Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Over half a million workers in Australia protested against against John Howard's falsely named 'Work Choices' programme. Many of them bravely went on strike to take action despite threats of dismissal by their bosses.
The legislation is an attack on workers' protection against unfair dismissal, pushing people on to individual contracts, award conditions are not guaranteed or protected, restricting rights to organise, and rights to overtime and shift allowances, and minimum wages will now be directly under Howard's overzealous thumb.
A post-march debate in Melbourne on 'Who represents the workers' was heated on the best strategy to go forward. Workers' Solidarity reported that “officials from three major unions expressed doubt on the wisdom of relying on the Labor party. A plan was outlined to reform the ALP from within to make elected ALP parliamentarians more accountable to workers needs. Others at the meeting stated that this plan has been tried and failed in the past.”
In New Zealand, Wildcat believes there is one answer to that debate. No party in government will ever represent workers.
The 'Work Choices' legislation is essentially what happened in New Zealand with the Employment Contracts Act in 1991. This National Party legislation introduced a new system of individualised employment contracts, casualisation and the removal of existing rights, voluntary unionism and the banning of most forms of industrial action, in particular any strikes not connected with contract negotiations.
The result was while Australian living standards and wages went up, New Zealand's stagnated.
The installing of the New Zealand Labour Party in to power with the financial support of New Zealand's union movement and capitalists has ushered in a new era of cooperation with the bosses.
The truth remains that on average New Zealanders earn 30% less than Australian workers, despite high economic times for the rich.
During the staunch but muted picket at the Australian High Commission in Wellington of 200 workers, activists, and organisers there was no mention by official speakers of the 600 Air New Zealand workers that are being fired by Helen Clark's government, or the recently announced public service razor gang. It took an outraged member of the Brass Razoo Solidarity Band to tell the truth about Labour and those that still support them.
We need to send a strong message of solidarity to Australia, but we also need to fight for democracy for workers at home! The first step is to sever ties with all political parties, and stop throwing good money after bad - election after election.
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Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
I share the anger and frustration expressed in the posting by John Anderson for SNAP.The sickeningly collaborationist tenor of CTU and other speakers at the solidarity demo sounded a warining for all low paid workers. Trust in Labour, help build the economy, be thankful and patient we're told.
That strategy has not helped the low paid and never will.
That's why I agree with unions severing all ties with parties like Labour. The only "positive" product of those ties is the provision of career opportunity for a few at the top.
I don't think its desirable or even possible to eschew contact with "all political parties"
I was the musician who stood up and spoke against
Labour's anti worker laws, and I'm also a member of the Anticapitalist Alliance, a grouping of politically like minded people who act as a party and hve even stood candidates for parliament.
We think that at this stage of history there's still political gains to be made for workers by trying to do revolutionary agitation from the hustings. We recognise that other activists think differently and believe that this difference of detail should not rule out common action against the class enemy in other areas.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Some thoughts on John's call for 'democracy' here and 'solidarity' with the Aussies.
Workers democracy means workers power (Lenin used proletarian dictatorship as opposed to bourgeois parliament or the bourgeois dictatorship).
This has to come out of workers organising production, beginning with the rank and file taking back the unions and imposing collective rule in the workplace.
Some of this democracy is bourgeois democracy such as the right free association and to join a union. But these rights were not won or defended withiout massive struggles in the past.
The Howard Bill threatens to take away even the most basic trade union rights (so much for bourgeois democracy). So we need to start with a defence of these basic rights but fight for them by the class struggle methods of rank and file collective action - workers democracy and workers power.
The defeats in NZ in the 1980s and 1990s resulted from union bureaucracy putting the lid on the boiling masses. The same will happen in Australia if the rank and file does not prevail over the bureaucracy and take charge of the struggle. We cannot fight for them but we can help a lot.
The only way to act in real class 'solidarity' with Aussie workers is to fight for the same rank and file control of production in NZ against attacks on workers such as Air NZ and CHH. (It helps if the companies are in both countries so we can back each other up).
In all of the fights where the bureaucrats are trying to do deals based on the 'partnership' between business and labour, or 'tri-partnerships' including the state, we should reject these deals.
For example, fight against the loss of 600 jobs at Air NZ by insisting that the rank and file and not the EPMU do the audit of the books. Occupy, and demand the full nationalisation of Air NZ under workers control!
Fighting the loss of jobs and plant closures at CHH when Graeme Hart tries to make a quick billion or two by carving it up. Occupy, and demand its nationalisation without compensation under workers control.
Same with the oil industry. Nationalise Big Oil!@
Same with the banks, Nationalise the Big 4!
Any and all of these struggles will rapidly develop into a showdown with the bureaucracy committed to its partnerships with business, and with the Labour Governemnt, committed to disciplining the workforce in the interests of the bosses. It will be a victory for workers democracy and workers power over the bosses dictatorship.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Did you expect that the CTU would complain about the Labour Party? If anything they sabotaged the demo's in NZ by not publicing it until Tuesday morning which meant most workers could not organise time off. Also there is a feeling that we went through the ECA with no help from our cobbers across the Tasman.
In NZ for most workers the debate has gone well beyond whether a government will represent the workers, it is to find a union that will. And so far most of the players are rating really badly.
Really the truth is that the ECA completed what most unions had already done to their own. If you were in a union during the good old days of compulsory unionism you would know why so many people were ready to dismantle "their union" structure and prefered to battle their employer on their own.
Australia and NZ need unions who understand that they work for the workers not the bosses and until then unionisation of both countries will be limited to workers who are in conflict with their employers for the time that they are in conflict.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
I guess for me I started my working life in earnest after the ECA came in. I have no experience of voluntary unionism - and I can find no one outside of the student union movement who would say it was a good idea.
The CTU publicised the demos before that including leafleting the railway station twice, and there had been several emails from them to encourage organisers to tell members before that. I think their attempt was genuine.
As far as I can tell, those emails just sat in the organisers intray. The timing of the rally didn't help.
I believe one of the truths of the ECA is that union organisers haven't really ever adapted to the massive workload placed on them by the ECA - and consequently largely abandoned political resistance (with a few notable exceptions). This makes the volunteer approach of UNITE! which has had mixed results, particularly interesting.
I think the NZCTU and other organisers involved have not had much recent experience in organising demos and aren't really sure of what to do.
There seems in Wellington anyway to be a flush of new young organisers interested in broader campaigning.
I have hopes that next year will be an interesting one for activism within the union movement.
Ultimately, I feel that many out there can't be bothered engaging with the CTU and others on these issues, because they believe there will never be any change. I'm too angry to remain silent any more.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Jo wrote:
"If you were in a union during the good old days of compulsory unionism you would know why so many people were ready to dismantle "their union" structure and prefered to battle their employer on their own"
It did vary quite a bit. In those days a minority of unions tried hard to organise their membership on the ground. Leftist unions in the transport industry,manufacturing and some others. Their memberships were pretty loyal as most of them felt their unions were worth something.
There were also a majority of 'paper unions' existing only because of state legislation. They were worthless to workers and fell apart as soon as compulsory unionism came in.
John said:
"I believe one of the truths of the ECA is that union organisers haven't really ever adapted to the massive workload placed on them by the ECA - and consequently largely abandoned political resistance (with a few notable exceptions)."
There's some truth in this, some younger union organisers in particular struggle heroicially with work overloads.
"I think the NZCTU and other organisers involved have not had much recent experience in organising demos and aren't really sure of what to do."
There's some truth in that too. Mind you, its hard to organise demos of any size if you believe
in your heart of hearts that social change comes exclusively from lobbying Labour mps.
But I believe the main problem in the New Zealand labour movement is the collaborationist line emanating from the top.
Top CTU leaders are Labourparty members and many aspire to be mps. They support the capitalist system, no ifs, no buts. They want capitalism to work. They are consistently hostile to class struggle unionism and see leftists as more of an enemy than the boss. Just listen to Andrew Little talking on the radio with employers about working shit out together. And see how he's lauded in the capitalist media like the LISTENER and METRO.
I think top union leaders in and around the Labour party occupy a similar role to communist party union bureaucrats in the former Stalinist Eastern Europe. And, although it will take a while and a lot more ommph from below, they will ultimately and deservedly suffer a similar fate.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
"They were worthless to workers and fell apart as soon as compulsory unionism came in."
that should have read "...soon as voluntary unionism came in."
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Theres a sort of mythology creeping in here about the ECA. The one think we must not do is blame workers for what happened.
Many of us in unions then knew damn well that the leaderships was rotten. We did not expect them to act in our interests. We expected them to sell out.
Even among the majority of rank and file who did have illusions in the leaderships, there was a majority vote in all the big unions for strike action against the Bill.
In other words the rank and file wanted to fight. This was a big acheivement given the history of union embedment in the state and the passivity generated by compulsory unionism. That should not be written off as part of the handwringing.
As I said in another post, a national strike would have got some results. The fact that the fight was still there was proven by the staunch 13 week Carter Holt strike of 1992.
The basic problem was that those of us who knew we would be sold out in advance did not convince enough of those still with illusions to take charge of that fight. Instead they 'mandated' their union heads to vote for a national strike giving them the 'out'to vote against a national strike.
That's the bloody lesson. The bureaucracy did a good job, they marched us up to get some concessions on the Bill, then marched us down again to defeat. That was their job. Their reward came in 2000 with the ERA that re-recognised the unions and provided the bureaucracy with its charter.
Getting this history right is the only way to stop it happening again. We need to fight for rank and file control of the unions around all of the big attacks that are looming, here and overseas.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
'I think top union leaders in and around the Labour party occupy communist party union bureaucrats in the former Stalinist Eastern Europe. And they will ultimately and deservedly suffer a similar fate'
You mean they'll ultimately convert themselves into a capitalist mafioso? Crikey, that's something to look forward to! Come to think of it, hasn't Ken Douglas already done that?
I understand the point you're trying to make but I think the analogy's a bit off. Perhaps it'd be better to look at the recent history of the Venezuelan unions, who have gone in the space of a few years from suffering under the most awful leadership imaginable to being the leading edge of the revolutionary process unfolding in that country.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
I'm surprised to find I agree with most of what is being said here. I suppose the hard question is this: how to sell the idea of a bottom-up union to people for whom picketing is seen as dangerously radical? Does jargon and rhetoric of the socialist and anarcho-leftist variety help? I suspect that it leaves them with the feeling they are being asked to do something totally outside their experience. I'd suggest that we need to start talking about union organising using common sense language and everyday examples. Where the jargon terms are genuinely useful they can be thrown in but used sparingly.
Let's start with a list of common leftist jargon:
solidarity = support
mutual aid = sharing, helping, co-operating
grassroots = local, community
collective = group
syndicalist/socialist/communist/anarchist/*.ist = all isms are wasms
Get the idea?
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Most people have some kind of experience of taking on the responsiblity for seeing that something gets done in their family or community. Most people have an experience of supporting someone fighting a personal injustice. Most people have an experience of being in a group of people working together to achieve a common aim, whether it's having a PlayGroup or having a bake sale for their church. In some cases they may have been involved in more obviously radical initiatives like community gardens, food co-ops, local newspapers etc
Direct democratic union organising means doing these things, using the same sets of skills and understanding of human relationships, in the places we work. The first step is talking with our workmates to establish common concerns (so often dismissed as whinging), identifying short and long term changes we'd all like to see and brainstorming creatively about what sort of tactics could achieve those goals. Using appropriate communication (from casual workplace conversations and formal meetings to phone trees and internet forums) we make plans that take the best aspects of everyone's ideas and then support each other while we try them out.
As we try different tactics we continue to communicate about the results we are achieving, what other tactics we could try. By listening to each other's thoughts and feelings about the way we are organising ourselves and the actions we are taking we allow our group to evolve and respond appropriately and hopefully successfully to the different obstacles between us and the change we want to see.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
While it is important to speak in a way that can be understood some of your examples do not really make sense to me.
Solidarity implies a relationship that goes behind mere support, it is also not a largely foreign expression compared to say mutual aid.
Also, almost all members of a union are in a collective agreement. I think emphasising what a collective is, is helpful also because it goes well beyond a group. It implies collectively organised activity, and some form of democractic participation, something group does not express at all.
I've only been active for three years, and I had no problems with these terms, precisely for the reasons you mention. Solidarity and collective action is a substantial part of my experience of living in New Zealand.
One of the dangers activists face is to think that our way of organising is somehow unique or special. There is nothing inherently anarchist about collective action or solidarity.
Which brings me to the -isms. I am happy to be indentified as an anarchist, it simply and quickly expresses a link to 200 years of resistance and action against the state and capitalism, and to certain sets of ideas which have evolved out of this experience.
For me anarchism is a way of evaluating what I am doing and what my motivations are when working for change.
Of course plenty of people have negative associations with anarchism or just don't know what it is. However I don't see this as a limitation, just a chance for conversation (or as institutionalised lefties say dialogue).
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
While it is important to speak in a way that can be understood some of your examples do not really make sense to me.
Solidarity implies a relationship that goes behind mere support, it is also not a largely foreign expression compared to say mutual aid.
Also, almost all members of a union are in a collective agreement. I think emphasising what a collective is, is helpful also because a collective goes well behind a group. It implies collectively organised activity, and some form of democractic participation, something group does not express at all.
I've only been active for three years, and I had no problems with these terms, precisely for the reasons you mention. Solidarity and collective action is a substantial part of my experience of living in New Zealand.
One of the dangers activists face is to think that our way of organising is somehow unique or special. There is nothing inherently anarchist about collective action or solidarity.
Which brings me to the -isms. I am happy to be indentified as an anarchist, it simply and quickly expresses a link to 200 years of resistance and action against the state and capitalism, and to certain sets of ideas which have evolved out of this experience.
For me anarchism is a way of evaluating what I am doing and what my motivations are when working for change.
Of course plenty of people have negative associations with anarchism or just don't know what it is. However I don't see this as a limitation, just a chance for conversation (or as institutionalised lefties say dialogue).
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
good piece John.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Reformist's examples of everyday language seem to be the common sense language of managerialist capitalism. Terms like ""brainstorming creatively", achieving "short and long term goals", "appropriate communication", all sound like the type of talk used in modern management literature. This type of language is completely saturated in the managerialist ethos. If we are to use this type of language we would need to pay it very critical attention to subvert it. That may prove difficult. As to using the language of the revolutionary tradition, I don't think there is anything wrong with drawing on the resources of centuries of anticapitalist struggle as long as this does not sink into mindless sloganising. This type of language is obviously oppositional but does it accomplish what we want it to do? Too often sclerotic slogans are applied to concrete situations without any attention to the need to reach the workers involved. How quickly, one wonders, will the Air NZ workers respond to the call to form workers councils and take over the company? In the present climate I think this is pretty unlikely. The left in NZ needs desperately to change the common sense of the working class. We have been losing this battle for a long time now and it doesn't look as if it is going to be won for a long time. Indymedia is a good start at changing the common sense but much more needs to be done. The old-fashioned term "consciousness raising" is pretty close to what I'm suggesting. Rank and file unionists and grassroots community organisations need to build more effective means to educate and inform. We used to have the WEA. I don't know enough about the WEA but we do need something that reaches workers and raises their consciousness about the exploitative nature of capitalism and why it needs to be fought. All this probably sounds elitist to some but I see no reason why it should have to be so.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Rank and file control of the EPMU would be a good outcome and best practice going forward
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Not to mention the Nurses Organization
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Dave, my point exactly! How the hell do we disrupt the everyday language of capitalism embodied in the phrases "best practice" and "outcomes"!! This language automatically defaults to an individualist, utilitarian outlook on the world. My point is that in order for people to understand and appreciate calls for workers control, etc., they need a basic understanding of capitalism and the history of working class struggle against it. Of course, the capitalist media disconnects the working class from any sense of its own history. Workers in NZ by and large have no knowledge of the history of workers councils and occupation of factories. We need to bring into working class consciousness events like the Turin factory occupations, the Flint sit-down strike and the Upper Clyde shipbuilders sit-in. We need to build up a common memory of struggle so there is a connecting thread to the past and a common pool of knowledge to draw on. If this were in place then the call for workers control would not be so much pissing in the wind.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Malcolm I agree. But the history can be understood and language can only develop if it means something concrete and is used around an actual fight. The Delphi fight in the auto industry in the US today is a good example.
Here the threat of closures and wage cuts of over 50% etc are bring lots of discussion about historic tactics, including strikes, work to rule and occupations like the 1930s sitdown strikes.
Here is a good website that collects lots of info on this.
http://www.kclabor.org/crisis_in_auto1.htm?emc=&m=1473126&v=1000055515&l=2
There needs to be a lot more rank and file political analysis and debate around local fights like Air NZ, NZ Post etc.
An attempt to link these all together is at
http://www.rankandfilers.blogspot.com/
you are welcome to join and contribute.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
one reason why i think many people find the far left irrelevant in NZ is that they go on (and on and on) about overseas struggles. Russia 1917 France 1968 etc. talk of factory occupations in NZ seems a little romantic, given that there have only been one or two isolated cases in NZ history (one was in a clothing factory in Levin in the early eighties).
if you are gonna talk about local rank and file issues in the here and now, i thinks its importante to learn from the successes and failures of (more or less) rank and file unions in the past. like the boilermakers in the seventies -- the CCD split from the timberworkers in the same decade -- the Watersiders before 1951 -- and so on. brings it home a little. we do have a radical union tradition of sorts here.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Comrade Getafix. The discussion here has been the ECA and its aftermath in relation to Howard's 'reforms'.Is it too much to talk about NZ and Australia in the same sentence? When it comes down to it Australian bosses owns about 1/3 of NZ's capital wealth.
IMO the important reference point is not so much NZ pre-1991 union history, which relates to cycles of a protected insulated economy, although that is still important, but the way workers in other countries similar to NZ have responded to the globalisation of the market, such as the occupations of bankrupt companies as in Argentina and Venezuela.
No-one has mentioned 1917 here, but do you know the effect that the Russian revolution had in NZ and right around the world? For a start the imperialist bosses recognised that they should stop getting their workers to kill one another, bring the war to a halt and sic their armies onto Soviet Russia.
Capitalism operates in a global economy, so do we.
Nationalism gets in the road of workers unity. Workers internationalism is the only answer. We have to build international rank and file organisations to fight the international corporates and banks. If we are going to socialise international companies we need an international socialist movement.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
Thanks for pointing me to the KC Labor site Dave. It looks really interesting. I also agree that the context for struggle in New Zealand is immediately international and we need to take strength and our analysis from relevant overseas struggles. That said, informing Kiwi workers of their own radical history is extremely important as well. The labour movement is and should be international but your own national traditions speak to you directly, especially if you have had relatives and friends involved. I'm Scottish and proud of Scottish radical history but obviously I don't see that as any limit on my international perspective.
Re: Workers' choice: political parties or freedom
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