Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, September 11th, 2009 - 7 comments
We’re seeing a new pattern in work relations emerging. The big employers, emboldened by having their party in power and using the recession as an excuse, are attacking workers’ pay and conditions. But this isn’t 1991 redux. The unionised workers of today have joined voluntarily and believe in collective action; the unions are no longer […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, September 11th, 2009 - 31 comments
There’s a nasty dispute brewing at Open Country Cheese involving a six week lockout threat, some highly aggressive anti-union PR, calls for the Government to gut labour laws and major links between the company and senior National Party figures. It’s early days yet, but this could be a big one. Open Country Cheese was founded […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:43 am, September 11th, 2009 - 11 comments
Today, 200 Telecom engineers in Auckland and Northland will be fired. Not because there’s no work for them but because Telecom and it’s $7 million CEO want to cut ‘labour costs’ – that’s workers’ incomes, families’ livelihoods to you and me. Here’s how Telecom’s scam goes. Currently, the engineers are employees of Telecom contractors Transfield […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, September 10th, 2009 - 18 comments
Socialist Aotearoa have organised a Telecom solidarity fundraiser on Friday night. Not for $7m man Paul Reynolds, but for the lines engineers his contractors are busy laying off with no redundancy and trying to force into sham dependent contracts. If you’re in Auckland head along and show your support. The engineers are sure going to […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:00 pm, September 8th, 2009 - 3 comments
Infratil-run NZ Bus has called off its planned capital strike for tomorrow. The company had been going to prevent bus drivers and other staff who wanted to work from working. It has withdrawn that lock-out notice and presented a better offer to the workers. The workers have also withdrawn their notice of intention to work […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, September 8th, 2009 - 20 comments
By John Ryall, SFWU National Secretary While The Standard readers know that the air traffic controllers were the excuse that Kate Wilkinson used to signal a repeal of parts of the 2008 Employment Relations Act (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Act, they are probably not aware of who is really going to be affected by […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, September 8th, 2009 - 8 comments
Coming soon to a workplace near you, if Kate Wilkinson gets her way: According to this report by Roll on Friday, a receptionist formerly employed by a major US law firm is suing the firm, saying she had no choice but to wet herself. Rebecca Landrith was employed by Littler Mendelson, a leading employment law […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, September 8th, 2009 - 7 comments
Yesterday Infratil got their NZ Bus hand-puppets to announce that they will be going on strike. On Wednesday, if the bus-drivers refuse to donate their time freely to increase Infratil returns to investors, the company will remove bus-services from the commuters of Auckland. If the reasonable attempts of the bus drivers to increase their wages […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, September 7th, 2009 - 27 comments
Auckland bus drivers have been in negotiations with NZ Bus (which is owned by Infratil) for a 70 cent an hour pay rise. Currently, they’re on between $14.05 and $16.75 an hour for 13-hour shifts. Many workers are on split shifts, which means up to four hours a day of unpaid time between shifts. Negotiations […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, September 4th, 2009 - 8 comments
Yesterday, National’s Kate Wilkinson tried to use a dispute over how to apply the new rest breaks law for air traffic controllers as a pretext for taking away our right to rest and meal breaks. She tried to paint the dispute over breaks as being about union intransigence, with the “Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) unwilling […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:47 pm, September 3rd, 2009 - 18 comments
In 1908, the miners at Blackball took a famous strike over the right to take rest breaks at work. For most of the rest of the century this was enshrined in law and in our culture as a basic right of all working New Zealanders. That is, of course, until the National Government of the […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:10 am, September 2nd, 2009 - 38 comments
I find the Right’s assumption that the bosses are acting in some greater interest fascinating. There’s this unwillingness to believe that the bosses would be acting in their own interests and that what’s in their interests are often not in the interests of the rest of us. Look at the comments yesterday on the Telecom […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, September 1st, 2009 - 7 comments
A good outcome from the Zeal320 dispute. The deal doesn’t quite close the gap between Zeal320 workers and other AirNZ flight attendants but gets a long way there. It’s scary going out on strike, not knowing when you’ll be back to normal work and pay. AirNZ played very dirty. Zeal320 workers’ rosters were purposely organised […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 1st, 2009 - 69 comments
There’s nothing like a Tory Government in power and a monopolistic corporate flexing its muscle to remind you that capitalism is all about serving the bosses and screwing the workers. This Telecom dispute. The engineers are being made redundant from their current roles already in batches. On October 1, all the jobs will be gone […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, August 28th, 2009 - 12 comments
“I’m not going to resign” – Kate Wilkinson It’s one of the truisms of politics that when you’re a minister and you say you’re not resigning, it’s only a matter of time until you are. Kate Wilkinson’s behaviour has been almost universally disgraceful- the Kiwisaver debacle, her vitriol during the Shawn Tan affair, refusing the let […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, August 27th, 2009 - 10 comments
Excellent piece by Patrick Gower in the Herald today on Judith Collins’ attempt to smear Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon. Collins has leaked part of an OIA (which she’s so far refused to release to Labour) which she says shows “union bosses” are “living a jet-set lifestyle” on the taxpayer after they received $127,000 in […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:31 pm, August 26th, 2009 - 15 comments
This morning the National Distribution Union put out a statement saying the Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, had refused to attend an executive meeting on the absurd grounds that Telecom lines engineers belonging to a different union, the EPMU, had recently been on strike. In Question Time today Sue Bradford asked whether the Minister’s refusal […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, August 25th, 2009 - 21 comments
Red Alert continues to get better and better. Beaumont’s latest is one of those powerful stories that deserves to be told, and Red Alert provides the platform. I’m going to be cheeky and reproduce it in full: Today at a fleamarket in Panmure I spoke to a young couple with a young daughter. The young man […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, August 24th, 2009 - 24 comments
I don’t know what it is about the word “Labour” that the right finds so hard to understand. David Farrar has a piece up today attacking the Labour Party for backing the Telecom lines engineers, who are members of the EPMU. The crux of his argument is that Labour should keep politics out of industrial […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:30 am, August 24th, 2009 - 76 comments
Recently, Bill English has been trying to make excuses for not doing anything about the spiralling numbers of unemployed. He says that the practically full employment* of recent years was a mirage and people who are becoming unemployed should know “their jobs were unsustainable“. It’s similar to what he was saying in 1999, when he […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:07 pm, August 20th, 2009 - 37 comments
You’ve heard about the Telecom dispute. But while a lot of the focus has been on what it means for the lines engineers involved, an equally important issue is what it means for the future of our country’s infrastructure. Because basically, this whole dispute is a sympton of Telecom’s attempts to increase its profits at […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:48 am, August 13th, 2009 - 56 comments
Unemployment has shot up to 133,500, nearly doubling in 18 months. But that’s not the whole story. The official ‘unemployed’ are only the people without work who looking for work and able to start now. Add to that the ‘jobless’, people who want work but are not actively looking (because they’re discouraged or there’s none […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, August 12th, 2009 - 8 comments
Service & Food Workers Union national secretary John Ryall has a new blog. His first post takes aim at the claim by Ngai Tahu Runanga Chair Mark Solomon that the National Government should be considering Iwi for public-private partnerships because they have a greater commitment to New Zealand. Ryall argues that the recent behaviour of […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, August 12th, 2009 - 22 comments
The Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson, is holding a meeting today with 25 top CEOs on the number of New Zealanders who are killed every year at work. The fact it’s being billed as an example of ‘partnership’ shows a lot about this Government’s worldview, because she’s specifically excluded any representation from the workers who’re […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:45 pm, August 11th, 2009 - 32 comments
It’s great to see all the lines engineers standing up to Telecom’s attempt to strip away their employment rights and turn them into dependent contractors. I was lucky enough to catch the protest above yesterday (not my photo though), and there was a lot of passion from the guys. There’s a good reason for that […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:11 am, August 7th, 2009 - 33 comments
Who said this? “if we continue with National’s policies over the next three years we will be able to create another 115,000 jobs and bring unemployment under 6%. These are realistic targets…Labour’s claim that it can bring the unemployment rate down to 3% is also a hoax” It was Bill English in 1999. Of course, […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:27 pm, August 6th, 2009 - 13 comments
Darien Fenton’s minimum redundancy bill has been drawn from the ballot and is likely to go before the house in the next two weeks. In my opinion implementing a minimum redundancy is one of the most significant ways we can reduce the effects of the recession on working Kiwis because it offers a buffer for […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:12 am, August 6th, 2009 - 22 comments
Stats NZ has just released the unemployment figures for the June Quarter. Unemployment has hit 6%. That’s 138,000 people out of work. We’re going to need more than a cycleway to get ourselves out of this one.
Written By: - Date published: 5:00 am, August 6th, 2009 - 5 comments
Today the Household Labour Force Survey, which includes the official measure of unemployment, will be out. The headline number is expected to be around 5.6%, up from record lows below 4% just nine months ago. The HLFS has a few limitations though. It only measures the percentage of people who are ‘in the work-force’ (ie in work […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:04 pm, August 2nd, 2009 - 31 comments
17,000 youth jobs. That’s what Key has promised with a $152 million programme (some of this is existing money). Like Colin Espiner says “ambitious plan”. We’ll see if he manages to deliver. The record so far has been big promises and bigger failure to deliver – the money hasn’t been spent and the jobs haven’t […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:39 pm, August 1st, 2009 - 15 comments
Tomorrow John Key will be announcing policies on youth unemployment. Looks like rehashing of the already announced Youth Guarantee and probably something more. Whatever Key comes up with it will be tinkering around the edges. The Nats aren’t willing to spend any money and they don’t have any big ideas. If the cycleway, the tax-cuts, […]
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