Mana Coach Services Strike

On August 31st drivers employed by Mana Coach Services went on strike at the depot outside Paraparaumu Station, an hour north of Wellington. The workers took the strike action after the company refused to budge on wage rates, despite the Tramways Union reaching a settlement of 11.5% over two years with two other companies in Wellington. Besides wages, atrocious work conditions were a trigger for the strike. These include the expectation that drivers work 14 hour shifts for 13 days in a row and Mana boss Geoff Norman recently firing a driver who arrived 10 minutes late for work due to having spent the night at hospital attending to his sick son.

The picket at the depot was attended by about 20 people. Aside from tramways affiliated drivers, solidarity was given by the National Distribution Union, Rail Maritime Transport Union workers, AWSM and members of the public. The picketers were in good spirits as passing cars tooted support and Norman was heckled via a megaphone while skulking around the depot. At one point the RMTU members blocked the exit to the depot, causing a scab-driven bus to turn around and leave by an alternative exit.

It is true that the numbers involved in the picket were small and Mana was able to largely keep operating. However, the active solidarity given to the workers by those in other unions and groups and the positive attitude displayed by all, are an example of the kind of fighting spirit that can still be undertaken even in the current difficult climate.

Strike Interview

On August 31st AWSM interviewed Nick Kelly, President of the Tramways Union during a picket of bus drivers employed by Mana Coach Services in Paraparaumu, north of Wellington.

AWSM: Can you explain the background to your current action?

Kelly: We’re on strike today because this employer has been bullying its employees for far too long. We’ve had them threatening people, that is threatening not to give them full time shifts if they don’t quit the union.They are sacking people because they turn up 10 minutes late to work, when their kid was in hospital. They refused to pay overtime rates, they refused to give drivers control over their hours of work, so they’re trying to make them work 14 hours a day, 13 days in a row, change their hours at a moments notice, and generally just making it as difficult as possible, for drivers to have any life outside of work, and then given all the best shifts, to the non-union members, so that the union members have the worst possible time. We’ve managed to get o.k settlements with the other two companies [Go Wellington and Valley Flyer] now, 11% increases, not so with Mana. Mana are just total scumbag employers and they need to be taught a lesson.

AWSM: How long has this problem existed?

Kelly: Its been going on for ages. We had a strike here 3 years ago and managed to make a few inroads, unfortunately because they’ve been bullying people out of joining the union, they’ve been able to continue to run it like a little fiefdom. Its quite disgusting that in 2010 workers can be treated as badly as they are out here, its just revolting.

AWSM: And how do you see these conditions altering under the 90 Day Bill?

Kelly: The 90 Day Bill is going to be bad, obviously. The worry is that people will join the union and on the 89th day you’re sacked. With the personal grievance stuff, we’re constantly taking personal grievances out here, they’re constantly trying to breach the agreement, to breach the law, if they water down the grievance process its one less protection for workers who are already in a really bad state and we wont even be able to visit the depots and if the employers are going to have to give permission for us to get on the depots, why would they give the union permission to come on here when they treat workers this badly? So the government is just pandering to these absolute bullies, absolute scumbags like Mana Coach Services who are getting their way with this National government law change, so we need to stand up and fight.

AWSM: So with that in mind, what sort of actions will be most effective in the future?

Kelly: Well, we’ve got to take industrial action. Obviously at this point we’ve only got a minority of the members, we need other workers and other people who want a better life to come along and support and protest and to stand up to bully employers and to corporates like this. This is a multinational corporation that’s making huge profits, sending them offshore, underpaying their workers, treating them like crap and we all need to stand up and say “No, you cant treat people like this anymore”. So people in New Zealand need to stand up and start fighting this sort of thing, because its not just Mana, its not just the bus industry, its all over the workforce and its going to get worse with these government changes.

N.B. This interview has been slightly edited for clarity.

Hunger Strike for a real solution to the complex conflict between the Mapuche nation and the Chilean State

The untenable situation which the various communities of the Mapuche people have faced for centuries has once again reached crisis point.

Mapuche political prisoners, tired and weary of violations of their rights, torture and persecution, even against minors, and excessive and arbitrary treatment by the Chilean State and Judiciary, took the grave decision to go on hunger and thirst strike from Monday, 12 July this year.

These prisoners are all accused of attempting to occupy land or damage property of lumber companies, strategic businesses in Chile’s primary export model who have been occupying the ancestral lands of the Mapuche people.

Today, all 31 political prisoners who are split up in various high-security prisons in southern Chile (in Concepción, Temuco , Valdivia , and Angol), have risen once again as a single body and taken the difficult decision to forgo food and water, demanding a real solution to this political conflict.

Given this situation, the undersigned libertarian organizations from various parts of the world declare their full solidarity and denounce the Chilean State and judiciary.
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Report: Auckland ‘Fairness at Work’ rally against employment law changes

Billed by the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) as a celebration of ‘Fairness at Work’, the Auckland rally on Saturday August 21st attracted over 1000 workers, though most weren’t there to celebrate. There was the inevitable brown nosing of the Labour Party as CTU President Helen Kelly gave a shout out to those MPs scattered throughout the crowd, but a speech from the National Distribution Union rep Syd Keepa and the music of Tigi Ness countered the CTU message and made it clear that worker’s power, not parliamentary power, was needed to win this fight.

Keepa made the connection between beneficiary bashing and attacks on workers rights, noting that John Key, a representative of the rich, was leading an attack on the poor. It was clear Keepa felt a show of worker’s strength was the only means to counter this attack, stating that in his opinion we should be having a general strike. His suggestion was meet by a hearty cheer from many in the crowd who shared his frustration and anger.

The rally ended with songs by Tigi Ness calling for workers to ‘get up, and stand up for their rights’ in defence of their whanau and their communities. A nationwide action has been called for Wednesday 20th October, as the struggle continues.

Photos courtesy of John Darroch. Reports from other centres to come soon!

Let’s Kill The Bill!

On Saturday August 21st, there will be nationwide rallies organised by the Council of Trade Unions against the Government’s proposed changes to employment laws.

Auckland: 1pm, QE2 Square (bottom of Queen St, opposite Britomart)

Wellington: 1pm, Civic Square

Christchurch: 1pm, Cathedral Square

Dunedin: 11am, Sunday 22nd August, Assemble at Dental School, Great King Street, March to rally at the Octagon

Below is the text of a leaflet produced by AWSM for these rallies and the struggle to defeat these laws. It is made to go along with an earlier article, Workers Set To Face More Attacks, which contains more details about the proposed changes themselves.

You can also download a .pdf version of the leaflet, designed to print out on double sided A5. Click here to download it (126kb).

Let’s Kill The Bill!

Like most of us, you too are probably overworked and underpaid. We slave away for 8 (or more!) hours a day, only to head home and find that we don’t have enough money to pay for the things we need to live an enjoyable life. Unfortunately, the Government is now proposing changes to employment law which will only make things worse! If the changes go through, we will all face a future with more unemployment, even less job security, less days off in both sick and annual leave, lower pay and all the stress and frustration that goes with all of that.

But it’s not all doom and gloom - together, we have a huge amount of power as workers and, if we can work collectively and exercise that power, we can not only defeat these proposed law changes, but also improve significantly on the status quo!

All over the country, people have been out on the streets marching and rallying against these attacks on workers. But while mass protests on the streets are worthwhile, they will not be enough to roll back these proposed changes on their own. Mass action, like the hundreds of thousands that protested in the street against the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act in 1991, is ignored by those in power when it suits them. We need to take strike action and hit bosses where it really hurts — their profits.

The Council of Trade Unions is organising protests and probably a nationwide stopwork in October, however we need to go well beyond that if we are to have any chance of stopping these law changes. We need real resistance run by the workers ourselves, not rhetoric and symbolic action. Likewise the Labour Party, which implemented a ban on solidarity strikes and political strikes when it introduced the original Employment Relations Act while it was last in power, is primarily concerned with managing capitalism rather than supporting workers. This means that when push comes to shove, the Labour Party will side with the bosses and make workers suffer - as was most clearly demonstrated during the 1980s when the Lange government introduced the most sweeping right wing reforms this country has ever seen.

What follows are some further ideas for collective resistance to these anti-worker laws.

We need to take industrial action against the bill where possible. This action can be legal or not. If you are not in negotiations, and thus cannot strike legally, push to open up negotiations for variations to your contracts to oppose the proposed laws. In that way, you open up space for legal strike action. Or push for unofficial strike action, like taking a mass sickie at your workplace on the day of the stopwork or protests against the bill. We need to build on these actions, and push for more national stopworks and strike action to defeat the bill.

If you can build a strong supportive culture with your workmates, you can create a situation where action can be taken even when outside the legal restrictions. Support others’ struggles too - we are all in this together, and that means that we need to support and encourage each other to the best of our ability. Ensure that all action is controlled by the workers taking it, not by union officials who are removed from the shop floor and don’t have the same interests as us.

The new laws will make us work more for less pay. We want more pay for less work. We oppose any deals or laws linked to increases in productivity and work hours (such as reducing our leave or ability to take sickies). The bosses already steal countless hours of our lives and countless dollars from our pockets, they certainly don’t deserve even more!

If, at the end of the day, these laws do pass, we need to plan to make them unworkable. Any boss considering firing someone under the 90 Day Bill should know that if they do, they will have pickets outside their business. Likewise for those employers who pressure workers into giving up their 4th week of annual leave. Bosses need to be taught that they cannot use these new laws without there being negative consequences for their profits.

One way to do this is to get involved in creating a network of militant workers in your area. This network could organise the above pickets. It could coordinate action and solidarity to support and encourage those taking industrial action and to resist any repercussions on those going beyond the law. If you are interested in being involved in a network like this, please contact us below.

We want to dump not only these new laws, but the whole sordid Employment Contracts/Relations Act era which has strangled workers’ ability to strike, thus delivering massive profits to capitalists. In the end, there is no such thing as pushing for fairness at work. The capitalist system is at its heart exploitative, and all bosses are exploiters, even the ‘nice’ ones. Ultimately, we need to get rid of the whole exploitative system and bring in a classless, stateless society whereby we freely co-operate to meet our collective needs rather than be wage-slaves for the profit of a few.

This leaflet was produced by the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM), a national organisation working towards a classless, stateless society: anarchist-communism. As class-struggle anarchists our priority is active involvement in workplace struggles and industrial action as well as community based campaigns in our neighbourhoods. We encourage working class people to organise themselves against capital and the state. We do not seek to paternalistically organise people from the top down.

Solidarity #11 - August 2010

Issue 11 - August 2010Download issue in .pdf format (1.1MB)

The eleventh issue of Solidarity, free newssheet of the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement. Download the .pdf above, or click below to read the contents online.

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Beneficiaries Burn Bennet In Rotorua - Interview

Just like in 1991, National is attacking both the waged and unwaged wings of the working class at the same time. We interviewed Paul Blair of the Rotorua Welfare Action Group about their response to National’s assault on beneficiaries (for example, by cutting emergency benefits and forcing many sickness and domestic purposes beneficiaries to work). They held an incendiary protest on July 12 in Rotorua.

What is your personal and political background?

Working class Catholic grew up in Canterbury/Bankstown area of Sydney Australia. My father was a member of the Australian communist party in the early fifties when it was banned by the State. Came to NZ in 1969 basically to dodge the draft into the Vietnam war and then ended up staying. Worked as a truck driver, labourer, and in low paid jobs. Learnt lessons of unionism as a unionised driver with the Coca Cola company in Sydney in the sixties.

Benefited from free University education in Auckland in the seventies, turned on by Marxist thought, and worked as a teacher and later graduated in law from Waikato Uni and admitted to the bar in 2009. Went on first political march in 1976 against attacks on DPB’s. Politicised by the 1981 Springbok tour and lost all respect for “Law” and “State”. I describe myself as a left socialist-anarchist-atheist.

Can you give some specifics about the recent beneficiaries demonstration in Rotorua?

The rally/demonstration theme was chosen so that if only a handful turned out the demonstration could still go ahead without losing credibility. On the other hand if a good crowd turns up we could march on the road. As it turned out we had about a hundred people (see photos) turn out so we marched around to the National Party Offices with our demands. A good turn out for Rotorua in the middle of winter.

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