i feel had. another campaign hits the dust i suppose. and this is supposed to be some great victory for the workers or soemthing they tell me. i still feel had. the whole event just seemed to highlight how weak the unions are, how depoliticised students have become, how fucked up things are when half naked porm stars attract more people to queen street than any protest would ever hope to achieve.

its not like i was expecting france or something but a bunch of officials talking about how great they are and then the maori party announcing their surprise is hardly inspiring.

its funny how anti-capitalists always talk about how the electoral system is just token participation in democracy, cause what we saw today was token participation in democracy. Instead of voting, peoples participation amounted to boarding buses to go stand in a square for an hour.

i think today created the illusion in many peoples minds that we can kill the bill as it were by rocking up to one well stage managed rally.

chris knox was good. the march was good. the weather was good.

does this "victory" mean we can all go home now?

No-one organised it? The EPMU and the NDU organised and paid for 70 buses to get people there, they organised for section 26 notices to release workers from their jobs (and went head to head with employers threatening everything from injunctions to last-minute challanges and straight refusuals). They booked the square,and the town hall and radio advertising. Most importantly they and other unions provided hundreds of thousands of people with detailed information about an attack on their rights that otherwise would've slipped under the radar and in doing so mobilised mass protest from thousands of actual working people around the country. These people are not activists, many of them have never protested anything in their lives, and they got out and beat this Bill - it wasn't some backroom deal that changed the Maori party's mind it was the combined efforts of tens of thousands of ordinary workers organised through their unions. If you're going to complain about union beaurocrats maybe you should take the time to think about the orgainisational structure required to go up against the capitalist machine in a long-term and effective way instead of mimicing the language of the right. As for it being pro-labour - not a single labour MP spoke at any of the rallies (and that really pissed them off). But was it anti-National? You fuckin bet. The National party is the politial arm of capital - every National MP is rich and they have a huge class interest. Anyone who mistakes anti-national for pro-labour has got themselves caught in the authoritarian "with us or against us" understanding of the world that is fostered by the likes of Bush. I would've thought your energy would be better spent fighting the right rather than criticising all those workers who've got out and won a huge victory over legislation that would've fucked over so many people including yourselves.

can someone make this into a feature please?

RY had been at the heart of organising for the rally- we put up hundreds of psoters for it, but in the end there was "no time" for a radical youth speaker. the time was found, however, for pita sharples. is this how union politics really works-the radicals dumped for the MPs all the time.

Mike, I think you missed the point.

In case you didn’t notice it is not only the mapp-bill that is galvanising workers up and down the country. Just look at the latest Indy Media articles on industrial action, for example.

In fact for the last 12 months (since the labour election ‘landslide”) there has been a steady escalation of strike action across ever industry. Every week another couple of groups of workers are out on strike. Even the level of direct action amongst politically-non-aligned community groups is on the increase, for fux' sake.

I think it is also highly symbolic that the nurses and junior doctors were back on strike, not for the first time ever as a lot of fresh-faced journo's would have us believe, but for the first time since about 1987-8 when the jun. doctors last went out on strike.

Even these relatively “professional” layers, who give themselves anxiety headaches contemplating the effect on the community etc (of their striking) have again had to resort to strikes to get their message heard, despite massive campaigns against them by the media.

After 9 years of labour government, workers across the board have had enough waiting for roses tomorrow and are striking for bread today.

As for the anti-mapp demos, who is ‘dissing the workers that turned up? No-one. Everyone is stoked at the turnout, after years of enforced inactivity.

Who doubts that the union bureaucracy has realised that it is time to start some kind of fightback?
On the contrary, the union tops who have demanded workers play footsy with labour all these years have no alternative than to support this escalation in workers taking industrial action. They have no alternative but to channel growing working class anger. If they don’t they will lose all relevance.

The point at issue is the relationship between labour and the unions. Many union tops are wedded to the labour party. Therefore they tailor action to make sure labour doesn’t get “tarnished’ by these expressions of workers political anger.

When rank-and-file unionists at the Otahutahi anti-mapp demo dared to criticise labour, they were quickly chastised by officials who reminded us how much worse off we would be with national. Well, gee thanx for that grandpa! As if workers on an anti-national demo didn’t know that national was also bad!?!

This conjoined relationship (unions-labour) stifles workers organisation. Yea it’s great about the busses and the section -28’s. It’s great that union officials use the necessary legal levers to enable workers to take action – but that is their job, it’s what WE WORKERS pay them for!

But if we are relying on legal maneuvers, and familiarity with bus booking procedures to oppose the attacks of any government then we will be worse off that we were when union officials convinced themselves (and us) that compulsory unionism would be the salvation of the NZ worker, last time round.

You claim that many of these workers have never taken action in their lives. Well I don’t know how many people you interviewed on that demo, but I took a look at the average age, and most of those at the rally seem a lot older than me. And if I can remember the strikes and massive demos of the late 80’s and 90’s against the ECA, then I’m willing to guess that a fair proportion of those on this demo did too.
They probably even participated.

I also recall that during those campaigns all that anger and energy was dissipated into nothing, because of the cozy relationship of the CTU/union tops with labour, and their unwillingness to challenge the government of the day.

This was the problem then, and it is the problem now. That is what unionists need to confront. That is what we need to fix.

But at the same time we need to build the union organisations that will discipline whichever party rises to power should they take a swipe at the rights and livleyhood of workers generally.

So the Maori Party are the heroes of the day? Ever feel like you've been had? Lions led by donkeys yet again.

"Radical Youth, Socialist Worker and the Greens, Workers and Alliance Parties"

Socialist Worker and the Workers Party had presences with tables and banners, and radical youth brought out banners with youth rates ad other demands. Not sure how well represented the Greens were, although I saw their leaflet being handed out, and I think the Alliance was there in the form of Len. As far as I could see there was no Labour or young Labour presence.

In terms of the physical presence of organised 'tendencies', the social democrats and liberal capitalists were down in comparison to the further left and revolutionary groups. But of course, this is compensated for by the outlook of most of the union leadership.

Jared:
MISC:
Chris Knox is an excellent choice of entertainment. Some well known songs AND intelligently written.

Nick:
He is good when he's on form. We've had him on campus twice, the first time he was great. The second time he defended Labour.

Omar, it was always going to be a stunt to pressure the Maori Party and keep the Labour right in line. Sharples picked the right time to appeal to the heaps of Maori workers in Aotea Square to look to the Maori Party. No accident that Sharples was introduced by Treen, McCarten's mate in Unite, whose strategy is still to build a 'new Labour Party' alongside the Maori Party.
It would be a disaster for the Maori Party to split Maori away from Labour and prevent a real fight over union dissafiliation.

It was a bit more stagemanaged than most rallies I have seen. Drives home the point that even the most union conscious layer of staunch unionists who turned up are still locked into the cosy Labour Party/CTU relationship. I would say that that little exercise has reinforced rather than put this relationship under strain.

But Omar should not have been surprised. After all we recently saw the great Unite Super Size campaign dragged in behind Sue Bradford's Bill. McCarten has made it clear that for him the unions are no more than a vehicle for mobilising workers to support working families in parliament.

Laila Harre now leading the NDU has followed the lead of Unite to give her union a push towards campaigning for young workers. That's OK but we have no reason to believe that the outcome in the NDU will be different from Unite.

SFWU's Jill Ovens gave a loud speech calling on unions to get on the 'streets'. But if the Clean Start campaign is any indication, street action is still stunt action that is designed to influence the 'community' and public opinion, and ultimately, voters. Jill joined the Labour Party to get elected to the SFWU Northern Region leadership and has declared that she won't be campaigning for dissaffiliation from Labour. So its the case here too that all 'streets' lead to parliament.

No surprise there either, as all the former leading lights of the Alliance spent ten years trying to get into a coalition with Labour to push it left. They failed inside parliament, so now theyre trying outside.

The conclusion that we are drawn to is that this 'left turn' in the unions by the former Alliance leadership is part of a deliberate strategy to provide a 'left' cover for the right wing CTU bureaucracy and create a new left social democratic constituency among the newly radicalised and unionised youth in casualised jobs.

Its part of a world wide trend to suck radicalised youth in behind the Chavista model of reform which sows illusions in strong populist leaders being able to defeat rogue US capitalism/imnperialism and create a democratic, green, Mr Clean capitalism.

The huge enthusiasm for Chavez support of Amadinajad and Nasrallah shows where this is heading: this new brand of left popularist leadership can rescue capitalism from all its evils without the independent mobilisation of workers in the unions and in their own political parties.

But capitalism/imperialism cannot be reformed into Mr Clean Green by Chavez, Nasrallah or George Egomaniac, it has to be overthrown by the independent class organisations of workers.

Workers resistance will continue to build like the Venezuelan youth in the Revolutionary Youth LEft in the UNT who will not vote for Chavez, like the rank and file of the Hizbullah who will not give up their arms whatever deals Nasrallah makes with Bush's UN, and the young workers who enter the unions in NZ who will revolt against the left bureaucrats strategy of using them like extras in Peter Jackson movies.

Back to the local scene, building a militant rank and file across all the unions to challenge the left bureaucracy is our immediate task. One move to foster this is the Labour Forum in Auckland.

Labour Forum meets next MOnday night in Auckland.
Trades Hall 7-30pm.
This forum is open to all rank and file activists who want to unite across all unions to build an independent, fighting and democratic union movement.
On the Agenda is:
Union Power to Kill the Bill (why we can't trust politicians to run our jobs)
Info and action on current disputes
HOw to raise anti-war resolutions in unions.

unions say 5000, media says 4000

Omar, I wasn't there, but have some idea how you feel. After attending tightarsed top down office controlled union functions disgorging lying Labour party propaganda for over 30 years I sometimes feel a bit discouraged too.
But the bullshit surrounding these things will go on, because careerists and bureacrats are a product of the system. It's our job to grit our teeth and keep on offering real alternatives to capitalism. In times of genuinely heightened struggle, such ideas rapidly make sense to many people; it helps to keep them alive and kicking in these relatively tranquil times.

I thought it was good that a number of real workers issues were highlighted in the banners shown on this thread.

And I take heart from this observation by a Workers Party comrade present at the rally:

"despite all critisms that will come of this Event, there were
5000+ Union members in Aotea square yesterday protesting in unity
against an attack on workers rights. Many of them will see for the
first time that their struggle exists out side the walls of their own
place of work and will have left knowing that they're not alone."

"RY had been at the heart of organising for the rally- we put up hundreds of psoters for it, but in the end there was "no time" for a radical youth speaker. the time was found, however, for pita sharples. is this how union politics really works-the radicals dumped for the MPs all the time."

Same shit happened at Unite's public meeting ages ago. It really shows how little acknowledgement or expression youth/radicals get at union events, unless they want to use us as their token youth, or use us to do their grunt work (eg. postering).

They wonder why there's no youth union movement, 'cause there's no space for us to have real decision-making power. There's no respect, so often union gatherings are full of patronising adults, or dominating men. Because so many unions are so bureaucratic and conservative. Unions are doing just as good a job representing the workers as the government is representing the people.

Roughly written impressions of August 23 Work Rights rally


POSITIVES

1) WP engaged in building for the march:

One WP member mobilized the overwhelming majority of NDU members. According to another NDU employee, he mobilized a very large proportion of the total NDU members who were present. Another WP member, as a rank-and-file NDU member, led a large worksite with a banner saying ‘5%, 4 Weeks + service/Union Democracy/Fight Casualisation’ i.e., concrete demands for that workplace and for the labour movement. Other members worked with an EPMU employee to mobilize students by heavily leafleting Auckland University. Although they handed out the official union leaflet, this work conformed with WP objective of winning students to workers struggles.

2) SEA Unite members:

Members of Sky City Employees Association Unite walked off the job despite intimidation and threats by the employer. At one stage the crowd received them, and this added a more militant class struggle element to the rally.

3) A mass union rally:

Participants in the rally numbered about 5000. These were mainly blue collar workers, as well as service sector workers. So this was obviously the largest union mobilization in some time. The size of the mobilization puts to rest – in a public way - any claims that the union movement is dead, or that the class struggle is over.

4) Some rank and file speakers:

Some rank and file speakers were organised, prior to the rally, to speak. Of all the speakers, the best were rank-and-file NDU and SFWU speakers.

5) A receptive audience for more advanced ideas

I personally spoke to over one hundred workers as part of advertising a forum I will be speaking to. About 95 percent responded positively to ideas like “So we say let’s not allow the top trade union leadership, with the EPMU/SFWU affiliated to Labour, to turn this campaign into an anti-National Party rally or early election campaign for Labour, because casualisation is rife under Labour”. Some responded that they would put our leaflet on the wall at work. The few percent who didn’t respond positively either seemed bemused, or a bit unaware, but not hostile.








NEGATIVES

More so than ‘the positives’, the way in which most of the negatives impacted is quite hard to measure because of the destandardisation of the working class. For example, where union democracy, the usage of stop work time is no problem, and where union democracy is weak, that usage is a real problem. So while these comments will not apply consistently, the inconsistency does not negate the validity of the comments.

1) Union democracy and the rally

In some cases workers need the Stop Work time to debate claims and other issues. In some workplaces moderate and tame delegates and organisers prevent workers from debating claims. There are even cases where such people say that workers ‘aren’t allowed to know the claims’. So the using-up of 2 of the four annual Stop Work hours would have been a god send to organisers and delegates who, because of being under-committed or under-resourced, seek to prevent democracy, debate, and rank-and-file input.

Of course, democratic organisers and delegates can fight to ratify extra meeting time, and strong rank-and-file workplaces can call snap meetings. But in most workplaces such arrangements and activities don’t exist.

2) Tightly controlled event

Closely related to the above, is this point: Objectively, in sum total, the union officialdom, and the ideas of the union officialdom, gained more of a platform amongst workers. There was an extremely tight control on the reigns, no open microphone, not even for organisations that helped to organise the mobilization etc.
We’d hate to see this officialdom in a May 1968 situation.


3) One hour event, or strike

It could be argued (cynically) that ‘no open mike’ resulted from lack of time, however, this begs the question as to whether workers’ rallies should be confined to one hour. After allowing for travel time, most workers would have been at the veent for close to one hour. We believe that the ‘one hour event’ concept lowers workers’ expectations, and that to combat this we should raise workers expectations by A) arguing for political strikes, and B) for the right to political and solidarity strikes, both of which are banned by Labour.

4) The Politics level

The overall politics were anti-National. In many ways we still have an effectively two-party system, so this anti-National approach, whether intended or not, converts into a pro-Labour approach. The EPMU and SFWU top-leaders *do* intend this to happen.

More disappointing, was Mike Treen’s introducing of Pita Sharples to the stage, where he (Sharples) groveled about his party’s early anti-worker support for the Bill (except Harawira). This support was given at a time when Turia was hobnobbing with ACT.

This meant that far from being given some clarity about what political organisations stand for workers rights, people were encouraged to take up vague impressions that the Maori Party represents workers interests because it didn’t ‘all-out’ attack them, although it nearly did.

5) Symbolism of workers struggle

The top-leadership simulated an atmosphere in which workers were out to ‘Kill the Bill’. For example, in order to prolong the suspense, and make the protest seem more relevant, it was pretended that the Maori Party had not already fully come around to its position of not all-out attacking workers by supporting the bill, and therefore, it was still highly relevant for workers to march under the one single anti-Naitonal kill the bill demand.

More honestly, event organisers could have conveyed the message, ‘The Maori Party has come around now, so let’s celebrate that the bill won’t go through, we’ve had an upsurge of union activity with the 5% per cent campaigns, with Unite, a campaign against youth rates, let’s strengthen all that.’


6) No internationalism.

With the exception of a rank-and-file SFWU member who talked about John Howard and work choices, there was very little internationalism on display. For example, it was less than 3 weeks ago that the NDU was condemning the bombing and killing of Lebanese workers. Laila Harre should have done so yesterday as well. Unite Union, with wider-reaching left leadership, should have used some of its influence to enable a speaker on the topic of internationalism. And someone should have advertised the upcoming march against the occupation of Lebanon.

As it stands, we still have a union movement that wants to wear its internationalist hat on weekends.

MISC:
Chris Knox is an excellent choice of entertainment. Some well known songs AND intelligently written.

wtf? radical youth wasnt at the heart of organising this rally. putting up a few hundred posters does not equal organising. maybe you could say ry helped promote the rally but unless im mistaken no one did any actual organising as such for it.

Omar (and others),
You sound surprised at the way union bureaucrats always manage to sideline enthusiastic activist workers.

You are right to be pissed off at this.

Here in CHCH we had a similar experience.
At organising meetings to plan the anti-mapp demo down here, the people who turned up to EPMU organised meetings decided that there would be a march around the town if there were 80 workers or more.
In good faith, and because no-one had any idea of how many people would turn up, they decided to let the EPMU organiser who would be directing the event make the decision on the day of the rally.

As it turned out about 150 workers did turn up. This was many, many more than most people expected. Despite this however, the EPMU’s organiser on the day, Karina Brown, refused to put the proposal to march through town to the workers at the rally.
The EPMU officials instead preferred to direct workers to stand outside a building where the national party was having their conference and shout at NP delegates (as though his would make them change their minds).

Of course it made more sense for the (labour supporting) EPMU to have the rally portrayed as an anti-national event, by having it focussed ONLY at the national conference.
If workers were to start marching around the town advertising their anger, impressionable observers might draw the conclusion that there was also a problem with the workplace situation under the existing government.

But none of this should be a surprise: unaccountable bureaucracy, lack of democracy, disregard for the decisions and views of rank-and file members, are just some of the reasons that unions melted like sno-cones on tarmac, once union membership became voluntary and the ECA/ERA got hold.

It is also probably the reason why only 6 rank-and-filers bother turning up to CHCH EPMU organising meetings despite the seriousness of the anti-worker bill.
It will also be the reason for the fact that there will likely be even fewer the next time the EPMU tries to mobilise activists to paint their posters and banners, (but not get to decide what the action will be...).

Union members and activists need to use any opportunities that arise to organise other workers, but also resist the demobilising effects of being undermined by the anti democratic fatcat bureaucrats.

The bureaucrats fear the workers, because they feel the level of anti-labour anger growing. This is why everything is so stage-managed. They fear even more, the inevitable day when it boils out of their control.

Keep the hotplate on Omar!


PS: Despite the obstacles, good turnout for the T-M rally.

i mean no one in ry did any organising for it.

"The National party is the politial arm of capital - every National MP is rich and they have a huge class interest. Anyone who mistakes anti-national for pro-labour has got themselves caught in the authoritarian "with us or against us" understanding of the world that is fostered by the likes of Bush."

Yeah, and Labour is the other arm. NZ capital has two arms. One pulverised the public secotr in the 80s and the other knocked out the private sectore in the 90s.

Does it not strike you that, in some senses, Bush is correct. We are with or against the ruling class. Anyway, Labour proved they are 'with' the Bush administration. Don't you remember Powell's 'very very good friends' statements, and footage of Clark with BUsh admin. representatives as part of their 2002 election campaign? Labour is 'with'.

JP: My whole point was that Labour are not the good guys, the rally was anti National not pro-labour. Or do you also follow the authoritarian credo of "my enemy's enemy is my friend" as well as believing Bush is right?

Observer: You're right about the wave of industrial action but (significantly) wrong about the date. The EPMU, the NDU, and the Servos started the "fair share" campaign in early 2005 and industrial action kicked off pretty much straight away.

I don't believe Labour would've liked the prospect of a massive campaign of industrial action being kicked off by their "mates" just months before a tight election. Looks like they had to suffer it. Could you please explain how these facts tally with your idea of a "cosy relationship" between Labour and the unions.

Come to think of it, I've got the feeling that the EPMU (aka "labour's mates") is probably responsible for the most industrial action and the best results for and with its members in the last few years. Surely with a Labour government in power this can't be so?

"JP: My whole point was that Labour are not the good guys, the rally was anti National not pro-labour. Or do you also follow the authoritarian credo of "my enemy's enemy is my friend" as well as believing Bush is right?"

Yet you say that National is *the* poltical arm of capital. Well, I'd argue that one of the differences between National and Labour is that Labour is closer to NZ capital than Naitonal, and National is closer to international capital than Labour. But both are poltiical arms of the bosses/capital. And yes, I stand by my statement that as far as the ruling class goes, an individual/entity is with it or against it, or, if it is mixed, it will eventually be resolved for or against.

I'd like to create a syllogism to show how worng you are in saying that my position is authoritarian like Bush and that I htink Bush is right, but it's a littel too tedious.