direct action gets results!

From cleaners to casino workers, beneficiaries to students, people around the country are proving that there's nothing like good old direct action to get what you want from the bosses. Anarchists have always advocated direct action because it encourages people to work together cooperatively and enables them to take their grievances directly to the people responsible rather than rely on intermediaries like politicians and union bureaucrats. For this reason, direct action is incredibly empowering for those involved. What's more, as the stories below show, it works!

Victory for sky city casino workers

Recently hundreds of workers at Auckland's Sky City Casino took direct action against their employers by refusing to work overtime until they were rewarded for it with overtime rates.

Management at the casino has for a long time made ad hoc requests for workers to add a sixth day to their week; sick of not getting overtime for this, workers exploited the clause in their contract that allows them to decline overtime, forcing crises upon management during the casino's busy weekends.

Eventually, management gave in and agreed to pay overtime. These workers, who organised their actions democratically and independently of the off-worksite leadership of their union, have shown the viability of the direct action alternative advocated in Thr@ll and other places as an antidote to the half-hearted initiatives of the CTU (Council of Trade Unions) leadership and its supporters close to the government. It's important that we spread the news of this victory for direct action.

CONTENTS

neo-liberal globalisation and
the tino rangatiratanga
movement

mayday 2001

water bill payment strike

direct action gets results!

glimpses of an alternative
society (part 3)

pga aotearoa

waterfront dispute continues

wage

Desperate measures pay off for student

A Wellington student who broke a window and chained himself to a pillar at a WINZ office last November was discharged without conviction recently after a district court judge said he acted after "extreme provocation".

David Gibb, a student and father of five, took the action after WINZ refused to pay his student allowance for more than a month. He said he could no longer feed his children properly.

"I expressed very clearly how desperate we were and when I spoke to the next person it was a case of expressing it all over again," said Gibb.

WINZ accepted it did not manage Gibb's case properly, but in a statement said, "Although we have offered an apology we don't condone Mr Gibb's behaviour, which created fear and apprehension among staff and clients at the time."

It will take Gibb two years to pay the $2,000 bill for the damaged window, but he says his protest allowed him to pay the bills the next day and keep the power on.

Locked out cleaners win

About 100 cleaners at Wellington hospitals were locked out in early March. Spotless Services, which employs the cleaners, is an Australian company which has a reputation for union busting. Spotless was attempting to reduce job security. The cleaners disagreed, and so Spotless locked them out.

However, the company did not bargain for the reception it received. There were spirited, noisy, well-attended and well-supported daily pickets outside Wellington hospitals; there was widespread solidarity from workers inside the hospitals, who made life difficult for the scab labour Spotless brought in to replace the cleaners. As a result, the lockout was lifted after a few days.

Spotless and the cleaners reached a deal in which the cleaners gained a 4% pay increase and retained job security.

S26 trial update

Two of the activists on trial in Wellington as a result of last September's S26 protest have had the charges against them withdrawn. One had been charged with wilful damage for placing a sticker on a bank window. The other had been charged with disorderly behaviour likely to incite violence for informing a policeman, "We have a right to protest, fucker!"

Six others still face a range of charges, including trespass, assaulting a police officer and escaping police custody.

The prosecution wound up its case on April 4. The defence lawyer has asked that the judge dismiss the case, partly due to the lack of disclosure by the police of key evidence. The judge is due to give her decision on whether the case should proceed or not on May 16.