On the subject of alternatives, here is an excerpt from something I wrote for the last International Women's Day. It's probably more relevant to the timber towns than the Coast, but you get the drift:

'How many times have Kiwi workers heard the words 'there is no alternative', when excuses are made for the decline in their living standards and quality of life over the past twenty years? In the 1980s and 90s successive governments used 'there is no alternative' to justify the privatisation of state assets, mass layoffs of workers, cutbacks in welfare and the decay of health and education services. The ‘law of the market’ and ‘the global economy’ had to take precedence over ordinary people’s needs – it was as simple as that, as far as National and Labour governments were concerned.

Today's Labour government uses 'there is no alternative' to justify its support for George Bush's War of Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its pursuit of a 'free' trade deal that will give US multinationals even more power over Kiwis' lives. Apparently US hyper power is, like dog eat dog free market capitalism, an unalterable fact of life, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Many Kiwi workers have, for the time being at least, accepted the 'there is no alternative' mantra. A lot of us don't like the influence that unelected corporate executives have over our everyday lives, or the lies and bullying of the US government and its allies, but what other choices are there?

Who needs the boss?

But over the last year, a group of workers in a small town in Venezuela have shown that the bullies are wrong, and that there is an alternative to the chaos and brutality of both ‘the invisible hand of the market’ and the all-too-visible fist of US imperialism . The 1,400 workers at Venepal, a mill in the Venezuelan town of Moron, came to work one day last year to be told that their jobs were gone. Venepal had suddenly become 'uneconomic' for the multinational company that owned it, and 1,400 jobs were going to vanish offshore. It’s a story that Kiwis have heard again and again, in milling towns like Tokoroa and Kawerau. But the workers of Moron didn’t like the idea of redundancy – they occupied their mill, and appealed for support to the workers of the rest of Venezuela and the world.

Last month, after a huge campaign, President Hugo Chavez signed a decree nationalising Venepal under the control of its workers. Under a plan drawn up by those workers in consultation with the government, the mill is now producing paper for Venezuelan schoolbooks. Tokoroa and Kawerau may be in decline, but Moron is once again thriving.'

Amazing what you can do when you have a strong labour movement. Control of work was one of the major aims of the West Coast miners when they had a strong and militant union.