The Louise Nicholas case of rape against a senior serving police officer and two former police officers failed to get a conviction. Outraged by the result, supporters of Louise Nicholas claimed that two of those acquitted were already serving a jail sentence for rape, a fact that was suppressed under NZ’s penal law. Should such information be made known at trials or are their other ways of defending rape victims from failures in the bourgeois justice system? No More Rape Victims on Trial! The Louise Nicholas case had disturbed many New Zealanders even before it ended with a not guilty verdict. The team of lawyers representing the three senior police officers accused of rape had effectively put Nicholas in the dock by making a series of attacks on her honesty and integrity. The jury's verdict was the final insult, because it seemed to brand Nicholas as a liar and legitimise the behaviour of the defence team. To those who knew some of the information about two of the accused which had been kept out the case, the jury's verdict was even more frustrating. Within hours of the end of the trial the suppressed information had appeared on the internet and on leaflets distributed by protesters. Anyone who has been privy to this information will find it very difficult to believe that Louise Nicholas got a fair deal in court. In the aftermath of the trial many people are wondering what steps can be taken to prevent a repeat of the injustice that Louise Nicholas has suffered. Some feminists have suggested that the law should be changed so that relevant previous criminal convictions of the accused can be considered by a judge and jury rather than suppressed. It is hard to see, though, how such a measure can be squared with a commitment to a fair trial and to the reform of sexual offenders. It is worth noting that the call for the consideration of previous criminal convictions is being echoed by some organisations on the far right of New Zealand politics, including the Act Party. Other observers pin their hopes on the reform of the police to eliminate the sort of abuses that Louise Nicholas suffered. Some on the left welcomed the appointment of Annette King as Minister of Police, hoping that the presence of a female at the top would help to get rid of some of the sexism of the force. Others call for the recruitment of more female officers. Such suggestions are naive, because they rest on the belief that sexism exists in the force because of the presence of a few 'bad apples', or at worst a macho 'cowboy culture'. A similar analysis of police racism has seen successive governments recruiting thousands of Polynesians to the force, and organising workshops on 'cultural sensitivity'. Yet the police force remains a profoundly racist institution which is disliked and distrusted by many Polynesians. The racism of the police has come to be symbolised by the slaying of Stephen Wallace in Waitara in 2000, yet the policeman who shot Wallace repeatedly in the back was Maori. The truth is that, whatever the views of their individual members, the police are institutionally racist and institutionally sexist. The police defend capitalism, which is a system which creates the oppression of women and ethnic minorities in a thousand ways every day. Efforts to reform the force by injecting a 'feminist' culture into it will fail. The police can only be transformed when society itself is radically transformed. But society is not going to be transformed overnight, and many people are looking to take action now to help prevent a repeat of the injustice Louise Nicholas has suffered. If tinkering with the legal system and trying to reform the police are not options, what can they do? One thing that we can all do is work to strengthen the independent organisations that assist victims of sexual violence. In New Zealand, these organisations help thousands of women every year, yet they are chronically under funded and struggle to survive.
Sexual Abuse HELP
In Auckland, the Sexual Abuse HELP organisation does a heroic job on a very tight budget. HELP operates a twenty-four hour hotline for victims of sexual violence, provides doctors for these women, provides advisers to coach them through the stressful process of confronting the police, laying a complaint and going to court, and also provides long-term counselling to help victims transcend their suffering. Anyone who followed the Louise Nicholas case can see how the services which HELP provides could have benefited Louise in the aftermath of the assaults she suffered. If Louise had been able to make a complaint to the police promptly and undergo a prompt examination by a sympathetic doctor, then it would have been much harder for her attackers to smear her by contesting the truthfulness of her memories, and by alleging she enjoyed the sex she had with them. Medical evidence would have shown that the sex was forcible, violent, and painful. But without an organisation like HELP to turn to, it is not surprising that the eighteen year-old Louise Nicholas felt unable to report the abuse she suffered to the police or a doctor. The huge numbers of women who turn to organisations like HELP today are proof that many sexual violence victims still find police stations and doctor’s examining rooms intimidating places. In Auckland, HELP last year received 8,000 contacts through its hotline, and guided hundreds of women through the courts and into counselling programmes. Yet HELP and similar organisations still struggle for funding, and often exist on the edge of insolvency. Their inability to service the whole country and their inadequate advertising budgets mean that many sexual violence victims still do not know that organisations exist to help them. These women suffer the isolation of the eighteen year-old Louise Nicholas, and frequently succumb to depression, substance abuse, and even suicide. Government under funding of HELP and similar organisations is directly responsible, then, for unreported rapes and the unnecessary suffering of many women. While the government lavishes money on the police, new prisons, and troops to fight George Bush’s war in Afghanistan, HELP is forced to appeal to private donors, because its four main public funders – Children Youth and Family, ACC, the Ministry of Development and the Auckland Health Board – invariably fail to provide it enough to operate on. Other organisations that assist victims of sexual violence complain of similar insecurities. Two years ago HELP initiated a protest campaign to draw attention to the fact that it was on the edge of bankruptcy. After doctors and other caregivers told a large public meeting they were prepared to go on strike, the government stepped in with a one-off injection of cash. But such last minute payments are not enough: HELP and similar organisations should be assured adequate funding from a single government source, so that they can do their jobs free from constant worries about insolvency. Everyone who is outraged by the injustice that has been done to Louise Nicholas should demand that the government respond to this injustice by massively increasingly funding for organisations that assist and represent the victims of sexual violence. Trade unions have an especially important role to play. Many of employees of HELP and similar organisations are members of trade unions, and the Service and Food Workers Union helped organise the 2004 public meeting to defend HELP. After the murder of Stephen Wallace in 2000 the National Distribution Union took up the Wallace family’s campaign for a public inquiry into the actions of the police and the broader question of police racism. Today, trade unionists should support the protests against the sexism and injustice Louise Nicholas has suffered, and also demand better funding for those who help victims of sexual violence.
CWG members were at the Methodist City Mission Hall, for the Auckland launch of the Clean Start - Fair Deal for Cleaners campaign, which is being waged in New Zealand by the Service and Food Workers Union and in Australia by the SFWU's sister union, the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union. About one hundred and twenty people - union organisers, delegates, rank and file members, journalists, and the usual unctuous politicians - listened to New Zealand Idol winner Rosita Vai give a rousing start to proceedings by filling the hall with her twenty-four track voice. Vai's would be a hard voice for anyone to follow, and the nasal whine of SFWU National Secretary John Ryall never stood a chance. Vocal performance aside, Ryall did make some sound points about the necessity and justice of the cleaners' campaign, citing research which shows that cleaners in New Zealand work three times as much floor space in a shift as their Texan counterparts. Given that Texas is not a part of the world renowned for strong trade unions, Ryall's data spoke volumes about the situation of cleaners in New Zealand. Sue, an SFWU delegate from Auckland Airport, made the same point using personal experience rather than statistics, noting that she'd been working at the airport for seven years, for a 'really really really mean' boss who had recently offered her a thirty-five cent pay increase. 'That's a box of matches', Sue observed. In her seven years at the airport, she had helped increase union membership from 35 to 140, as more and more workers saw the necessity of uniting to demand more than a box of matches. The SFWU is demanding a minimum pay rate of $12 an hour for all cleaners, the establishment of a proper health and safety regime in the buildings cleaners service, and the end of the sub-contracting of cleaning services to fly-by-night outfits who make impossible demands on workers. It is not clear, though, how these aims are to be achieved. John Ryall spoke of 'waking the companies that own the buildings in Auckland as well as Australian cities' up to their 'social responsibilities', and getting them 'to sit down at the table with the union'. The task, it seemed, was the conversion of bosses from a profit-driven immorality to a community-minded generosity. MP Mark Gosche mounted the podium to make a similarly evangelical appeal to 'all those big businessmen who want to shake hands with Polynesian superstars like Rosita and Tana Umaga to also respect the parents of these people, the low-paid workers'. But big business and its advertising agents use celebrities like Umaga and Vai as cynically as they uses cleaners: both are exploited, it's simply that - until they retire or record an album that flops - the celebrities are more valuable commodities than the cleaners. Gosche's fellow Labour MP Darien Fenton followed him to the podium, and delivered a breathtakingly banal speech. Fenton recalled her many years in leadership positions in the SFWU, and the effort and financial expense that went into the Labour election campaign that dragged her into parliament last year. 'I haven't forgotten you and where I came from, I always keep my desk clean, and I always talk to the parliament cleaners' Fenton announced proudly. Whether such shining examples of working class militancy represent an adequate return for the tens of thousands the union spent getting Fenton to parliament is open to question. Green MP Keith Locke made a speech which managed the not-difficult task of upstaging both Gosche and Fenton. Locke noted that the Green Party demands an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $12 an hour, and called on the SFWU to support Green MP Sue Bradford's bill to abolish youth rates. Neither Gosche nor Fenton had managed to mention either the minimum wage or youth rates, preferring to bask in the feeble glow of Labour's 1999 Employment Relations Act, and stoke up fears of National MP Wayne Mapp's doomed 90 Day Probation Bill. The failure of these two members of Labour's 'left' faction to so much as mention a progressive piece of legislation like Bradford's Bill should be a warning to all SFWU members. If it is to be successful, the Clean Start campaign will have to rely on rank and file action, not the ex-leaders the union has packed off to Wellington. The internationalism of linking up the NZ and Australian unions is an important move, since the cleaners would be working for many of the same firms (such as Spotless) now that NZ is virtually a branch of Australian capitalism. According to one of the SFWU organisers, the US service worker union, the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) is also involved. This is one of the biggest unions in the states with 35,000 cleaners (janitors) as members. This was the union that made a big splash in the early 1990s unionising mainly Latino women workers in the big cities in the US - the Justice for Janitors campaign. Ken Loach made a good film on the Los Angeles campaign, "Bread and Roses". The film was notable for depicting an almost unrecognisable LA from the usual glitzy Hollywood image. Some of the tactics used by the workers such as invading the private parties of super-rich lawyers whose offices they cleaned (inspiring viewing) could be used to advantage here. Imagine occupying the Koru and Kangaroo Lounges. We hope the SFWU is planning a big rank and file contingent for May Day. It would be most fitting for NZ service workers, many of them migrant workers, to join in solidarity with the many US (around 12 million 'illegals') migrants who will be on the streets for a nationwide stopwork May 1 to tell Bush where he can stick his plan to make’ illegals’ criminals. The mass movement of migrant workers in the US is the biggest thing to hit the US working class for years. I hope that some of the inspiration rubs off on kiwi and Aussie workers! It could be just what is needed to kick start a much needed rank and file control of the unions in these countries.
It is vital that workers, especially in low-paid casualised jobs, are recruited to unions where they have rank and file control and can unite to build a strong labour movement. When union officials conduct turf wars over union members, it is the workers that will lose out. The poaching of one is an injury to all. Workers need to take action against poaching and for unity!
Air NZ: Ground staff turf wars
Both the EPMU (Engineers Union) and SFWU (Service & Food Workers Union) have members on the ground at NZ airports. Negotiators from both unions began talks with Air NZ management in August – September last year (2004).
Rex Jones of the EU stitched up a deal with Air NZ management back in December last year. Part of this deal is that the EU have agreed to work with Air NZ management on splitting the deal into 3 separate agreements; airports, cargo and retail, etc. After Jones’ promises to management, the EU members were offered an agreement which included backpay (or a bonus). This deal excluded members of the SFWU.
The bureaucratic style of negotiation goes on behind the backs of union members. The EPMU negotiation team stitched up a deal without informing members about what conditions they would lose in the deal. Then the EPMU take the offer to the whole membership.
This style takes the power away from union members and plays up the role of union officials as ‘great leaders’. We say ‘All power to the members’. Members must be fully informed of the progress of negotiations throughout negotiations. This means regular meetings of the membership and the negotiation team and members on the negotiation team. We support the right of members to dismiss and replace non performing delegates or officials.
The SFWU were after at least as good a deal as the EPMU, but with no loss of conditions. They were frustrated by Air NZ management’s lack of negotiation. Air NZ would not offer them the same deal as the EPMU. So the SFWU took strike action. During that strike the EU members continued to work! A divided strike was much less effective at impacting on the bosses business.
ERA adjudication
The SFWU failed to get a deal with Air NZ and went to the Employment Relations Authority for adjudication. SFWU continued to try to get as good a deal as the EPMU, but Air NZ implied that the EPMU was more deserving. ANZ told the adjudicator that they gave the EPMU members a “bonus” (as backpay) because the EPMU was more willing to improve efficiency and productivity (for the bosses) and to make changes and split the contract (into business units).
Class Struggle condemns the actions of the EPMU; bureaucratic dealing, settling first and promoting their “brand” of union above other unions. By doing so the EPMU has undermined working class solidarity.
Turf wars at Casino
Another turf war is going on at the Skycity casino where the SFWU succeeded in unionising most of the workforce. Now Unite officials (supposedly a union for the low paid, unorganised and unemployed workers) have moved into actively recruiting at the casino.
Unite officials have poached SFWU members. A Unite leaflet directly compares fees with the SFWU and then provides a form to send to Skycity payroll, for joining Unite and quitting the SFWU. The West Auckland branch of Unite! condemns those Unite officials’ actions.
All unionists must strongly condemn these actions of Unite officials poaching at the Skycity site. We call for the resignation of the official(s) responsible. Unfortunately most union rules do not allow members to dump rotten officials. Workers need to reclaim control over their unions and change the rules to let workers dump rotten officials.
Takeovers
We have heard that the EPMU is having secret talks with other unions, with the aim of amalgamation. This is another way to recruit members through takeovers. We call on those unions in talks to take proposals back to their members, and for the members to vote on which union they wish to join.
Working class answers to turf wars
Ban poaching! Members must regain control of the unions so they can dump rotten union officials who refuse to work for the benefit of the working class as a whole, and elect delegates and officials who are accountable to and recallable by the membership.
This means fighting for democratic, militant unions that are capable of acting independently of the state and its labour law ‘leg-irons’ which are all designed to make unions work within the bosses’ laws.
To do this we recommend workers stay with their union, and put up a real fight for their demands and for working class solutions, within their union. Only after attempts to raise demands within their own union, have got nowhere, should workers consider dumping one union for another.
End turf wars and unite to fight the employers for better wages and conditions. When workers are divided and fighting each other within different unions, this allows the bosses to screw down wages and conditions by playing unions off against each other.
We call for maximum unity among workers:
· MUCAs (Multi-Union Collective Agreements).
· MECAs (Multi-Employer Collectives)
· All union members to vote on agreements.
· All up meetings – all union members meet to discus the progress of negotiations and offers.
· Open the books: show what the union owns and union officials’ salaries.
· Fighting funds that are used to support striking workers.
· Set wages of union staff at the average wage of workers.
· Allow unemployed workers to be members of the union at reduced rates.
From Class Struggle 60 March-April 2005
