Wellington Living Wage Advance
After a long debate, a meeting of the Wellington City Council on 28th October voted 9 to 6 in favour of security contract staff being paid a Living Wage. The Council already pays its directly-employed staff a Living Wage. Earlier this year the Council had resolved under the Long Term Plan that they would extend […]
Zero Hours Contracts Treachery
Workers cannot put any trust whatsoever in this double-dealing Key government of liars. When it comes to employment law, under the lead of Workplace Relations minister Michael Woodhouse, they have developed a habit of announcing one thing and doing another. They told the public they were going to stop the exploitation of migrant workers. They […]
Get the Warehouse to pay a Living Wage
Today International Socialists and local Living Wage activists joined striking First Union members in an hour’s action outside the Warehouse store in Porirua. We were asking shoppers to show their support for the in dispute workers by signing protest postcards to The Warehouse Group boss Mark Powell. In that short time over 200 signed. Back […]
Migrant workers’ victory in Korea
Over the past 50 years, few countries have experienced such a dramatic economic rise as South Korea. A country once known for sweatshops and cheap manufactured goods; now produces some of the world’s most advanced ships, cars and electronics. An important part of this process was the state-led export of Korean labour. From 1975-85 over […]
Our struggles – in the courtrooms and out
In March this year Service and Food Workers Union National Secretary, John Ryall stated that unions would be taking more and more employment cases to Court following the latest in a string of successful cases for low-paid employees. He went on to say that litigation was now preferable to collective bargaining, which he described as […]
Marketing Poverty: the Question of Fair Trade
Capitalism is a system based explicitly on the exploitation of the many by the few. Throughout its few short centuries of existence, it has extended massive inequality to every corner of the globe. The supposed “free market” has pushed that process to the extreme, especially between the exploited countries of the global “south” and the […]
Equal Pay for Women: the Long Struggle
Kristine Bartlett is a hero. Her case put the question of equal pay back at the centre of politics. Bartlett has been employed for twenty years doing socially vital work as a carer for the elderly, and yet she was paid an insulting $14.46 an hour. This, Bartlett and the SFWU argued, breached the Equal Pay […]
Celebrating Unite’s struggle against Zero Hour Contracts
In a campaign reminiscent of Unite Union’s SuperSizeMyPay.com getting workers on to collective contracts from a decade ago, once again Unite has burst onto the industrial scene to take on the fast food giants and against all odds, win. The campaign brought out courageous stories of workers speaking out against their exploitation and zero-hours contracts, […]
Living Wage win at Wellington City Council
On Wednesday the 24th of June Wellington City Council voted nine to six in favour of paying its contract staff the living wage of 19.25 an hour. The ‘MOP’ march began outside the Wesley Church on Taranaki Street with a hot breakfast and speeches from the CTU president Helen Kelly and Bishop Justin Duckworth. Lots […]
Talleys AFFCO – New Zealand’s most Dangerous place to work?
Talley’s group is one of the most notorious employers known in the union world. The Talley’s family has made it their personal mission to destroy unionism in New Zealand and they are starting with their own companies. Again the employers are in a dispute with their meat workers, trying to force further cuts in workers […]
