970s gay rights activist Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn. Penn gives one of his best performances to date as the charismatic and outspoken gay leader, portraying him from his very few last days as a Republican-voting, Wall Street bureaucrat in the late 60s early 70s to his awakening as a fighter against gay oppression and subsequent assassination in 1978.

Continue reading “Film review: MILK”

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Workers rights from day 1

Around 30 people picketed outside National MP Nicky Wagner’s office on Friday 27 February in protest at the government’s 90 day sacking law.90-day-protest-chch

The picket was called by the Workers Rights Campaign, a joint WP-Alliance initiative which has broadened out to involve class-struggle anarchists, Socialist Workers and anyone who wants to oppose the 90-day legislation on an anti-capitalist basis.

Wagner’s staff locked the doors, apparently fearing an occupation although one hadn’t been planned. Occupations can wait until the first firings start.

The attendance included Workers Party, Alliance, Socialist Workers, anarchists (including from the new Workers Solidarity Movement), and small contingents from both the EPMU and SFWU, with their union banners, plus some high school students from Unlimited (an alternative school in the city centre).

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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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Bolivia fights back against imperialism

-Tim Bowron

On January 25 Bolivians voted by a large majority to approve a new constitution designed to give greater control over the country’s natural resources to the indigenous majority of the Andean nation.Evo Morales

The constitution, which was championed by Bolivian President Evo Morales (a former Aymara peasant activist and leader of the left nationalist Movimiento al Socialismo/MAS), was the culmination of nearly two decades of struggle by the indigenous majority to wrest back control of their lands from the blanco elites and their friends the foreign multinationals. During the 1990s Bolivia saw a succession of governments embark on an unprecedented campaign of privatisation including the full or partial sale of the state-owned oil, gas, electricity and telecommunications industries. In 2000 the then-President (and former military dictator) Hugo Banzer signed a contract with a consortium led by US company Bechtel to give it exclusive rights over the supply of water and sanitation services in the city of Cochabamba, with local residents forbidden from collecting their own water through rainwater tanks or other natural methods.

Continue reading “Bolivia fights back against imperialism”