By Martin Gregory
The defeat of the 1890 Maritime Strike, a general strike of transport-related unions, smashed up the first wave of union militancy in these islands. Union membership was knocked back from 63 000 to just 8 000, and the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894 was passed.
The arbitration system ended strikes completely. It applied to unions that registered under the Act, and most did, despite the loss of independence to be able to take legal industrial action or even determine their own rules. The unions, which were mostly local craft unions, accepted, even welcomed, the Arbitration Court handing down awards because they were too weak to take the employers on.
Recent articles
Health workers need more: ‘independent’ panel no way forward
During last year’s election campaign Labour seemed to be the party that offered pay equity and a boost to health spending. Nurses, health care assistants and midwives, working in unbearable conditions under National’s cutbacks, took Labour at its word. In November the ordinary member of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation voted down a collective agreement, […]
Renting and Class Struggle
by Dougal McNeill Renting can often seem like an isolating and powerless experience. We have to compete against other potential tenants for properties, going through the stress of flat hunting, viewings and landlords’ checks into our finances and private lives. Tenancy rules are weighted in favour of landlords. Rent comes out automatically from your […]
Nurses fight for their rights
Sarah Anderson works as a nurse. She submitted this to the New Zealand Herald a fortnight ago, before nurses voted down the DHBs’ latest inadequate offer. The ISO is happy to publish this guest post, and stands in full solidarity with the nurses and their demands. Negotiations between the New Zealand Nurses Organisation and District Health […]
The Vietnamese Trotskyists against colonialism and Stalinism
by Daniel Simpson Beck Starting with only a handful of members, the Vietnamese Trotskyists in the 1930s and 1940s were able to build large organisations capable of having great impact within the Vietnamese working class. They did so despite much larger Stalinist forces. Their rise and fall offers us lessons for building socialist organisations today. […]
Capitalism is killing the planet
By Joshua O’Sullivan It is hard to write an article about climate change without being accused of scaremongering, because of the size and scale of the truly existential crisis that lies before us. The challenge is immense and the effects of it are starting to hit hard across the planet. 2017 has been another […]
Trump and the Alt Right
By Andrew Tait Why should we be concerned about yet another rightwing American president or pay attention to the ravings of disgruntled keyboard warriors? Trump is an orange ball of arrogance and the alt-right thrives on outrage. But they are worth watching because both are products of a crisis in neoliberal ideology. The mainstream […]
Lessons from West Virginia
By Eric Blanc The Great West Virginia Wildcat is the single most important labour victory in the US since at least the early 1970s. Though the 1997 UPS strike and the 2012 Chicago teachers’ strike also captured the country’s attention, there’s something different about West Virginia. This strike was statewide, it was illegal, it went wildcat, and it seems to be […]
A response to Erin Polaczuk
by Romany Tasker-Poland and Shomi Yoon 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 […]
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…]
