As around 600,000 workers took to the streets around Australia on November 15 against the Howard government's draconian anti-union/anti-worker laws, some 120 New Zealand workers protested in solidarity outside the Australian High Commission in Wellington, 200 more protested in Auckland and there was also a protest in Christchurch.
Workers across "the ditch", as they say in NZ, know very well how much damage such laws can do to the union movement and how much pain they can inflict on working-class families.
Two organisers from NZ's dynamic new union, Unite <http://unite.org.nz>, Simon Oosterman and Desmond Letoua, and National Union of Public Employees organiser Lynda Boyd, joined the protests in Victoria on November 15. Oosterman addressed the Geelong and Portland rallies, and Boyd addressed the Melbourne rally.
They explained how New Zealand's 1991 Employment Contracts Act drove wages down and de-unionised many industries.
However, in the last 12 months, NZ unions have begun a militant wages campaign to regain what they lost. Unite has gone on an offensive to unionise the large, mostly young casualised section of the work force, with great success. Last week, Unite organised the first ever strike against the US-based multinational Starbucks, part of Unite's SuperSizeMyPay.Com campaign to boost public awareness of the plight of low-paid fast-food industry workers.
A symbolic strike at Starbucks coffee store on Auckland's Karangahape Road heated up when workers at nine other stores spontaneously joined the picket line. Starbucks management then threatened to fire any worker who was not back at work within an hour. But when employees got to hear about this "the text messages went all over the city, and we ended up with about 200 workers from 10 different Starbucks outlets joining us", Oosterman said. (See a video clip of the action at: <http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0511/S00285.htm>.)
The new worker militancy has also spurred left regroupment in NZ. Last month, I joined Socialist Alliance members Tim Gooden and Mike Byrne as observers at the launch, in Auckland, of the NZ Workers Charter movement (see <http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/635/635p10b.htm>). We took greetings from the Socialist Alliance and received a warm reception and a promise to initiate the NZ solidarity actions on November 15.
We thank the activists in the Workers Charter for their solidarity and promise to do the same from this side of "the ditch".
Peter Boyle
[Peter Boyle is on the Socialist Alliance national executive and is a member of the Socialist Alliance-Green Left Weekly editorial board.]
From Green Left Weekly, November 30, 2005.
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