Information Technology and the rise of New Zealand’s modern servant class

by O’Shay Muir

Five years on from the height of the global financial crises in 2008 there has been much talk in the media of what is being referred to as the jobless recovery (http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/business-mood-turns-upbeat-%E2%80%93-its-jobless-recovery-wb-134532). During the crises business learnt how to better manage and organise their labour force more effectively, learning how to do more with less. This improved organisation of labour combined with greater investment in technology has led to what many experts believe is a jobless recovery, greatly affecting middle class jobs (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10861554).  One of the main drivers behind this phenomenon has been vast improvements in computer technology, most especially computer software, with many experts noting that such technological advancements are replacing human labour at a pace never before witnessed in history (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10861554).

Technology replacing human labour is nothing new, however, most especially under capitalism.  One of the best ways to understand this phenomenon is to use Marx’s concept of relative surplus-value. In volume one of Capital, Marx notes that there are two ways in which capitalists can increase their rate of surplus-value. The first is absolute surplus-value, which involves a lengthening of the working day and the second is relative surplus-value, which involves improved organisation of the labour process and investment in new/better technologies to increase production, allowing one to produce at a lower cost than the competition. While both, especially relative surplus-value, give bosses a competitive advantage for an initial period of time, sooner or later the competition will catch on and what was once competitive advantage will become the new social average.

The other drawbacks are that the gains employers can make from absolute surplus-value are limited, as there are physical limits to how long workers can work, while the production of relative surplus-value leads to a fall in the rate of profit (see here).

While absolute surplus-value production has an obvious effect on workers’ well-being, Marx’s investigation into relative surplus-value indicated the impact that new technologies have on replacing

The poverty of the child poverty slogan

Poverty rates 1982-2012; the blue line is the key one as it tracks the percentage of incomes 60% and under the median income each year; taken from Treasury report, May 2012

by Don Franks

“Suffer the little children to come unto me,” Jesus said. 

This week, so does our prime minister .

Action on child poverty is tipped to be a surprise package in the Budget  next Thursday. Children who aren’t fed become victims and the Government has to deal with that, John Key reckons.

Last Monday Key said although National would not back Mana leader Hone Harawira’s “feed the kids” member’s bill, they might make a move on food in schools.

Key pointed to his state of the nation speech in 2007 and the Government’s support for KidsCan, Fonterra’s milk in schools programme and an extension to the fruit in schools scheme as signals he backed such moves in partnership with business.

Today Key said the Government was looking at the broader issues of

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday

. . . but not in New Zealand at present

by Colin Clarke

The celebration of the 1st of May as workers day has a strong and proud tradition all around the world since the nineteenth century. It was the one day of the year when workers could stand up and say ‘we are many, they are few’. Alexander Shliapnikov, in On the Eve of 1917, tells how, when he lived and worked in London before the Russian revolution, he would always take May Day off and the next day be asked by his fellow workers if he was ill. He would then explain the significance of workers’ day to them.

The best May Day march I have been on was the first May Day during the 1984-1985 British miners’ strike. You could feel the power of the working class as it marched in solidarity with them. At the time, there was every chance they could win the strike and there was a real mood of optimism amongst the marchers. The event encapsulated the true meaning of the day as a celebration of the power of the working class, especially as there were other marches around the country, equally strong.

Unfortunately, most May Day marches I have been on have been very different; either passive trade union-organised events or local ones attended by

Pike River company’s safety breaches killed 29 workers – it’s official

On Monday (May 6), the Greymouth District Court judgement on Pike River Coal was released,  Judge Jane Farish having found the company (now in receivership) guilty on April 18 of nine health and safety failures, resulting in the mining disaster of November 2010.  Overall, she found “fundamental safety breaches” by Pike River Coal which “were causative of the explosion and subsequent deaths of the men who perished.”

Her 64-page judgement included the damning indictment that the mine drilling rig’s methane sensor, which is supposed to be checked weekly, hadn’t actually been checked for four and a half months.  The Labour Department investigation into the disaster found its most likely cause was a roof fall which drove methane into the mine.  This ignited, causing the explosion which snuffed out the lives of twenty-nine workers.

Whenever methane levels reached 1.25 percent of the air in the mine equipment was supposed to shut down, but on November 19, 2010 the drilling rig’s methane sensor was faulty but the rig was kept operating.  Inadequate monitoring of gas levels, said the Farish judgement, “contributed significantly” to the explosion.  Indeed methane levels above 1.25% had occurred no less than 13 times in the 25 days leading up to the fatal explosion.  In just the week before it, explosive levels of methane had been reached five times!

As we noted in an article on this blog last November, “three years before the explosions the potential danger of

May Day in Iran: workers defy regime

Yassamine Mather reports on the growing politicisation of the Iranian workers’ movement

In a week where news from Iran is dominated by speculation about who will or will not stand as a candidate in the country’s forthcoming presidential elections and whether the Guardian Council will allow Mohammad Khatami (the last ‘reformist’ president) or Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei (president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s anointed successor) to participate; in a week where Iran’s press and media are consumed by speculation about ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani after he announced he is not ruling himself out as a candidate in the June 14 poll; in a week when a group of pro-US regime change supporters, the newly formed Iran National Council, elected Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah, as their spokesperson, the more astute sections of the bourgeois press were drawing attention to a serious player in Iran’s economic and political scene: the working class.

The US journal Foreign Policy writes: “As Iran’s economy continues to deteriorate, the labour movement is a key player to watch because of its ability to pressure the Islamic Republic through protests and strikes. . .  And thus far, Iranian labourers have not joined the opposition green movement en masse. But the economic pains caused by the Iranian regime’s mismanagement, corruption and international sanctions have dealt serious blows to worker wages, benefits and job security – enough reason for Iranian labourers to organise and oppose the regime. . .”¹

The journal refers to the role of Ahmadinejad’s massive privatisation programme and the ending of subsidies as policies that have

Irish trade union members vote ‘no’ to austerity deal – lessons for NZ workers

by Philip Ferguson

At the start of this week trade union members in the south of Ireland voted to reject Croke Park 11, a deal promoted by leaders of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in partnership with the Fine Gael/Labour coalition government in Dublin.  The current coalition, like the Fianna Fail/Green coalition that preceded it, has sought to make southern Irish workers pay for the financial crisis of Irish banks and the meltdown of the so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy.

For several decades the bulk of the union leadership there has pushed tripartite deals with the bosses and the state, a ‘partnership’ model which is often held up by New Zealand trade union leaders as worth emulating.  But these tripartite deals did not deliver to workers even during the ‘good times’ of the ‘boom’ periods in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Now the boom has turned to bust the partnership model has simply locked unions into accepting responsibility for the financial crisis and agreeing to the austerity measures demanded by the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, known in the south of Ireland as the Troika.

From demobilisation to anger

The leadership of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (the equivalent of the CTU in New Zealand) has engaged in some token rhetoric about ‘sharing the  burden’ of the crisis and they have marched workers up and down the hill and then sent them home a couple of times.  But, in general, they have acted as faithful lieutenants of the state and capital, serving more to demoralise workers than mobilise them.  Over time, the protests against austerity have become smaller and smaller and the main opposition to austerity measures has been a left-led campaign outside the unions against government attempts to impose a household tax.

For instance, on Saturday, April 13, just a few days before the trade union votes, 10,000 people took part in the latest march organised by the Campaign Against Home and Water Taxes.  One of the main groups involved in this campaign is the socialist-republican group éirígí and they had one of the largest blocs on the march, with scores of their activists and supporters behind a banner which read ‘1913-2013 A Century of Resistance!’. The éirígí bloc was awash with colour as participants carried tricolour, starry plough and éirígí flags, as well as placards declaring ‘Austerity isn’t Working – People of Ireland Rise Up!’ and ‘Fight Home and Water Taxes!’ whilst chanting ‘Fine Gael/ Labour hear us clear – We don’t want your home tax here!’ ‘No way – we won’t pay!’ and ‘Fine Gael/ Labour- Out, Out, Out!’ (For a report on this march, see here.)

Now, union members have had the chance to render their verdict on the collaboration of many of their leaders with the austerity programme of the main capitalist parties.  They have clearly had enough of

Teachers march in thousands

by Daphna Whitmore

John Key, you’ve got mail… Education’s not for sale!

Teachers’ protest Auckland 13 April 2013

Hey hey, where’s our pay?

Our schools, Our kids, Our future

Invest in the future, Invest in our kids

When education is under attack, Stand up, fight back!

Primary school teachers took to the streets yesterday in a nationwide protest organised by their union the NZEI. Anger at workloads, the Novopay debacle, the plan to establish charter schools and lack of resources got the teachers marching. In Christchurch there is also anger at school mergers and closures. (Earlier this year some were ready to strike.)

TVNZ put the protest numbers at 4000 in Auckland, one thousand in Wellington and several hundred in Christchurch, plus hundreds more in towns around the country.

The NZEI is concerned the government has a privatising agenda for education, citing the plan to set up charter schools. While it’s important to fight an erosion of public education a big privatisation programme just isn’t on the cards right now. National wants to hold the political centre and knows that privatising education would be hugely unpopular. The decision to set up some charter schools is more of a concession to coalition partner Act than a full blown agenda for education.

E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class – 50th anniversary

by Keith Flett

It is 50 years since the publication of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class. Published by Gollancz in the autumn of 1963, it was paper-backed by Penguin in 1968 and remains in print today. The original paperback cover, a painting of a collier from 1814, clay pipe in mouth, walking stick in hand tramping for work, remains an iconic image of the origins of the modern working class. The impact and influence of the book have been worldwide, despite the fact that the paperback edition weighs in at 958 pages. The book set the terms of reference for much labour history that followed.

Chapter headings such as “Members Unlimited”, a reference to the London Corresponding Society of the 1790s that moved to a then unknown open and democratic model of organising, or “The Free-Born Englishman” now hold their place in labour history itself. Thompson looks at the range of influences there were on the development of the English working class, in particular religion, and touches on the levels of exploitation and living standards that underwrote the political protests of the period from the 1790s to the 1830s, where the book ends as the Chartist movement starts. Thompson did not write about Chartism for several reasons.

Firstly, the book was already nearly a thousand pages long and late in submission to the publisher. Secondly, his partner, the late socialist historian Dorothy Thompson, was an acknowledged expert in this area.

In the second half of the book Thompson looks at “The Working-Class Presence”, writing in great detail about the range of working class responses to the development of market capitalism: from millenarians who thought the

1951 waterfront dispute – some questions from a reader

Various folks here might like to respond to Richard’s questions, so I’m putting them up as a post:

I have read lately various materials regarding the 1951 Waterside Dispute and paid special note towards the two articles which address the topic (http://rdln.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/behind-the-1951-waterfront-lockout/) and (http://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/jock-barnes/). Both of these articles have left me with a deep impression of the events which occurred during this dark period of New Zealand history and also left me with several questions, that is How do Marxists see the relevance of the 1951 Waterside Dispute today? What do Marxists think of the actions of labour organizations such as the Labour Party and the Federation of Labour who did not support the Waterfront Workers? Were the Marxists at all in the vanguard of the Watersiders as the Government of the time would claim through newspapers and radio?

I apologise in advance for these questions which may appear simple, but I am a secondary student conducting research into this area and it would be greatly appreciated to gain a better understanding of the dispute. Note that these aren’t questions given to me by any teacher but ones that I have personally from reading the two articles on your blog.

Richard Liu

Neither private capitalism nor state capitalism, but workers’ power: what Solid Energy and Mainzeal reveal

Spring Creek miners learn that what many on the left call “our asset” is going to take away their jobs

by Philip Ferguson

Early last month we reported on the collapse of Mainzeal, this country’s third largest construction company (see here), whilst last August and September we reported on the woes of state-owned enterprise Solid Energy and the sizeable layoffs that were underway (see here and here).

What has happened with both companies is remarkably similar: news reports record bad investments, poor management decisions, miss-estimation of future prices and price fluctuations, and a rather extravagant corporate culture.  A glance at the boards of the two companies also reveal an interlocking collection of state and private sector personnel on each.

We’ve covered Mainzeal in some depth, so let’s look more now at Solid Energy.  It’s boss as things began going down the gurgler was Don Elder, who was on a $1.34 million a year salary and who created a core of highly-paid executives as part of a typical corporate culture.  In 2000, the top salary in Solid Energy had only been $190,000.  By 2012, not only was Elder earning – well, being paid rather than earning! – seven times that amount, but there were 472 company employees on $100,000 and over.  Even as the company was sinking further and further into debt, millions was being paid out in bonuses.  (And keep in mind that this process was ongoing under the last Labour government; it