Fair Pay Agreements: Well, they would call them that, wouldn’t they?

Labour’s key concern is keeping in with business and making it more profitable (Photo: Thomas Coughlan)

by Don Franks

Sometime next year your pay and working conditions may be completely rejigged by the government.

For better or worse?

The fine print is yet to be penned. Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway has announced that a 10-person working group would report back by the end of 2018 on the design of new workplace laws setting minimum terms and conditions for workers in the same industry or occupation. The resulting terms will be called Fair Pay Agreements.

Through strike action Unite has won significant improvements in pay and conditions for fast food workers. This, not corporatism, is the way forward for workers. Photo: Unite

What’s prompted this new course?

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has stated that employers approached the government to express their interest in sector-wide agreements, because they wanted a level playing field when bidding against competitors who currently have lower labour costs.

“This isn’t just something that employees have been asking for so I want to correct the record on that,” she said.

What employees have been actually asking for, or rather, demanding, in sectors where they’re organised in unions is

Advertisements

Wasting away in Jacindaville

by Don Franks

Nibbling pavlova, warm fuzzies all over
Hasn’t it been a great honeymoon
But there’s still shit in the river – old pensioners shiver
And Auckland house prices aren’t coming down anytime soon

Wasting away in Jacindaville
Waiting for the baby’s arrival
Some people claim a new dawn’s in the frame
But I know it’s still – just about survival

They hosted Obama, without any drama
Went over and had a wee bow to the Queen

Hillary Clinton the woman warmonger

by Daphna Whitmore

Hillary the woman politician and smasher of glass ceilings breezed into Auckland this week. The media coverage has ranged from gushy snippets on baby boutique shopping and gift exchanges with the pregnant Prime Minister to shallow takes on not seeing the real Clinton. That comes after a week of Royal Baby story headlines, so no surprises from the mainstream media.

Jacinda Ardern and Hillary Clinton swapped baby gifts. No mention of troops in Iraq?

No surprises either from the three thousand people who paid good money to hear Clinton speak at what was essentially a book launch.  While they were lapping up the cliches about daring to compete and tweeting “feeling really inspired”, none seemed to reflect on Clinton’s actual record.

Not Clinton the hard done by faux feminist, but the establishment leader in the US imperialist-militarist system. Where was the commentary beyond children’s books and buzzy bees? Has Hillary the hawk, the supporter of US military adventures in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo been forgotten? How about the Hillary Clinton who voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq in 2002, and promoted the weapons of mass destruction propaganda? Even later by 2007, when the whole world knew no such weapons were ever found Clinton supported continuing the war. “We cannot lose sight of our very real strategic national interests in this region” she said.

Jacinda and the Elephant

Pic: Rosa Woods/Stuff

by Don Franks

Delivering her pre-Budget speech to a Business New Zealand audience, Labour prime minister Ardern said business confidence was “the elephant in the room”.

Business confidence has apparently been low since the new government took office. A business confidence survey conducted by NZIER found businesses had become pessimistic about economic outlook for the first time in two years after Labour assumed office.

There is no need to worry.

Over the last hundred and two years, Labour has demonstrated a loyalty to capitalism that can’t really be faulted. During the 1951 waterfront workers lockout, possibly the most tense class standoff after the land wars in New Zealand history, Labour delivered for the class they have always answered to. “Labour is neither for nor against the watersiders,” party leader Walter (later Sir Walter) Nash declared.

The pattern of behaviour continued in later years, all down the line.

Following the stock market crash of October, 1987 capitalism was in trouble. State-owned enterprises started

Why Labour is going along with Trump

by Don Franks 

Last year, US ambassador Scott Brown clashed with our then prime minister Bill English, who’d described Trump’s threat to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea as “not helpful”.

In a TVNZ interview on October 15th , Scott Brown complained: “With respect to the prime minister, who I do have a lot of respect for, people either love the president’s tweets or they hate the president’s tweets. But this is how the president communicates and reaches his base, and it’s effective for him… I would refer your viewers to a recent Washington Post article that came out on October 11th saying that the president’s policy, after years of basically languishing, are actually working”. Scott Brown went on at some length to make it clear that in future he expected more compliance from New Zealand politicians.

Since the governing Labour/NZ First coalition has been going, the US ambassador has not needed to caution our government on matters of foreign policy. It would seem the lesson has been taken. 

Soon after becoming prime minister, Ardern made it clear that her government would be prepared to support an attack on North Korea. Her statement was hedged around with talk of negotiations and UN resolutions but it was unambiguous. Military support was a last resort, but a resort no less. And there was no comment from her about Trumps’s continuing bellicose rhetoric being “unhelpful”.

On April 14th this year Jacinda Ardern declared that New Zealand “accepted” the US-British-French missile strikes on Syria. Ardern told reporters that her government had been informed about the attack hours in advance.

Asked by reporters if she would send troops to Syria, Ardern did not rule it out, responding: “That’s a hypothetical. We haven’t been asked.” 

Ardern firmed up her pro-war response after meeting with Merkel

She said she would discuss the war with French, German and British leaders during an upcoming visit to Europe. When later conferring with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Ardern firmed up her pro-war response, now saying she “utterly accepted” the need for attacks on Syria.

Words that hold back workers

by Don Franks

It happened again yesterday, on Morning Report. Air New Zealand boss Christopher Luxton airily deflected the interviewer’s awkward question: “No, Suzie, Im not going there because its commercially sensitive.” 

This refusal to reveal how much US president Obama’s visit cost the company was accepted, because “commercial sensitivity” is among the magic words and phrases capitalism uses to protect its interests. 

Cowboys in the boardroom

By Don Franks

NZ Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff has just published an interesting piece : “New Zealand needs to change how it does business.”

Richard notes that over the last 30 years, “the share of the economy going to working people has fallen from over 50 per cent to just over 40 per cent, cutting $20 billion  a year from pay packets.”

The union leader sees this having occurred because:

“… too many decisions about the work we do nowadays are made outside of employment law altogether.

“You see it for the people who are pushed to become dependent contractors and take all of the risk and little of the reward – that’s tens of thousands of drivers, utilities technicians, and construction workers over the last decade alone.

“You see it in the boardroom level decisions to re-tender whole workforces on lower terms and conditions by changing contractors (even though they end up largely employing the same people).