Grant Morgan, Auckland
The Workers Charter is launching a national newspaper in mid-February. Its editor will be John Minto, one of the best-known radical leftists in the country. John was a central organiser of the huge 1981 demonstrations against the South African Springbok rugby tour. This campaign included weeks of battles between anti-apartheid protesters and baton-wielding cops.
The paper will be a full-colour tabloid, published monthly for starters. News of its launch has been greeted with enthusiasm by leftists from different traditions. In anticipation of the paper, which will mostly deal with grassroots struggles and other immediate issues, Socialist Worker has redirected its monthly Unity magazine towards strategic problems facing the international workers' movement.
Each edition of Unity will revolve around one important theme. The first new-look issue — an 84-page booklet — examines global left regroupment, including the Workers Charter in New Zealand and Socialist Alliance in Australia.
Speaking as an editor of Unity and as an editorial board member of the Workers Charter paper, I see these two publications as providing an essential radical left symbiosis. The workers who become politicised through a popular paper will need a "big picture" Marxist journal to turn them into battlers for socialism.
At the heart of the Workers Charter is a radical "bill of rights" for workers and our environment, which has been endorsed by the far-from-radical top body of the NZ Council of Trade Unions.
Union leaders better known for their moderation than their militancy are being influenced by the pay revolt of NZ workers. A 5% wage-rise campaign was started in February 2005 by the Engineers Union, which was blown away by the results. Workers sick of low pay and corporate arrogance began pushing for action right across the economy.
This grassroots upsurge was the launching pad for the Workers Charter. Its activists want to win lasting political gains for workers as well as temporary economic ones.
Charter activists are central to the fast-food campaign of the Unite union. The immediate demands are for a $12 minimum hourly wage and the abolition of youth rates. These demands can only be won by organising young and multi-ethnic fast-food workers into a powerful force with broad community support, which would erode the power of multinational corporations and flow on into the political arena.
The world's first Starbucks strike took place in Auckland late last year. It sparked solidarity strikes at Starbucks stores in the US, showing how our side is increasingly aware that we're in a global battle against global capitalism.
New Zealand's first KFC strike took place in the Auckland suburb of Balmoral in December. Three out of the five strike leaders were aged under 18, earning as little as $7.80 an hour. Sam Van Der Kolk, 15, said ahead of the Balmoral walkout: "I'm looking forward to going on strike to let the community know we're getting paid crap. I'm doing it for everyone."
The fast-food pickets have truly been "festivals of the oppressed", with young workers taking the lead, vibrant colours and blaring music. The Unite fast-food workers' campaign and its associated Workers Charter project have captured the imagination of many workers and leftists. That's reflected in the charter's endorsement by Wellington seafarers, a militant union branch. Their December newsletter described the charter as a "practical example of a move by unionists to make life a lot better for the whole of society".
Governments on both sides of the Tasman are quietly negotiating a single market, which will have profound political and constitutional impacts as well as economic ones. It's vital that Australian and New Zealand leftists cooperate much more closely than in the past.
Successes by the Workers Charter will bolster the fight-back against John Howard's anti-union laws in Australia. So I urge Australian leftists to gain more knowledge and give practical support by subscribing to both the Workers Charter paper and the Unity journal.
[To subscribe to the Workers Charter paper for one year, post a cheque for NZ$40 to "Workers Charter", PO Box 13-157, Auckland, New Zealand. Email <editor@workerscharter.org.nz>. For an annual subscription to Unity, post a cheque for NZ$80 to "In Print Publishing", PO Box 13-685, Auckland, New Zealand. Email <gcm@actrix.co.nz>.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 1, 2006.
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