The Mouths of Sauron

The Mouth of Sauron? Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson, has very unwisely stepped from the sidelines of the dispute between Sir Peter Jackson and NZ Actors Equity to voice his support for the legal claims of Hollywood's Dark Lords.

"UNION" – it’s such a small word, and yet a person’s reaction to it can tell you so much about them. Indeed, to my mind there is no better test of character than the choices people make when confronted with an industrial dispute. The current stoush between the producers of The Hobbit and the union representing New Zealand’s actors has proved especially revealing in this regard.

Sir Peter Jackson’s response has been particularly disappointing. To most New Zealanders, Sir Peter is the epitome of Kiwi can-do-ism. He’s the man who did what no one believed could be done in the time-frame no one believed it could be done in. His hugely successful Lord of the Rings trilogy not only brought Tolkien’s magical prose to life on the cinema screen, it also presented New Zealand’s wild and unspoiled beauty to an astonished world.

So audacious was Sir Peter’s LOTR project that Kiwi actors, extras and technicians fell over themselves to help him. From the point of view of this country’s creative community (if not the trilogy’s hard-nosed Hollywood backers) LOTR was a demonstration of what New Zealanders could do. Sir Peter became the maestro of one vast, collective labour of love.

It made his name, and it made him a very considerable fortune – which none of us begrudged him. His success was our success.

And that’s what makes his response to NZ Actors Equity’s request for dialogue so very, very disappointing. Instead of siding with the people who helped to make him the movie mogul he is today, he’s sided with the Hollywood bosses.

Just imagine how much more New Zealanders would have loved and admired him if he had said to the industry big-wigs: "Look, guys, we were willing to under-sell ourselves once – just to show you what we could do. But now that we Kiwis have proved we’re the equal of film-makers anywhere, it’s time to pay us accordingly."

Sadly, what he actually did when push came to shove was become a union-buster.

The response has been fascinating.

The Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson, has weighed in on Hollywood’s behalf by asserting that any negotiations with "Independent Contractors" would constitute price-fixing under s30 of the Commerce Act.

This is extraordinary, but Mr Finlayson’s price-fixing argument is one with which the American trade unions would be all-too-familiar – going all the way back to the Sherman Act of 1890.

The Sherman Act was originally intended to combat the anti-competitive behaviour of monopolistic big-business "trusts" like Standard Oil, but was seized upon by anti-union employers as a way of preventing unions (which they characterised as "cartels" of workers) from acting as a "restraint of trade" by collectively "fixing" the price of their labour.

Section 30 of the Commerce Act outlaws any contract which sets out to, "or is likely to have the effect of fixing, controlling, or maintaining, or providing for the fixing, controlling, or maintaining, of the price for goods or services". So, any attempt by a group of contractors (i.e. actors) to collectively establish a common price for their services would indeed be illegal.

Needless to say, Sir Peter and his Holywood mates have gone to considerable lengths to ensure that everybody who wishes to participate in their productions does so as an "Independent Contractor" – not as an employee.

There is, of course, nothing to prevent Sir Peter from hiring actors, extras and technicians as "fixed-term employees". Nothing, that is, except the obligation which he would then have to recognise their union, bargain with it in good faith, and afford its members all the rights enjoyed by other New Zealand workers.

The Attorney-General knows this, of course, but has entered the fray on the Employers’ side anyway. Unwisely, I would say, in light of the fact that since the mid-1980s Cabinet Ministers have sensibly elected to remain "on the sidelines" of industrial disputes to which the Crown is not a party.

But Sir Peter and Mr Finlayson are not the only people whose behaviour has given us cause for consternation over the past few days.

What should we make of the well-known media personality and (of all people) the film producer (!) who rolled up to the NZ Actors Equity union-meeting in Grey Lynn expecting to be admitted? How would these gentlemen react, I wonder, if Equity’s Frances Walsh appeared outside their production meetings expecting to join their discussions?

It’s sad really. The neoliberal model of industrial relations has been in place for so long that a whole generation has grown up without the faintest knowledge of what it means to stand together in unity, or to express solidarity with a group of workers under attack.

Since we’ve been discussing Tolkein’s works, let me close with a passage from Lord of the Rings. It concerns the messenger of the Dark Lord, Sauron.

Tolkien describes him thus:

The rider was robed all in black, and black was his lofty helm; yet this was no Ringwraith but a living man. The Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dur he was, and his name is remembered in no tale; for he himself had forgotten it, and he said: ‘I am the Mouth of Sauron.’

It is to be hoped that all the mouthpieces of Neoliberalism: all the men and women who long ago forgot what it means to stand in solidarity with their fellow New Zealanders; all the "industry people" who have spent the last few days doing everything they could to undermine the unity of NZ Actors Equity; suffer the same fate as Sauron’s evil messenger.