Winston Keeps His Pledge To The Small Businesses Of Small-Town New Zealand.

Class Warrior: Like his predecessors in the Social Credit Political League, the NZ First leader is acutely aware that the small rural towns and provincial cities of New Zealand are hotbeds of class conflict. Not simply the classic Marxist conflict of capitalist versus proletarian, but also the no less bitter conflict between large and small businesses. Indeed, it is possible to characterise life in provincial New Zealand as a constant struggle of the particular against the general: of individual agency against institutional power.

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that the most accomplished class warrior to emerge from the struggle to improve New Zealand’s labour laws would be Winston Peters? No one else with a dog in this fight saw the class issues at stake as clearly as Winston Peters and NZ First. Not the employers; not the unions; and certainly not the Labour, National or Green parties. Peters and his colleagues can walk away from this debate as the undisputed champions of small provincial business. The electoral consequences of NZ First’s decisive intervention should not be underestimated.

There is a strong temptation on the part of left-wing activists in the major metropolitan centres to write off the people of the provinces as a bunch of undifferentiated reactionaries. To your average Labour or Green activist, provincials are racist, sexist and homophobic “rednecks”. The sort of people who still see nothing wrong with sending a float filled with people in blackface down the main street of their little town. Hopeless and irredeemable, these voters are not worth wooing – unless you’re Stuart Nash. (And the less said about Stuart Nash the better!)

Winston Peters knows better. Like his predecessors in the Social Credit Political League, the NZ First leader is acutely aware that the small rural towns and provincial cities of New Zealand are hotbeds of class conflict. Not simply the classic Marxist conflict of capitalist versus proletarian, but also the no less bitter conflict between large and small businesses. Indeed, it is possible to characterise life in provincial New Zealand as a constant struggle of the particular against the general: of individual agency against institutional power.

People living in large cities have a bad habit of romanticising small towns. They like to think that in a place where everybody knows their neighbours life must be wonderful. The reality is almost the exact opposite. In a small community the social hierarchy is much more sharply exposed. Yes, everybody knows their neighbours – but they also know exactly where they sit in the social pecking-order. Fun, one imagines, if you are positioned at or near the top. Wretched, if you are located near the bottom.

The local lawyers and accountants, for example, are perfectly placed to know exactly how well, or how badly, their neighbour’s are doing. The town’s doctors and teachers are similarly well-positioned. If knowledge is power, then these provincial professionals have a lot to play with.

The senior managers of nationwide chains, salarymen who will not lose their houses if their executive decisions turn out badly, may look down their noses at the senior bureaucrats employed by local and central government but, in truth, their day-to-day jobs are distinguished by the same petty protocols; the same demands from above. Well remunerated, but subjected to unceasing “performance reviews”, many opt to take out their frustrations on those further down the totem pole.

Not that the owners of the town’s small businesses would include themselves among the pen-pushers’ inferiors. In their own eyes – and often in the eyes of their employees – they are town’s true heroes.

Independent of spirit, willing to have a crack, contemptuous of those whose only purpose in this world appears to be making the lives of people like themselves as difficult as possible, it is difficult not to admire these small businesspeople.

It is no mean feat to keep a business afloat in the provinces. Notoriously under-capitalised, they all-too-often keep their operations afloat by paying themselves less than their workers. They are no friend of the trade unions with their one-rule-fits-all approach, but neither are they friends of the banks who bleed them dry or the big firms who expect them to submit ridiculously low bids for the jobs they then take their own sweet time paying for.

But without these small business people the towns and cities of provincial New Zealand would die. Their absence is frighteningly easy to spot. Main streets are dead: their shopfronts boarded-up and the real estate agent’s “To Let” signs fading in the sun. The young people those shuttered businesses might have employed have either fled or broken bad. The only signs of life are around the local office of the MSD.

These are the towns NZ First is pledged to restore to economic health. Winston Peters and Shane Jones want those kids in jobs, earning money, dreaming of one day becoming their own boss – just like the man or the woman who took them on under the 90-day rule, to see whether they had what it took, and then employed them permanently when they proved themselves hard-working and trustworthy. The unions can knock on the boss’s door as often as they like – they will find few, if any, takers here.

Of course there are exceptions – but in small-town New Zealand it is more common to find the small employers and their workers united in solidarity against the people who live on the hill. It’s one thing to be paid by the taxpayers; to grow fat on the fees you charge; or draw the salary only a big corporation can afford to pay. It’s quite another to keep the town’s cars and trucks filled up and roadworthy; or to fill the bellies of its inhabitants with decent tucker. All those engaged in small businesses: both their owners and the people who work for them; have taken a bet on themselves. Very often that bet is lost. Fair enough. Making a small business pay has never been easy. All the players ask is that the game stays honest: that the deck isn’t stacked against them.

That is the pledge NZ First made to them – and that is the pledge it has kept. Wages are not always paid in cash. Sometimes they are paid in dreams. By honouring that currency, Winston Peters and NZ First have made the heroes of small-town New Zealand their own.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 29 November 2018.

The Government v. The Business Community: Playing Chicken Over Employment Law Reform

But Has Grant Got His Leather Jacket Caught In The Handle? Declining business confidence and how the government should respond to it is fast developing into a game of political and economic ‘chicken’. Both sides know they are being challenged. They also know that the longer they delay responding the greater the risk of a tragic outcome. (Screen shot from Rebel Without A Cause) 

EVERY TIME the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance address the “Business Community” I wince. It’s painful to watch them abase themselves in the way they do. As if their endless protestations of good will and their oft-repeated promise to “listen” will make the slightest difference. The Business Community is acutely aware that there is nothing with more potential to cause them harm than a left-wing government. If it cannot be tamed, then it must be broken.

At the moment the attention of the government’s business opponents is focused on its reaction to the evidence of plummeting business confidence. This is fast developing into a game of political and economic ‘chicken’. Both sides know they are being challenged. They also know that the longer they delay responding the greater the risk of a tragic outcome. The Business Community is, however, convinced that, on the basis of its previous experience with left-wing governments, Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson will swerve first.

By “swerving” they mean backing away (if not actually backing down) from their proposed employment law reforms. The more intelligent members of the business community are only too aware of the head of steam that is building up in the workforce for a decisive shift in the power relationships prevailing in the workplace. Any reform that makes it easier for workers in the private sector to be organised into unions – let alone aggregated into the occupational collectivities of the pre-Employment Contracts Act era – has the potential to set off a wave of unionisation that could fundamentally disadvantage shareholders of all sizes.

Such a “revolution of rising expectations” has, however, been on the cards from the moment Jacinda began scattering her stardust hither and yon in the run-up to last year’s election. That stardust poses a huge problem for Labour. Without it, there was – and is – no possibility of the party winning anything like enough support to form a government. In deploying her politics of hope and kindness, however, Jacinda has raised New Zealanders hopes and dreams to dangerous new heights.

New Zealanders are expecting the Labour-led government to usher-in real and positive changes in the way they live their lives. Failure to meet these expectations will, almost certainly, result in the fall of the Labour-NZF-Green Government.

Jacinda and her team know this. They may have bought themselves some time by setting up scores of working-groups and inquiries, but at some point before the 2020 general election they are going to have to start delivering real gains to the people who voted for them. Being seen to back away, albeit under fierce business pressure, from restoring a modicum of fairness to the workplace will be seen by many traditional Labour supporters (especially the present and former members of trade unions) as a betrayal.

And yet, as the wage campaigns of public sector workers (the only groups who have been able to retain a credible measure of union density) are rolled out and resolved in settlements involving double-figures, the restiveness of the largely un-unionised private sector workforce can only grow. The Business Community do not need to have the consequences of this restiveness spelled out for them. Employment law reform could quite easily result in an unprecedented and largely unorganised strike-wave sweeping across the country.

That’s enough to shake the confidence of even the most unflappable CEO.

Unfortunately, it is also more than enough to unsettle the nerves of a social-democratic government that would (to paraphrase the shrewd observation of an old trade unionist pal of mine) retain control of the losing side in an argument about employment law reform than lose control of the winning side.

In spite of its name, the last thing Labour wants is the New Zealand working-class taking matters into its own hands.

Those who have put their money on Jacinda and Grant swerving at the last minute have, if history is any guide, made a pretty safe bet.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 10 August 2018.

Out of the Goodness of the Employers’ Big, Generous Hearts.

Doing Us All A Favour: Since the 1990s, a conviction has taken hold in the minds of New Zealand employers that they are the country’s biggest philanthropists. Far from acknowledging their role in the processes of ruthless commercial exchange, these employers speak of themselves as the selfless creators of jobs for their fellow citizens. Not for profit, you understand, but out of the goodness of their big, generous hearts.

A FEW YEARS AGO, Helen Kelly delivered one of the best speeches I had ever heard at a Labour Party Conference. It was on the subject of employers. The gist of her address was that, since the 1990s, a conviction had taken hold in the minds of New Zealand employers that they were the country’s biggest philanthropists. Far from acknowledging their role in the processes of ruthless commercial exchange, these employers spoke of themselves as the selfless creators of jobs for their fellow citizens. Not for profit, you understand, but out of the goodness of their big, generous hearts.

Trade unions, in the opinion of these unsung social heroes, were doing everything possible to thwart the employers unbounded philanthropy. These subversive organisations were determined to prevent the employing class from carrying on their good works. Somehow, these miscreant socialists had got it into their heads that capitalism was about exploitation. Such complete nonsense! As if all that unstinting effort could be expended in the name of something as vulgar as making money!

It was a great speech.

I was reminded of Helen’s insights only this morning as I read an opinion piece penned by Leicester Gouwland (NZ Herald, Business Section, 5/3/18) a partner in the accounting and financial services firm, Crowe Horwarth. Gouwland’s bugbear du jour was the Labour-NZF-Green government’s legislation abolishing the 90-day trial period in businesses employing more than 20 people.

He began his argument by citing the less-than-supportive responses to the government’s legislation from both the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Treasury. Why did the government ignore their advice? And why did it give them so little time to prepare it?

To anyone not already sold on neoliberalism, the answers to those questions are blindingly obvious. Gouwland’s indignation is, however, a useful pointer to just how much reliance employers now place on the agencies of the state to defend the “reforms” of the 1980s and 90s from any attempt to roll them back.

These comments were only the hors d’oeuvres to Gouwland’s feast, however. The main course was delivered in his response to the revelation (from no less a source than the 2014/15 National Survey of Employers) that 24 percent of workers taken on under the 90-day rule were dismissed during the period of the trial.

Just think about that. One worker in four was dismissed from their job arbitrarily and without the opportunity for legal redress.

Now read Gouwland’s interpretation of his astonishing statistic.

“This high percentage suggests the trial period is working and highlights the risk that employers take. It also suggests limiting its use will cost employers significant time and money to terminate these employees.”

Seldom have I encountered a more damning illustration of the employers’ mindset in relation to the rights of their employees. Workers are not there to be trained, assisted, counselled and, where all of the foregoing interventions have proved fruitless, warned that any further refusals to amend their behaviour will put their continued employment at risk. No, they are simply there to be “terminated”.

That the Employment Court has ruled over and over again that it is unlawful for employers to arbitrarily or constructively dismiss their workers, makes not the slightest difference to the employers who, as Helen Kelly so wryly pointed out, genuinely believe they are doing their workers a favour by “giving” them a job.

Logically-speaking, to “give” someone a job implies that the normal contractual relationship between “master” and “servant” has been by-passed. Someone who has been “given” a job is, presumably, not required to perform the labour that the job entails. Instead, the worker will be paid regardless of whether or not she fulfils her half of the bargain.

Now, this may happen when former politicians are installed on the boards of state-owned enterprises; or, when the clueless son of the boss is given a well-remunerated title without responsibility; but it almost never happens when someone applies to do a job of work essential to the efficient operation of the business – and its profits.

People are not “given” jobs, they are hired: and if the contract is one of service, then they cannot be dismissed without reasonable cause. The 90-day trial period was nothing more nor less than a legislative device for excusing the employers from their obligation to uphold and honour the contractual relationship with their employees.

Gouwland’s unwitting exposure of the employer mindset continues.

“An argument supporting the removal of the 90-day trial period is that it provides employee protection. It is hard to understand this argument as any non-performing employees will now need to go through a performance process. So where is the protection. Termination of employment is only delayed.”

Did Gouwland really just suggest that the purpose of the “performance process” is to facilitate the “termination of employment”?

Clearly, Mr Gouwland did not receive the memo about employers being the country’s biggest philanthropists. We miscreant socialists should, however, be grateful to the author of this extraordinary opinion piece. Seldom have workers been presented with a more compelling argument for joining a trade union!

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 6 March 2018.

Giving Workers What They Want: Honouring The Legacy Of Helen Kelly.

Helen Kelly - A Twenty-First Century Union Leader: The truth of the matter is that restoring equality in the workplace will not be accomplished by top-down, bureaucratic, institutional solutions. To enjoy the confidence and active support of ordinary working people, a fit-for-purpose, twenty-first century system of employment relations would need to have emerged from a consultative exercise of unprecedented size and thoroughness. In the simplest terms: it would need to be the product of the workers themselves.

 

WHAT BETTER TIME could there be to talk about Kiwi workers’ rights than in the days following Helen Kelly’s death? Who has contributed more to this discussion than the NZ Council of Trade Unions’ (CTU) first female President? And what other contemporary New Zealand trade unionist’s passing could have left such large and stylish shoes to fill?

 

Few would dispute that Kelly was by far the best leader that the CTU has so far produced. The way she was able to combine rock-solid principle with PR smarts made her the labour movement’s most effective twenty-first century union boss. Though she couldn’t quite match the Unite union’s Matt McCarten at street-level campaigning, Kelly’s keen intellect and her winning ways with the news media allowed her to keep the ideals of trade unionism alive in an era notoriously hostile to the claims of collectivism.

Had she not succumbed to lung cancer, it is likely that well before the end of this decade she would have made the transition from the trade union movement to the Parliamentary Labour Party. Once in Parliament, her rise to the top would have been inexorable. In relatively short order New Zealand would have had its second Labour Prime Minister called Helen.

 

All of which makes it one the great counterfactual questions of our history: “How different would New Zealand have been if Helen Kelly had not died of cancer at the tragically young age of fifty-two?” It is only when we attempt to answer that question that the true magnitude of the nation’s loss is brought home to us.

 

Labour has made great play of its current Future of Work exercise, but it has been much less enthusiastic about discussing the future of workplace relations. Indeed, Grant Robertson seems much more comfortable discussing how vital it is that workers are made ready for the challenges of the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. We hear a great deal about the importance of continuous upskilling and labour flexibility, but nothing like as much about ensuring employees have a genuine say in how much they are paid and under what conditions they work.

 

For a party calling itself “Labour”, this is a critical deficiency. The power relationships of the workplace have a huge impact on people’s well-being. How much we earn and how we work continue to dominate our existence in much the same way that they have done since the first industrial revolution. More so in the first quarter of the twenty-first century than in the second half of the twentieth, because the effective destruction of mass trade union membership in the 1980s and 90s swung the balance-of-power decisively in the employers’ favour.

 

Anyone raising these issues, however, will be told that they are living in the past, and that the world has changed too much for any social-democratic party to contemplate a return to the industrial relations regime of the 1970s. And it’s true, times have changed: although not enough, apparently, to destroy the master/servant relationship, or eliminate the commercial necessity of legally limited liability; but certainly enough to make joining a union a career-threatening move for 90 percent of private sector employees.

 

The most important challenge facing today’s Labour Party is how to render workplace power relationships more equal without mobilising the entire neoliberal establishment against it. Simply legislating for the restoration of compulsory unionism and industry-wide contracts is not the answer, because a change of government would instantly bring about their legal demise.

 

The truth of the matter is that restoring equality in the workplace will not be accomplished by top-down, bureaucratic, institutional solutions. To enjoy the confidence and active support of ordinary working people, a fit-for-purpose, twenty-first century system of employment relations would need to have emerged from a consultative exercise of unprecedented size and thoroughness. In the simplest terms: it would need to be the product of the workers themselves.

 

Such an exercise would need to be established and protected by legislation. The body responsible – let’s call it WorkRight NZ – would aim to, and be empowered to, approach as many working people as possible in their workplaces and have them fill in a comprehensive questionnaire intended to identify both the good and bad aspects of working life in twenty-first century New Zealand. The survey would also ask workers how their rights, as citizens and employees, might best be protected and exercised within the workplace.

 

The WorkRight NZ legislation would also establish a second investigative unit, dedicated to drawing upon the knowledge and experience of existing trade union and employer organisations; the experiences of employers, unions and working people in other countries; and the research and insights of New Zealand and overseas academic employment relations specialists. The goal of this investigative unit would be to establish local and international best practice in relation to collective bargaining.

 

The results of the consultative exercise would then be collated, analysed and written up in the form of a comprehensive report by WorkRight NZ. Contained within the report would be a draft bill, incorporating the participants principal recommendations, for presentation to Parliament.

 

Interestingly, a similar exercise in mass inquiry was undertaken by the First Labour Government. The Social Survey Bureau was set up in 1937 to discover the actual conditions prevailing in New Zealand’s farms, factories, shops, offices and homes. Its first major inquiry – into the living conditions of dairy farmers – produced such shocking findings, however, that the responsible cabinet minister, Peter Fraser, tried to suppress the research report and, when that failed, shut the Bureau down.

 

Asking the right questions has always been the essence of political radicalism. It’s what made Helen Kelly such an effective trade union leader. If the CTU and the Labour Party are looking for a way to honour her legacy, then finding out what workers want from their employers and their workplaces – and giving it to them – would be a great place to start.

 

This essay was jointly posted by The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Sunday, 16 October 2016.

The Duty Of Care

The Good Samaritan: When someone is being attacked, or is in need of our help, we all have a duty of care to those afflicted. Whether it's on the road to Jericho or down on the Auckland waterfront, we are never justified in passing by on the other side.

YOUR BEST MATES are being attacked by a gang of thugs – what do you do? Most of us wouldn’t need to think twice. We’d pile on in, fists swinging, to back them up. It’s the most human of responses: defend your friends and protect your loved ones from harm.

What sort of legal system would expressly forbid people from standing up for their mates? What sort of law-maker would try to stop us helping our fellow citizens?

Nobody would do that – right? I mean you hear about cases of mothers being charged with failing to provide their children with “the necessities of life”; or for failing in their “duty of care”. Because that’s a universal duty – isn’t it? To care for each other?

Well, no. It isn’t. Not when it comes to people being attacked by their employers. Not when a Board of Directors is beating up their own staff; stripping them of their livelihoods; impoverishing their families.

If you see that happening, and you try to do something about it, you’ll end up in court.

New Zealand prides itself on being a good international citizen, but when it comes to the rights of working people we are seriously delinquent.

Convention No. 87, Article 8, of the International Labour Organisation (of which New Zealand is a member) clearly states that:

1. In exercising the rights provided for in this Convention workers and employers and their respective organisations, like other persons or organised collectivities, shall respect the law of the land.

2. The law of the land shall not be such as to impair, nor shall it be so applied as to impair, the guarantees provided for in this Convention.

The guarantee provided for is, of course, the right to organise with the intention of  furthering and defending the interests of workers.

How, then, are we to account for Section 86 of New Zealand’s Employment Relations Act (2000) which states:

Participation in a strike or lockout is unlawful if the strike or lockout relates to … a dispute.

It is this section of the Act which prevents workers from taking action to protect and defend other workers – by means of “secondary picketing” and “sympathy strikes”. We have seen this section of the Act in operation at the ports of Tauranga, Wellington and Lyttelton, where workers attempted to prevent the unloading of ships serviced by non-union labour at the Port of Auckland. These men were subsequently forced by the Courts to do violence to their own consciences, and the interests of fellow union members, by obeying their employers’ “lawful” orders to unload the ship.

Interestingly, this is not something we ask citizens to do when their country goes to war. If a person can demonstrate a genuine “conscientious objection” to bearing arms he or she is excused from active service. Strange, then, that when ordered to do something that he or she knows is bound to hurt a fellow worker, citizens are afforded no such opportunity to conscientiously object. On pain of losing their jobs, paying a fine, or even being sent to prison, working people are obliged to put the boot into other working people.

Which brings us back to our earlier question: What sort of legal system, what sort of legislator, requires people to behave in this way? The answer, of course, is a legal system and legislators dedicated to facilitating the accumulation of private wealth. It is Capitalism which tells us that we cannot go to the aid of our mates; and that, when ordered to do so, we must put the boot into our comrades.

Is such a system morally acceptable? I would argue that it is not. Any more than the old “Jim Crow” system which (quite legally) denied African-Americans their basic human rights was acceptable. The laws that kept white Southerners in a position of social and economic dominance were fundamentally immoral, and they were laid low by the direct action of ordinary people who simply refused to obey statutes deliberately framed to oppress them.

It has long been understood by students of democratic theory that the citizen is not obliged to co-operate in his or her own oppression. As Thomas Jefferson put it in the American Declaration of Independence:

[W]hen a long train of [government] abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

The train of abuses of New Zealand’s working people has indeed be a long one, and perhaps its most depressing aspect is that when the party ostensibly dedicated to the rights of “labour” had the opportunity, it did not abolish the legal prohibition against sympathy strikes. Through nine long years in government, the New Zealand Labour Party declined to allow even its own voters to come to the aid of their mates.

Even now, in 2012, Labour’s new leader, David Shearer, declares his anxiety not to “take sides” in the Ports of Auckland dispute – not even as members of MUNZ, a trade union affiliated to his own party, are being stripped of their livelihoods. And, in spite of the fact that ILO Convention No. 154 stipulates that:

In order to secure the greatest social advantage of new methods of cargo handling, it shall be national policy to encourage co-operation between employers or their organisations, on the one hand, and workers’ organisations, on the other hand, in improving the efficiency of work in ports, with the participation, as appropriate, of the competent authorities.

Auckland’s Labour Mayor has very publicly elected to “pass by on the other side”.

For the sake of our mates, and our own consciences, the sooner we provide “new guards” for their “future security” the better.

How else can we honour our duty of care?

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Equal and Opposite

Naive: Auckland Mayor, Len Brown, must surely have understood that his action in demanding a doubling of the Port of Auckland's return on capital would produce an equal and opposite reaction from the Maritime Unions. Those behind the current employer onslaught should be under no illusion that if they go on pushing workers - workers will push back.

THE AFFCO CEO, Hamish Simpson, said it all: “It’s a fundamental test of the right to manage.”

What we see unfolding in North Island freezing works and on the Auckland wharves is a naked bid for unbridled employer power. The Ports of Auckland and AFFCO have made it clear, they will settle for nothing less than the full restoration of managerial prerogatives. They’re demanding the “right to manage” without let or hindrance; and that goal can only be achieved by the complete emasculation – or outright destruction – of their on-site unions.

AFFCO’s use of the lockout is the most brutal manifestation, to date, of the current employer onslaught. The contempt it displays for the company’s workers and their families is breath-taking. These are seasonal labourers, many of whom rely upon the money earned over a few months to carry themselves and their families through the rest of the year. Smoothed-out over twelve months, their pay is not spectacular. By denying its employees a weekly pay-check, AFFCO is openly declaring its intention to drive these families into poverty and starve them into submission.

It’s class war – pure and simple. It will not, however, be presented as such. Just switch on any radio and you will hear the soft, soapy sound of middle-class journalists washing their hands of all responsibility for calling these events by their true name. To hear them talk, the AFFCO bosses are only trying to advance their shareholders’ interests.

According to the bourgeois journalist’s view of economic relationships, your job doesn’t really belong to you, it belongs to the boss – and it is what he says it is. If you don’t like it – quit. Put simply, workers don’t own their jobs: either individually or collectively. The claim that workers – through their unions – are striking “in defence” of their jobs cuts little ice with this sort of journalist. How can somebody “defend” something that was never theirs?

What the bourgeois journalist cannot deny, however, is that workers still own their own labour. Brain and muscle power are still up for sale, and the boss is buying. Naturally, he’s anxious to purchase workers’ labour power on terms most favourable to himself. This he achieves by requiring workers to bargain with him one at a time. That way he can tell individual job-seekers to either take it, or leave it.

Collective bargaining, by contrast, sets out to establish a common price for a specific kind of labour. When successful it gives workers a significant measure of control over the jobs their bosses need them to do. Through collective bargaining they can determine both the job’s price and the conditions under which it is performed. By forming a union they give themselves the power to grab a share of the business’s profits that would otherwise be distributed among the shareholders, and distribute it among themselves.

Small wonder, then, that capitalists hate unions. By lifting workers’ wages above bare subsistence level (as the Maritime Unions have done on the Auckland wharves) the trade union reduces the size of the shareholders’ dividend. And since maximising the return to shareholders is the prime function of every business, it is hardly surprising that keeping unions out of the workplace ranks high on most boss’s list of priorities.

And if the shareholders have instructed the boss to double the business’s return on capital? What then? If we’re talking about a unionised business, then the boss’s most obvious course of action is surely to drive the union out. This is is exactly what POAL Boss, Tony Gibson, is attempting to do. The Auckland City Council (led by the allegedly left-leaning, Len Brown) has demanded that POAL double its rate of return on capital from 6 to 12 percent. If not in the wage-packets of its workers, where does Mayor Brown suggest POAL go looking for such an impossibly high rate of return? In demanding 12 percent, the City Council has effectively mandated the deunionisation of Auckland’s wharves.

Left-wing voters would do well to remember this next year when the so-called “Independent”, Len Brown, asks them for a second term. Or, perhaps they'll decide to run their own candidate in 2013? Maybe the wharfie’s son, Mike Lee?

It would serve Len Brown right for being so naïve. For seriously believing that the action of attacking the Maritime Unions would not generate an equal and opposite reaction.

Because Newton’s Law doesn’t just apply to physics, it applies to politics as well. Working people have never willingly submitted to wage slavery and there is no reason to believe that this generation is one whit more inclined than its predecessors to let employers drive down their incomes to subsistence levels.

Let the bosses and their parties take heed. If their temporary possession of the Treasury benches encourages them to re-draw the law to their own advantage, then what is to stop a party dedicated to the workers’ interest from doing the same? Push working people too hard and they will push back. Rewrite the employment laws for the purposes of restoring an uncontested “right to manage”, and a time will come when those same laws will be rewritten to restore the workers’ right to union protection.

Indeed, the more generously this government empowers the employers; the more openly it incites its friends to take-on the unions; the easier it will be for the next government to introduce legislation providing for universal union membership, compulsory arbitration and national awards.

An employment relations regime based on those three institutions remained intact from 1937 until 1991 – more than fifty years. How long the next regime lasts is entirely in the bosses’ hands. An equal and opposite reaction to the sort of things they’re doing now will give working people the upper hand for a very long time indeed.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Pitch

Right[s] on the Button! The campaign of the Australian Council of Trade Unions against John Howard's WorkChoice Australia attack on workers' rights was crucial to his government's 2007 defeat.

THE GRUEN TRANSFER, is a fine example of what a real state broadcaster, dedicated to genuine public interest television, can achieve. Produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) this half-hour television show takes a light-hearted weekly swipe at the global advertising industry.

One of the most enjoyable segments of the show is called "The Pitch" – in which "Creatives" from competing agencies are given an outrageous/impossible brief (in a recent episode they were asked sell ice to Eskimos) and told to come up with a 30-second TV spot.

Perhaps the most famous of these briefs involved making the case for an Australian invasion of New Zealand. "100% Pure NZ", runs the opening line of the winning entry. "0 air force", it continues. "100 percent there for the taking", gloats the penultimate caption as Aussie jet fighters streak across New Zealand’s undefended skies firing missiles on the helpless inhabitants below. The triumphant ending: "100% Ours".

Pondering the enormous difficulties currently confronting the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) as it attempts to mobilise public opinion against the National Party’s employment law "reforms", it struck me that "Create a favourable public perception of the New Zealand trade union movement.", would definitely qualify as a future brief for "The Pitch".

And before you shake your head and tell me "it can’t be done", let me tell you about a programme I recall from the days when New Zealand, too, had a "real state broadcaster dedicated to producing genuine public interest television".

It was called the Dean/Edwards Show (after its eponymous hosts Michael Dean and Brian Edwards) and was broadcast in front of a live audience from the Avalon television complex in the Hutt Valley. Dean/Edwards came under the rubric of Television One’s News and Current Affairs and was, to put it mildly, politically challenging.

The programme in question had taken advertising as its theme and its producers had approached a local agency to demonstrate the awesome powers of the industry. They were to come up with a positive ad’ for the most loathed trade unionists in the country at that time – the infamous Cooks & Stewards Union. These were the workers responsible for looking after passengers on the Cook Straight ferries, and they were notorious for timing their industrial disputes to coincide with public holidays.

The 60-second ad the agency produced featured the theatrical skills of the actor Ian Mune, and more than met the Dean/Edwards Show’s producers’ expectations. It was, quite simply, a little masterpiece. In just one minute the villainous Cooks & Stewards were transformed into no-nonsense working-class heroes.

So, you see, it can be done.

And if you need any further convincing, just take a look at the series of ads the Aussie unions ran in 2007 against the Liberal Party’s detested "WorkChoice" legislation. According to most Australian political commentators, these ads played a crucial role in defeating John Howard’s government.

There’s no doubting our own CTU has the resources to fund such a campaign, but do they have access to the sort of skills that turned the Cooks and Stewards into heroes? And, even if they secured the services of a top-flight agency, would the major networks agree to air their product?

When it comes to getting controversial ads broadcast, New Zealand unions have had some very bad experiences. For some reason the Advertising Standards Authority has found it extraordinarily difficult to affix its seal of approval to union-produced television advertisements. Somehow they’re always deemed to be in breach of the Authority’s strict rules.

Even so, were I in CTU President, Helen Kelly’s, shoes I’d be thinking long and hard about commissioning a series of ads designed to change the public’s perception of what unions – and unionists – are about. And I wouldn’t just be looking to the big ad agencies for ideas. In this age of the Internet and cheap computer software, I’d be appealing to every young digital designer, every student-flat Fellini, to send me their ideas as well. And if the ASA stood in the way, well, there’s always You-Tube.

As Forest & Bird and Greenpeace know only too well, there’s a whole new arsenal of weapons available to political activists in the 21st Century that simply weren’t available to the trade unionists of 1890, 1913 and 1951. Policemen can shut down and confiscate a printing-press, but they can’t seize every PC or shut-down the Internet – not unless they want a real fight on their hands.

What Helen Kelly and the CTU needs is the equivalent of Greenpeace’s "Sexy Coal" video clip – and the power of celebrities like Robyn Malcolm and Lucy Lawless to sell it. Below the radar of the despised "MSM", that one clip did more to put 40,000 anti-mining marchers on the street than any other piece of propaganda.

The Pitch is "Union Power". Any takers?

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 3 August 2010.