Aotearoa: 'Clean Start' campaign

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.

From Class Struggle 66 April/May 2006

International MayDay, One Class! One Fight! Occupy, it’s our right!

On this day ever since the hanging of four workers in Chicago in 1886, arising out of a strike for the 8 hour day, workers around the world have come together in marches, rallies and strikes, to celebrate their common membership of an international working class that continues to struggle against all its class enemies for its emancipation from the chains of capitalism.

The struggle continues because international capitalism cannot survive without a constant increase in the exploitation and oppression of every worker who produces its profits. In the process it destroys resources, steals land, closes factories and expels workers from production. Most destructive of all, it recruits jobless workers to go to war and invade countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to seize their scarce resources.

When workers resist and try to reclaim their countries, their resources, schools and factories, they are asserting their right to own and control the means of production necessary for life. Here we can see the common factor behind all of these struggles; it is the spontaneous struggle of all those excluded from production or trapped in wage slavery, to assert their class independence and take control of the means of production to meet their basic survival needs.

Mayday 2006 Unite all the struggles around the world

Today many such struggles are taking place around the world. Peasants are fighting to retain or get land; factory workers are fighting to survive closures; women workers are fighting to keep their families together and against violence; young workers are fighting for an education, and decent jobs, a living wage and social rights. Unemployed recruited into imperialist armies or warlords militias are refusing to follow orders. Iraqis, Afghans, Africans, Melanesians, Colombians, etc. are resisting imperialist occupations and fighting for their national independence.

Peasants and agricultural workers in the Solomon Islands, in Bolivia and Brazil, India and China, Nigeria and South Africa, resist the removal of their land for capitalist agriculture, or extraction of oil, gas, timber or minerals etc. by the giant multinationals based in the imperialists countries. Many of these peasants are indigenous peoples who retain their own social structures and cultures. Their universal response to these attacks is to occupy the land.

Take the land, but join forces with workers and also take the trucks, the ports and the banks!


Industrial workers, whose wages and conditions deteriorate under the increasing exploitation forced on them by the IMF, World Bank and WTO, resist in many countries. In Latin America, around a third of the work-age population is without work, and another third lives in the ‘black’ economy of undocumented, super-exploited, dangerous, virtual slave labor. Where workers are cast out of production, their instinct is to occupy and continue production.

Turn the occupations into expropriations!

In the United States the 12 million undocumented ‘illegals’ have poured into the country from the South, West and East, and perform the most menial, dangerous and servile work. They are under immediate threat of being criminalised, arrested, deported, or turned into ‘guest’ workers regulated and repressed by Bush’s Department of Homeland Security. Wherever ‘illegals’ stand up and fightback, as they are doing today in the US, they are criminalized, deported or locked up in the Guantanamos of this world.

Long live the ‘illegal’ worker! We are all ‘illegals’!
Close down the Guantanamos!

Women workers continue to bear the brunt of the worst exploitation and oppression. On top of the burden of child care and support, women still do the low-paid, menial, insecure work. As the capitalist crisis of the 80s and 90s has shifted much industry from core capitalist states to the ‘third’ world, women have filled many such jobs in the maquiladores of Latin America, the shantytowns of Africa, and factory dormitories of China and India, and borne the brunt of family breakdown, rape and murder. Because of this women take the lead in struggles for land rights, indigenous rights, factory occupations, and human rights. They are asserting their right to break out of domestic slavery and to take ownership and control of the means of production.

Forward the woman worker!
Abolish domestic slavery!

Young workers are also among the most vulnerable, facing, unemployment, discrimination and ‘precarite’ - lack of job security. In December of last year the unemployed youth of the migrant communities in France rebelled against the police as the agents of capitalist repression. In March of this year university students, high school students and workers in auto, rail, and the state sector took to the streets to stop the latest reactionary labor law giving bosses’ freedom to hire and fire young workers. They occupied universities, schools, and blocked railways and roads to prove that they too can take over and control, if only symbolically for now, the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Occupy the schools and universities under student/worker control !
For free education to all!
 
Soldiers are workers or peasants in uniform, drafted to fight the wars of their bosses by killing and looting the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies. They are mainly poor, unemployed youth drawn from peasant, migrant, or stateless families. If these troops refused orders the capitalist military machine would disintegrate. In Bolivia, Venezuela and Iraq some ordinary ranks have mutinied against their officers and sided with the masses under attack.

For rank-and-file control of the military! For the formation of rank and file councils!
For workers' and peasants' militias!


Socialism is the only way out

Global capitalism in the 21st century is in a crisis in which the forces of production are being destroyed so that capitalists can continue to profit. Marx long ago predicted that capitalism would ultimately dig its own grave by creating a working class that would overthrow the private owners to claim social ownership of the forces of production.

This is where we are today. Peasants, factory workers, women workers, youth, conscripts; the majority are being cast out of production. This is what Marx and Engels meant in the Communist Manifesto when they raised the slogan: “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”! Despite all those doomsayers who claim that socialism is dead, or those wheeler-dealers who claim that capitalism can be reformed by ‘democratic’ , ‘humane’ politicians, the system has them all in its grip. The producing classes cannot survive by placing any hopes in reforming the system. This can only lead to further social destruction, climactic disaster and fascist barbarism.

The only solution for the worlds’ workers is to expropriate the means of production from the private owners for our own use. When we are excluded from production, or forced into slave labor, we must occupy and put the means of production under our own control. Where workers have done this as in Argentina and Venezuela, they have proved that bosses are superfluous.

We are one class; the working class, and one fight; the fight for socialism

Standing between workers and socialism are all the enemies of their class. They are those who seek to contain and divert the workers struggle to expropriate the capitalists into compromises, deals, and sellouts to save the bosses skins. These are the false friends of workers – the union officials who are paid by the bosses state to prevent workers from running unions democratically; the political parties funded by the bosses state with false names like ‘labor’ , ‘socialist’, ‘worker’ or 'communist', that promise workers, land, jobs, health and education, but instead cut jobs, wages and benefits to guarantee bosses good profits.

Today the most dangerous class enemies of all the peasant, wage slaves, women, youth, and conscripts, who are struggling to take control of the means of production, distribution and exchange, are those false ‘socialists’ who tell the workers to put their faith in strong leaders who can bring about socialism from ‘above’; in particular, those in the World Social Forum who look to Castro, Chavez and even Lula, to solve their problems for them.

No! To defeat the class collaborationist World Social Forum we must build a new revolutionary communist international. The only guarantee of socialism is the independent, armed organisation of our One Class! Peasants, factory workers, women, and youth workers, united in workers councils everywhere; and our One Fight! Turn occupations all into expropriations as the basis of a socialist planned world economy!

Communist Worker Group (NZ) Member of the Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction

From Class Struggle 66 April/May 2006

Asylum for Ahmed Zaoui, 'Terrorist' or not!

 
Green Party Foreign Affairs spokesperson Keith Locke went on Auckland 1ZB radio station recently to talk about the Ahmed Zaoui case. Locke correctly called for Zaoui to be granted asylum in New Zealand, but the arguments he used on behalf of Zaoui can only be criticised.

Locke defended Zaoui by comparing him to Helen Clark, saying “Helen Clark is known around the world as a peacemaker, and so is Ahmed Zaoui - throwing Ahmed in jail is just as absurd as throwing Helen in jail would be.” Locke went on to differentiate Zaoui from members of groups which use armed struggle against oppression - he contrasted Zaoui the man of peace with the Algerian armed resistance and with the IRA, saying “there's no excuse for violence, whatever the circumstances.”

Yet the modern IRA was built originally as a self-defence force, and fought against Military occupation by an imperialist power, and the armed groups in Algeria are resisting a military dictatorship backed by French and British imperialism. Obviously there are many political criticisms that can be made of both the IRA and the Algerian Islamists, but equally obviously both are national liberation movements with wide support and many just demands. To support their suppression, as Locke implicitly does, is reactionary in the extreme.

What Locke's 'defence' of Zaoui actually does is (a) whitewash Helen Clark's and Labour's role in the ongoing War of Terror, and (b) reinforce the efforts of the White House to run together terrorism and national liberation struggles (think of Colombia, where Bush is calling the leftist guerrillas 'narcoterrorists', or the Philippines, where the Communist Party's New People's Army and the large Muslim insurgent groups are tarred with the brush of Abu Sayaff and Al Qaeda). We should support Locke when he calls for asylum to be given to Zaoui, but we need to accompany our support with criticism of the continuing rightward drift of the Greens and some other parts of the peace movement.

We have to take aim not only at the surface absurdities of Green and liberal arguments, but also at that their underlying view that the state and armed forces of Western countries can be 'turned' by the left and made to act for progressive ends in the Third World.

It is this underlying belief which has many Green supporters happily going along with their party's support for the invasion of the Solomons, and unconcerned about the way their party jumped into bed with the emerging Euro-imperialist bloc by backing a Franco-German occupation of Iraq under the banner of the UN back in March.

Trapped in their reformist illusions, the Greens and organisations like Peace Movement Aotearoa tend to hold back the anti-war movement by advocating forms of protest designed to 'pressure' Labour to act progressively on international issues. PMA, for instance, is now calling for letters to be sent to Helen Clark demanding the release of Zaoui.

The truth is that Labour will never be pressured into changing direction and dropping its support for US and European imperialism. Labour is dedicated to administering capitalism, and at the dawn of the twenty first century wars of recolonisation and rollbacks of civil liberties are the survival mechanism of capitalism. The War of Terror is a necessity, not some mistake a few well-worded letters can persuade honourable politicians to put right. We need organized workers' action, not symbolic pressure protests, to counter the War of Terror and help its victims like Ahmed Zaoui.

The absurdity of the Green-liberal position on the capitalist state and army was shown up by another part of Locke's performance on 1ZB. Locke condemned the SIS as an untrustworthy player in the Zaoui case, pointing out the closeness of the organisation's ties to the CIA and MI5. Where, though, does Locke think the information being used to justify the invasion of the Solomons comes from? If the SIS is not to be trusted over the facts concerning one man, how can it be trusted over the fate of a nation?

Locke also pointed to the role of French security services in helping the Algerian regime demonise opponents like Zaoui. Of course, France has a long history of acting against the interests of Algerians - in the 1950s and early 60s it killed tens of thousands of Algerians in a futile effort to defeat an independence movement in its biggest colony.

Closer to home, the French state has an appalling record in Pacific colonies like New Caledonia, where it killed a quarter of the Kanak population in the nineteenth century, and French Polynesia, where it tested nuclear bombs as recently as 1994. And then, of course, there's the role of French security services in the Rainbow Warrior bombing in 1985. Why, given this record, does Locke think that France offered a progressive alternative solution to the crisis in Iraq last March? Why did he trust the French army and security services over the Pentagon and the CIA? Why does he continue to advocate Franco-German occupation as preferable to US occupation? It is questions like these that rank and file Greens should be asking. 

From Class Struggle, 52 September-October 2003

AUSTRALIA: FREE THE ASYLUM SEEKERS! ABOLISH IMMIGRATION LAWS!

Open the borders!

The Australian government’s racist treatment of its asylum seekers, locking them up in detention centres in the desert like Woomera for years or bribing Pacific politicians to take them to remote Pacific atolls, has raised a storm of protest by the inmates escalating recently into hunger strikes and suicide attempts. We argue for ‘open borders’ to refugees.

Australia and most of the Western states are trying to limit the rising flow of refugees fleeing from countries devastated by wars, famines or genocide caused by imperialist exploitation and oppression. This is nothing new since the Western powers and their white-settler colonies have always had racist immigration policies that restrict access and discriminate against non-European migrants as ‘second class’ citizens. Now the US war on terrorism has added to the plight of these refugees by deliberately provoking fears that they may be terrorists.

Most of the detainees as Woomera in Australia are Afghan and Iraqi, victims of decades of wars and political repression unleashed by imperialist policies. Yet when the Yankee war on terrorism was unleashed on Afghanistan on October 7, Australia suspended the processing of Afghan refugees on the grounds that some might be members of the Taliban or al Queda! The bosses in Australia don’t normally need an excuse to be racist, but this was a great ‘opportunity’ (Bushes words) to delay processing and even talk of returning these migrants home.

What is the solution?

The Australian state is a miserable US toady and will not bow to public pressure to release or grant increased numbers of refugees legitimate migrant status. Both Liberal and Labor parties have already shown in the case of the Tampa scandal that they are prepared to compete for votes by playing on the fears of Australian workers about migrants taking their jobs. It is pointless appealing to the morality or ‘mateship’ of Howard or Crean, or to international agencies to intervene.

It is necessary for Australian workers to demand that their unions act to strike against Australia’s racist immigration policy to free the asylum seekers and to allow them to stay as new migrants. We have to reject the plan to return the migrants to their ‘home’ countries. These have been desolated by wars and sanctions and cannot possibly relocate the millions of migrants who have fled abroad. Instead we have to prove to Australian, NZ and other Western workers that it is in their interests to fight for open borders.

Australian workers must see that it is in their interests to demand the right to go where they like without borders and immigration laws. They already do it inside Australia, and many do it to other countries. Europeans were boat people at some point in history. Only the Aborigines could walk from South East Asia. So we all originated as economic migrants traveling around looking for work or sustenance.

Boat people yesterday and today.

The situation with today’s boat people is different yet the same. It is different because today people are refugees from imperialism’s destruction of their countries economy caused by sucking out the wealth that people need to live on, or by unleashing wars or sanctions to remove ‘rogue’ regimes and put West-friendly governments in power. The same, because it is economic and/or political survival that motivates people to migrate, not the desire for a holiday in the Australian outback or Pacific Atoll, six weeks in a leaky boat or the back of a freezer truck.

This freedom of movement is taken for granted by the capitalists who can buy their passage wherever they choose. Immigration laws in Australia, NZ and the ‘West’ favour those with ‘assets’ or skills to contribute to the development of economic growth. Workers or poor peasants, on the other hand, especially those from Asia, Africa or Latin America, are not free to travel unless they have a necessary skill in demand. The result is that they have to go through a series of racist barriers where their right to freedom of movement is determined by whether or not the bosses can make a profit from their labour.

This is why immigration quotas are used like a tap, turned on when there is a demand for labour, and turned off when that demand dries up. Instead of the bosses being seen as the problem because they want to regulate the international flow of labour, it is workers who are branded overstayers when their labour becomes superfluous. We say, put an end to the bosses’ borders! Demand the right of freedom of movement for labour!

Workers’ Government

Of course we cannot demand open borders under workers’ control unless we have ways and means of making this possible.
To provide jobs and welfare for migrants we have to tax the rich to pay for these. When they object we have to occupy their factories and run them under workers control. When they attempt to jail us we have to be able to defend ourselves. The only way we can do this is to fight for a Workers’ Government that is based on workers power and is able to plan the economy to meet the needs of all workers rather than serve the narrow class interests of bosses’ profits.

Strike for the right of freedom of movement!
Strike to free the asylum seekers!
Open Borders under workers control!

From Class Struggle 43 February/March 2002