Tramways Union Threatens Wellington Bus Strike
On 14 April Tramways Union members working for NZ Bus in Wellington voted 204 to 2 for industrial action. Action could be called any time soon, but under the anti-worker Employment Relations Act the union must give the employer 24 hours’ notice, thus giving a little time for NZ Bus to organise to limit disruption, […]
Indian Farmers Protest!
Farmers in India have had enough of the Modi government’s anti-farmer reforms. Farmers have set up camps and occupied Delhi borders since November 2020 in protest against agriculture laws passed in September. At the time of writing the protests were continuing with no intention to stop until demands are met. The farmers protest under the […]
Pandemic, the Left, and Workers’ Power
In the face of the economic and public health crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, the US left oscillates between mutual aid efforts and parliamentary impotence. We need to take part in workers’ struggles today and prepare for the coming upsurge. There are over 140,000 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the US, but the actual […]
Italian workers strike to force action on the coronavirus pandemic
Italian workers have gone on strike to shut down the country as the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic surpasses 7,500 – mostly in Lombardy, the main industrial region in the north-west of the country. Despite the government’s well-publicised lockdown, it has been business as usual for many sectors of the economy. Last week, the […]
Labour’s COVID-19 response package: Not enough for workers
When the Labour-led Coalition Government revealed its first fiscal response package to the COVID-19 pandemic I was, at first, jubilant. The pessimist in me had been expecting austerity, expecting cuts and sell offs. This package is definitely not that. $12.1 billion in spending and 4% of GDP – great! But as the afternoon continued and […]
Vale Dick Scott
Obituaries for Dick Scott, who died on New Year’s Day, have emphasized his importance as a figure changing how New Zealand history was written about, taught, and imagined, especially by Pākehā. He deserves those accolades, but we should remember too that his early, pioneering histories were written as part of a project to change the […]
Solidarity with Grant Brookes
Grant Brookes is the democratically elected President of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. The NZNO last year went through a major industrial struggle to win much-needed pay increases. This included strike action, the first such action in almost three decades. Many thousands of health workers were energised by this process, and the campaign, naturally, involved […]
Teachers’ Strikes: Lessons from our Struggle
Teacher and ISO member Romany Tasker-Poland, on learning from the teachers’ strikes. The teachers, primary and secondary, have had a victory (if a partial one). It has been a long fight. The first teachers’ strike was by NZEI primary teachers in August 2018. Primary teachers struck again in November in the form of rolling regional […]
Teachers’ Strikes: a win, and the coming challenge
Strikes work. That’s the lesson of the teachers’ industrial action in May and earlier. Chris Hipkins said there was no more money. Within days of the teachers’ action – a massive rallying of primary and secondary striking together – an additional $271 million were somehow discovered. Teachers went on strike not just for their own […]
Power in union – teachers strike for education
Teachers from both secondary, primary, and area schools went on strike in their thousands yesterday to show their determination and frustration with the negotiations with the Ministry of Education and Education Minister Chris Hipkins. Union strength and union pride rang out throughout Aotearoa. The combined strength of both unions was palpable. Teachers downed their whiteboard […]
