by Romany Tasker-Poland and Shomi Yoon
Union hard / Wahine Toa: strong unions are built by women ready to fight, like the heroes of the Meatworkers lockouts at Talley
We write as socialists and as women who are proud trade union members, active in building our unions and the wider movement. Recent comments by Erin Polaczuk, national secretary of the the Public Services Association, in the Listener distort our trade union history and close off our future. Polaczuk claims the union movement is “smarter now” than it was in the 1970s, that the “feminisation of the union movement has changed things”. “We are not guys coming in and having a punch-up,” she claims. Strikes are a “last resort” in this “mature era”.
Recent articles
The housing crisis hits – again
by Shomi Yoon As the academic year starts for tens of thousands of university students, the frenzy of looking for accommodation begins again. This time however, it’s worse than any year before. There is a shortage of rentals. Trade Me reported a drop in availability of 70% in December 2017. Landlords are milking this woeful […]
Cannabis reform frustrated
by Martin Gregory Parliament’s so-called “progressive” majority fails to support Swarbrick’s medicinal cannabis reform Within two days Parliament has considered two Bills on medicinal cannabis. The net result falls far below the reform of cannabis prohibition that the public wants and had a right to expect. An extremely timid Government Bill passed its […]
Employment law changes show the limits of reformism
by Martin Gregory On 25 January the Labour-led government announced in outline its proposed changes to employment law. We will have to wait for the wording of a draft Bill in February to see the details and any devils lurking there. If the reader detects a level of distrust on my part this […]
Trump, fire and fury
by Andy Raba The arrival of Donald Trump into the Whitehouse has escalated tensions on the Korean peninsula. In recent months, Trump has goaded the North Korean regime on an almost daily basis. In August, he threatened to unleash “fire, fury and frankly power” if the North does not halt their nuclear weapons programme. […]
Abortion should come out of the Crimes Act
by Shomi Yoon Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said these words in a televised leaders debate in the lead up to the elections. She is the first leader to bring up the issue of decriminalising abortion in a forum so close to an election. It came as a breath of fresh political air. Not because […]
There are no white people
By Dougal McNeill A pleasing irony to end the year: enrolments by non-Māori in Māori language courses in the Wellington region have surged recently, encouraged in part it seems by the reactionary campaign against the use of Te Reo Māori on Radio New Zealand. It’s a welcome sign. Socialists support any and all efforts to […]
David McNally: from global slump to Trump
Long-time Canada-based activist and socialist David McNally is in New Zealand for both an academic conference and a socialist meeting at the University of Otago. Guy McCallum reports on McNally’s first New Zealand public talk: The Global Financial Crisis in 2008, one of many crises under capitalism, has led to austerity for the working […]
We Support the RMTU
by Romany Tasker-Poland The Wellington picket for the RMTU’s 24-hour strike on Thursday drew a steady stream of support. Alongside RMTU members, some of whom were at the picket from 6am to 6pm, unionists from the Tramways union, the PSA, E Tu, NZNO, PPTA, TEU and other unions turned up to tautoko the strike.
From the archive
Anzac Day: Against the Carnival of Reaction
On Anzac Day 1967, at the height of New Zealand involvement in the ‘American War’ in Vietnam, with New Zealand troops taking part in the suppression of the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation, members of the Progressive Youth Movement in Christchurch tried to lay a wreath following the dawn service in memory of those killed by imperialism in Vietnam. They were arrested and charged with disorderly behaviour. Feminists a decade later faced down a media-driven public outcry when they laid wreaths to the victims of sexual violence during war.
Lest we forget? It’s more like lest we remember. Anzac Day serves as a carnival of nationalist reaction, a day of public ritual aimed at promoting forgetting: forgetting the real legacy of New Zealand imperialism and militarism in favour of a sentimental nationalism, an anti-political celebration of national unity. [Read More…]
