Dear Class Struggle comrades,
I thought I’d bring you up to date with some of the events in my West Auckland local of Unite! Community Union. Unite! was founded as a union for beneficiaries and low-income earners. In recent times Unite! has been controlled by Matt McCarten, and has been divided into two sections, a Community union for beneficiaries and some low-income earners, and a ‘workers’ union for employees as diverse as English language teachers, chefs, and hotel staff.
Our local is opposed to the expansion of Unite! into these new areas, because it has involved poaching members from other unions, a practice which is always counter-productive, and which is giving Unite! a bad reputation in the union movement. We are also concerned at the recent attempts of Unite! organiser and McCarten ally Mike Treen to bring prison guards into the union. We see prison guards as no better than cops, and we don’t think they belong in the workers’ movement.
We are alarmed by the way that unemployed and other beneficiaries are now being marginalised through the whole of Unite! We insist that Unite! was formed in the first place to organise and unite low-paid workers, unemployed workers and beneficiaries – in fact, we would argue that Unite! has no other reason to exist.
Our local is standing candidates in the upcoming Unite! national executive elections - we hope to join with leftists from other parts of the union to highlight the errors of the union leadership and increase the weight of the opposition on the national executive.
Our branch suffers from chronic poverty, so that even getting members to meetings is difficult. We have no full-timers, our secretary is an honorary secretary only, none of our members has been a union delegate in the past, and until recently we have not been constituted as a local.
We find it difficult to get out propaganda and we have little or no capacity to ‘help’ people who are just going to pay a fee and not be active members – hence we don’t get fees, and we have the bare number needed to form a local. Our five leading members have been relying mainly on a benefit, and one has been ‘Jobs Jolted’ onto an AMES course far below his intellectual capacity and education. Another is a PhD student and thus on a limited income.
We were very pleased, then, when we were recently recognised as a local, and received our first refunds from union headquarters. We now need to elect a treasurer along with a president, vice-president and secretary.
Despite our money woes, we have been very active so far this year. We made a special point of attending this year’s May Day demonstration, because we believe that beneficiaries and low income earners have to be recognised as an important part of the workers’ movement. The weather on May the first was bad, and the official demonstration was called off without authorisation by union officials belonging to the May Day Committee. An alternative march to the nearby US consulate to oppose the war on Iraq was proposed by some of our members and despite the heavy rain part of the rally marched there and listened to speakers from a variety of workers’ organisations.
Several of us participated in the recent Global Peace and Justice Auckland demonstration against the war and the phoney handover of power in Iraq. One of our members spoke to the demonstration, noting that our local arose out of the anti-war movement, and emphasising our solidarity with the unemployed workers of Iraq. Some of our members have attempted to investigate a ‘Work Track’ centre in New Lynn, a major working class area of West Auckland. We are concerned about the way that under the ‘Jobs Jolt’ the organisations running various compulsory courses have the right to ask WINZ to cut the benefits of beneficiaries who break course rules.
After observing work track courses ‘from the inside’ we believe that the providers of the courses must be creaming it off – they provide so little in the way of services, despite the generous contracts WINZ gives them!
We issued a press statement condemning the Budget for doing nothing for beneficiaries. We are being vigilant about the possibility that the special benefit may be cut – at present many of those able to get the special benefit rely on it as a top-up, to get them a socially acceptable standard of living.
Our branch decided to participate as strongly as it could in Unite’s attempt to unionise Burger King – four members of our group attended the initial briefing and five members participated with varying success. We deemed the Burger King drive a useful exercise, and it was very educational to see how the union access clause of the Employment Relations Act operated.
An important event in the life of our group took place on May the 8th, when Warren Duffy represented us at the big anti-racism march called in Christchurch by Asians tired of harrassment and assaults. We raised the $300 for Warren Duffy to represent us at the demonstration, and he was able to repay us by making some personal links with left-wing Unite! members in other parts of the country. A new anti-racism march will take place in Wellington on October the 23rd, in response to the desecration of Jewish graves, immigration laws that humiliate Pacific Islanders, the Maori-bashing encouraged by politicians like Don Brash, and the activities of the neo-nazi National Front.
I am hoping that our local will be able to send members to this march, and that we will not be alone in representing the labour movement.
It is clear that racism is on the rise in Aotearoa because of the gaps in class consciousness created by the defeats of the union movement and atomisation of the working class in the 80s and 90s. The building of a strong union movement is the best long-term antidote to both the National Party and the National Front, but a strong union movement can only be built on an internationalist basis.
Sadly, our union movement is lacking in internationalism. Even some of our best unions cross the line - witness the Service and Food Workers Union's recent press release attacking the importing of foreign workers by an understaffed Sealords factory in Timaru, a press release issued in the same week as an appeal for international solidarity with a sacked union member!
Then we have Maritime Union of New Zealand, which mixes a good position on the war in Iraq with the economic nationalist campaign for cabotage. Don't get me started on the Amalgamated Workers Union, which helps the cops sniff out 'illegal' workers on Auckland's building sites. We can't oppose racism if our movement espouses racist policies. We should be uniting with workers of all races and nations, not with cops and prison screws!
I urge comrades in other unions to send representatives to Wellington on October the 23rd.
Best Wishes,
Unite! rank and filer
From Class Struggle 57 August-September 2004
May 1 is International Workers’ Day! All around the world we are seeing those who are exploited and oppressed by capitalism and imperialism engaged in resistance struggles. In Aotearoa/New Zealand we need to rebuild a labour movement that can act in solidarity with this global resistance. We need to build unions that are democratic, independent, militant, and internationalist, as 'schools for socialism'! Workers commemorate past struggles and act in solidarity with present struggles. We remember the historic struggles of the Paris Commune of 1870, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the heroic colonial revolutions such as the Chinese and Vietnamese. In NZ we celebrate the class battles of 1890, 1912-13 and 1951. These are the major milestones in the making of our class into that revolutionary force that has the power to overthrow capitalism and build socialism. Workers resistance on the rise Today the workers movement is weak and defensive. Years of defeat have pushed workers into retreat. But while capitalism can drive back workers struggles it cannot destroy the only class that creates its wealth. Around the world there are signs that workers are once again on the move. Imperialism is in deep crisis and can only survive that crisis by robbing workers and peasants of their resources, driving down their wages and making their lives miserable. International resistance to imperialist rule is mounting. But the organisation of that resistance is still at a rudimentary level. Because of the weakness of the organised workers movement worldwide, resistance to oppression is taking forms that cut across working class solidarity and hold back the rise of international labour solidarity. In Palestine and Iraq, the invaders have smashed working class organisations and are forcing workers into the arms of the bosses and Islamic clerics. Young workers are being driven to futile suicidal attacks against high-tech invading armies. Isolated and outgunned these ‘intifada’ can be smashed as in Palestine and Afghanistan. Al Qaeda, the terrorist organisation funded by wealthy Saudis, is bombing and maiming Western workers to drive imperialism out of the Middle East, not to liberate Muslims but to make rich Arabs bosses even richer. What we have to learn from all these struggles of oppressed peoples against imperialism is two things: first, the working class is the only class that can unite all the oppressed and defeat imperialism, and second, that the working class must be united internationally and led by a revolutionary party. Why the working class? The leadership of the national struggles against imperialism must come from the working class. Only the organised armed workers can turn resistance on the part of peasant and tribal fighters into a victorious defeat of imperialism. All other classes have an interest in doing deals with imperialism for a share of the wealth created by workers and peasants. Workers, in opposing the system that exploits and oppresses them, have a class interest not only to defeat imperialism. They also have an interest to overthrow the national capitalist class and its hired politicians - including those who pose as friends of the workers like Arafat, Chavez or Lula. And workers have the means to do this as they can strike to close down the economy, arm themselves, win over sections of the military and take state power. But even where workers are highly organised as they are in Bolivia, they have been cheated of power by class traitors in their own ranks. Armed peasants and miners led by militant trade unions have several times in the last decades been capable of taking power, only to be betrayed by leaders who do deals with imperialism to share the expropriated labour of workers and peasants. To avoid repeating these defeats, we have to keep alive the lessons of the past as guides to action today. In Russia in 1917, the armed workers were led by a revolutionary party that defeated the treacherous sellout elements in their ranks and helped the struggle for national liberation to become a victorious socialist revolution. The difference between Russia in 1917, and the failed or incomplete revolutions in Germany 1919, Bolivia 1952, Cuba 1959, and Chile 1973, was the existence of a revolutionary party. The second lesson is, that a victorious national liberation movements against imperialism cannot survive as independent workers’ state without the class solidarity of the workers in the imperialist countries, including their rich client states like New Zealand. This is because these ‘Western’ workers are the only class that has the strength to shut down the imperialist economies and bring the war machine to a halt. For example, it was the German workers who went on strike and the soldiers and sailors who mutinied in 1918 stopping the European imperialist powers from overwhelming and smashing the Russian Revolution at its birth. The workers in the imperialist countries are the only force with the power to stop their own bosses from invading, occupying and destroying other countries, by defeating the 'main enemy' at home.
The labour ‘aristocracy’ But there is a problem in building support for liberation struggles in the Western working class. Many workers are ‘bought off’ with high wages and back their bosses in imperialist wars. They are members of the labour ‘aristocracy’ whose wages are partly paid by the cheap labour of the ‘developing’ countries. Their unions are led by bureaucrats that manage labour relations within the law of the bosses’ state. They vote for reformist parties that claim to manage capitalism in the interests of ‘all classes’. For example in the US, the main union organisation, the AFL-CIO, is proud of its ‘patriotism’ in supporting the ‘war on terror’, including the use of the Patriot Act to attack labor rights at home. Why? Because this war defends the interests of US workers whose jobs and wages depend on the strength of US imperialism. The AFL-CIO calls for votes for the Democratic Party, as the more union-friendly party of the US bosses, to deliver these jobs and wages. This is why the vast majority of those millions of workers who opposed the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, did little more than demonstrate in the streets or pray for peace. They thought that war was the wrong policy. And their pacifism is catching. When Bush abolished the labour rights of public employees after 9-11, there was no strike in response. Even the West Coast Longshoremen, traditionally one of the most militant US unions, loudly proclaimed their unrivalled patriotism and backed off an industrial dispute last year when Bush threatened to lock them up under the Patriot Act. NZ workers sign up for imperialism In NZ the CTU official stand on the ‘war on terror’ was to endorse the UN resolutions. While the Auckland CTU leadership took a more principled stand against a UN invasion of Iraq, the union movement in NZ has not taken any industrial action against the SAS being sent to Afghanistan or the Engineers to Iraq. NZ workers too are dominated by a union bureaucracy that banks its career paths on 'lesser evil' Labour governments or an alternative future Alliance/Green coalition managing a 'peaceful and just' capitalism. Why? Because in NZ the most privileged workers in unions affiliated to the Labour Party and the 'left' parties, benefit from NZ’s military alliance with Australian and US imperialism. For example the Maritime Union 'cabotage' campaign appeals to NZ bosses to join forces with Australian imperialist bosses to keep ‘foreign’ workers on lower wages off local ships. And the EPMU is begging the Aussie military to contract out maintenance on its frigates to the Whangarei shipyard that helped to build these ANZAC frigates to police the Pacific on behalf of US and Australian imperialism’s interests.
Pacifism means sucking up to bosses Thus the most privileged layers of Western workers depend for their jobs and incomes on direct or indirect benefits from imperialist military expenditure. Or on wars for oil, gas, copper, diamonds, fish etc whose proceeds trickle down into their jobs and pay packets. These unions are bureaucratic, pacifist, dependent on the state and form racist national fronts with their bosses to protect their jobs from migrants or foreigners. The most these workers will do against war is to argue that imperialism does not need to fight wars to defend their jobs and high wages, and that the UN should manage invasions like in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. This is why the official labour movement in the imperialist countries will never go beyond pacifist posturing and never take organised strike action to stop war. For example, even when train drivers went on strike against Britain’s role in the Iraq war, they acted as individuals and not as members of their union. Build unions of the most oppressed! But all is not lost. While the union bureaucrats in the imperialist countries serve the interests of the bosses and the labour aristocracies, they do not represent the vast layers of other workers who are highly exploited and oppressed. These are the migrant workers and/or low paid service workers who are mainly women, ethnic minorities and youth. They are typically casualised workers, not unionised and on the worst pay and conditions. They do not benefit from imperialism and form an oppressed layer of cheap labour in the imperialist heartlands. They have the class interest to form strong links with other workers across borders in the oppressed world and take direct action against their own military machine. It is to these workers that we must look to form new class struggle unions based on rank and file democracy. They can be organised independently of the state, reformist parties and the bosses. Like the Latino janitors unionised in Los Angeles, they can take militant strike action to fight for better wages and conditions in the heart of the imperialist machine. They can act in international solidarity with the anti-imperialist resistance around the world. Organise the casualised worker! In NZ, the large majority of workers in the casualised mainly private service sector are not unionised. They are predominantly young, female, migrant workers. They work for multinational hotels like Sheraton, fast food outlets like Burger King, petrol stations like Mobil, and supermarkets, multinational call centres and commercial cleaners. They need to be unionised so they can join forces with the workers who are employed by these same global corporates in other countries to fight together to win rights and better pay and conditions. They can also link up globally with unionised workers in oil companies like Shell, banks like Citigroup, and military contractors like Halliburton, and other war profiteers, to blockade these companies and demand that they get off 'corporate welfare' and free up billions for health, education and housing for the poor. The can unite with unionised workers in the export industries such as fishing and forestry to oppose anti-worker practices and the destruction of fish and timber stocks. They can fight to keep the foreshore and seabed from being sold-off to the expanding multinational aquaculture corporations. They can demand the nationalisation of all these companies under workers’ control with no compensation to the bosses! For Rank-and-file control of unions To be effective these unions must be run by their rank and file members. They must struggle to be independent of any political bureaucracy, of the reformist parties who suck them into parliament and the bosses’ state, and able to unite with other unions in militant strike action. With this organisational strength, these unions can be what Leon Trotsky called ‘schools for revolution’. They can take up the fight for the most immediate bread and butter demands, and when the bosses refuse to meet them, they can take the fight all the way to win workers’ control of industry and state power. They can take action on wages which become stands on war. They can defend their jobs yet refuse to build or repair frigates. They can demand that the CTU takes strike action against NZ’s military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the CTU refuses they can replace it with their own rank and file leadership. They can impose boycotts and bans on Israel. They can mount solidarity campaigns in defence of migrant workers, so-called illegal workers, refugees like the jailed Algerian Ahmed Zaoui. They can fight for the rights of foreign workers in NZ ships, and build support for the independent trades unions and women’s’ organisations of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. These unions must be democratic, independent, militant and internationalist! They can train and empower the working class fighters who will unite with workers globally and create a new political leadership that can bring an end to capitalism and build a world socialist society! Workers have no country!
No to cabotage, frigates and theft of the foreshore! Strike to stop imperialist war at home! Support the resistance in Iraq and Palestine! Support the workers and peasants revolution in Bolivia! No to the treacherous leaders of the WSF - Lula, Chavez and Castro! For a new World Party of Revolution!
From Class Struggle 55 April-May 2004
