Fightback’s Polly Peek recently spoke on the topic of Marxism and mental health in Christchurch.
Capitalism functions in such a way that people impacted by mental illness are often lacking the health services needed, and face discrimination in employment and stigmatisation in wider society.
Downloadable MP3 available here
Grant Brookes, Health First candidate for Capital & Coast District Health Board
Aged care is in crisis. It’s headline news. In August, pay cuts of up to $100 a week for staff at Ranfurly Rest Home and Hospital in Auckland were the lead story on Campbell Live (When your employer proposes a pay cut). In early September, an inquiry into shocking neglect of elderly residents at Wellington’s Malvina Major Home was front page news in the Dominion Post (Rest Home failed all its residents, Ministry says)
Although the mainstream media reported these as isolated issues, in reality they are the tip of an iceberg.
The systemic crisis has been clear for at least the last three years. In 2010, opposition MPs Sue Kedgley and Winnie Laban led an alternative inquiry into aged care, after National Party members of the health select committee blocked a formal parliamentary inquiry. (October 2010 Aged Care Report)
And it was confirmed last December by the Caring Counts report, published by the Human Rights Commission. This found that the predominantly female workforce in aged care – many of whom are new migrants – and the elderly people they look after are undervalued and discriminated against. (Report of the Inquiry into the Aged Care Workforce)
The situation for support workers, often working alone to help elderly people in their homes, is largely invisible. But it’s probably even worse.
Aged care in New Zealand is suffering the ravages of neoliberal capitalism. Today’s crisis flows from the privatisation and deregulation of the sector over the last 25 years.
Up until the 1980s, rest homes were mainly run by charities. But by 2010, over two thirds of residential facilities were privately owned and run for profit.
The industry is dominated by multinational corporations, banks and private equity firms. A third of the beds nationwide are provided by six large chains.
One of them is Ryman Healthcare. Ryman owns the Malvina Major Home, of Dominion Post fame, where a confused elderly woman was repeatedly left lying in her own faeces.
In the 1980s and 1990s, there were legal minimum staffing levels for homes like this. But in 2002, deregulation removed minimum staffing requirements.
Ryman Healthcare receives $800 million a year from the taxpayer. How much of this goes straight into the pockets of investors is unknown, as the company is not obliged to account for this public money.
It is known, however, that on night shifts they employ just one or two nurses to look after the 200 residents at Malvina Major. Is it any wonder that residents are sometimes neglected?
The aged care crisis has been the focus of a decade of campaigning by the three unions representing in the sector – the Nurses Organisation, the Service & Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota and the PSA.
But the proportion of workers who belong to a union, while higher than the private sector average, is much lower than in the public health system.
In 2006, union density across aged care averaged 20 percent. This has weakened the ability of workers use industrial action to press for change.
Despite this, aged care has featured prominently in strike statistics in recent years, winning modest improvements (or limiting the deterioration) for workers and residents in some places.
But given the relative industrial weakness, the unions have also turned to political campaigning. Because District Health Boards administer the funding contracts with aged care providers, elected members of the DHBs do have some influence.
The PSA is lobbying DHB candidates to commit to pay justice for contracted out home support workers, including equal pay with those directly employed by the DHBs (Time to Care).
The SFWU is calling on DHB candidates to support its Living Wage campaign (www.livingwage.org.nz), and its minimum hourly rate of $18.40.
And the Nurses Organisation is asking candidates to sign a pledge, including commitments to the Living Wage and equal pay for nurses and caregivers in aged care compared with their DHB counterparts (DHB Elections 2013, NZNO).
Standing as a candidate for Capital & Coast District Health Board, I am proud to continue my years of involvement in the battle for aged care by supporting these union campaigns.
Hone Harawira, facing arrest for defending public housing at Glen Innes.
Ben Jacobs, Fightback (Wellington).
Housing is in crisis. Decades of market-based policies have decimated the social housing stock, and the market is failing to provide affordable housing. After all, housing is a necessity, not a luxury good – letting the intersection of supply and demand determine prices serves only to deny housing to those who can’t afford it.
Social attitudes to housing – and successive government policies – have roots in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s colonial history. The value placed on land by the British Crown and its representatives is evidenced by the lengths they were prepared to go to in order to obtain it: aggressive deception, in the case of the Kemp purchase, or outright theft by means of punitive confiscation throughout the North Island. Such value was determined in part by the sales pitch that was made to colonials, that only in New Zealand would they have the opportunity to own their own property. This was the birth of the quarter-acre dream.
The modern equivalent of this propaganda can be evidenced in the cornucopia of house and garden magazines, home development TV shows, and extensive media coverage given over to the concerns of the minority of New Zealanders that own their own home and can afford to invest in its beautification.
At the other end of the spectrum, discourse regarding homelessness has been blaming and paternalistic – in the case of Wellington’s recent Alternative Giving scheme – and aggressive in the case of Auckland council’s proposed Nuisance Begging bylaw and the deployment of security guards to move homeless people “along” during APEC and the Rugby World Cup.
This capitalist propaganda comes against a background of declining real wages – workers’ share of New Zealand’s Gross Domestic Product has been steadily declining since the 1970s, forcing prospective home-owners to become increasingly indebted for life in order to achieve their dream of home “ownership”.
Workers share of Gross Domestic Product. Source: Bill Rosenberg, CTU (2010)
Household debt ($M). Source: Reserve Bank of New Zealand
Credit from banks flows easily on the assumption that they can just claim back the house if the borrower can’t meet the payments, and that house values won’t drop. But based on the capitalist model of supply and demand, this effectively pushes house prices up, encouraging the development of more profitable, more luxurious housing in exclusive subdivisions.
These upward pressures on house prices flow on to rental accommodation, Statistics New Zealand recently released a report based on census data showing a doubling in real terms of the cost rental accommodation in two decades.
Rent has doubled over the last 20 years. Source: Statistics New Zealand
But it’s not just market forces alone. Neoliberal policies introduced by the fourth labour Government in the 1980s – and carried on by National in the 90s – reduced the proportion of tenants who were renting from public sector landlords from 38% in 1986 to 18% by 2006. Further, public sector landlords, such as Housing Corp and city councils increasingly acted like private sector property developers, introducing market rates and expecting to profit from their provision of social housing. Likewise, private landlords have become more profit-hungry. In the 1980s it was relatively common for employers to provide subsidised accommodation to employees, something that is almost unheard of today.
Rightly, much media comment is made of the situation in Auckland, where a fast growing working class population is confronted by a slower housing market that is increasingly expensive. But this pattern is evident in other centres too. This month, the Porirua community newspaper the Kapi Mana led with a story State housing crisis, noting that 191 families were on the wait list for 11 available state houses in Porirua.
Opposition to the Tamaki Transformation Project in Glen Innes reached public consciousness in recent months, notably with the arrest of Mana leader Hone Harawira. After a period of false community consultation, where any intent to reduce the number of state houses was strongly denied, the project was initiated in 2011 with a reduction in the number of state houses from 156 to 78, eviction of tenants and the sale of seaside land to property developers for private housing.
Mainstream political parties have responded to the crisis. Predictably, Labour and National ignore the economic and political reality. Labour recently announced plans to subsidise the development of a large number of “affordable” homes, initially costing $300,000. This presents an excellent opportunity for speculators, as these will be houses for private sale. But it was their proposed policy of restricting investment in property to “New Zealanders” that got most attention, on the left anyway. Blaming “the foreigners” for the failings of their own market-friendly policies betrays Labour as a capitalist party that would rather introduce racist policies than dare to appear remotely socialist. Interestingly Australian investors would not be denied access under Labour’s proposed policy – apparently they are not the bad kind of foreigner.
National are predictably letting the provision of social housing deteriorate even further, and just as predictably, don’t seem to care. This year’s budget handed more responsibility for the provision of social housing to community organisations – not necessarily a bad thing in itself – but it is apparent that these organisations will be so poorly funded that the number of homes is expected to decrease as a result. National’s election promises in respect of social housing focussed more on “moving along” the unworthy poor from state homes and replacing them with more worthy tenants.
Mana’s housing policy priorities explicitly address some of the causes of the housing crisis, acknowledging the effects of colonialism on Maori home ownership, and seeking to address homelessness. Mana policy development seems to derive from the struggle for transformative reforms, and as such, demand the attention and qualified support of socialists. Unfortunately, these policies also attracted the attention of the founders and Facebook friends of the so-called Pakeha Party, whose deliberate historical ignorance wilfully construed such policies as reverse racism. Of course the Pakeha Party has quickly become a bizarre parody of itself, but in its heyday it did attract a large number of followers. Socialists must struggle not only for public housing, but against widespread confusion as to the causes of disenfranchisement (hint: it’s not foreigners or Maori).
Welcome to the September 2013 issue of Fightback. Fightback is a socialist organisation in Aotearoa/NZ, and this is our monthly magazine.
With the 2013 local body elections coming up, Fightback will be involved in electoral work alongside community struggles on the ground. Fightback does not believe socialism can be simply voted in, however electoral work combined with wider popularstruggles can play a role in socialist transformation. In an article originally printed on the Daily Blog, Mike Treen of Unite Union and the MANA Movement discusses strategy for the 2014 general election (page 15-16).
Fightback supports the MANA Movement, which is standing candidates in the local body elections. Fightback writer Daphne Lawless interviews John Minto, who is standing for Mayor of Auckland on a MANA Movement ticket; (page 17-19) and Ian Anderson interviews Grant Brookes, a Fightback member who is standing on a Health First ticket endorsed by the MANA Movement (page 20-21).”
by Daphne Lawless, Fightback
Anne Russell’s article reprinted here clearly shows how the left have dropped the ball on defence of Chelsea Manning. Her 35-year sentence for the crime of letting people know exactly what the global hegemons have been up to in their war zones is a shocking travesty of justice.But perhaps even more shocking is the way that her gender and her medical history have become a stick to beat her with. Even those on the left of politics couldn’t resist the urge to use male names and pronouns with respect to Chelsea – or even worse, the dehumanising sneer of “he/she”.
Meanwhile, CeCe MacDonald, an African-American trans woman, is currently serving time for manslaughter in a male prison after fighting off a racist, homophobic attack. Paramedics in the United States have been known to simply leave injured people to die once they find out that the person is trans. Trans people are used as a cheap punchline by the likes of Hell Pizza and other “blokey” wits, while Germaine Greer spews out a “feminist” variation of the same hatred. Why are trans people still an acceptable punching bag?
Tradition
The common sense of “Western” society is that gender is binary, and that is that – as the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition would have it, humans were created “male and female”. Of course, even at a basic biological level this is an oversimplification. Intersexed people – those with “ambiguous” genitals or other sexual features – account for 1 in every 500 live births according to some definitions, 1 in 60 according to others. Until recently, it was standard practice to simply surgically “adapt” these children – with no consent or even acknowledgement – into one or other of the socially accepted genders.
But beyond that, many human cultures through time and space have had at least one “third option” of gender. An example close to home would of course be the Samoan culture, where fa’afafine – generally seen as being closer to a third gender than to the Western concept of “transgender” – who have been an accepted part of the culture from time immemorial. Kaupapa Māori includes whakawahine and tangata ira tane. In many Indian cultures, a third gender known as hijra (sometimes called “eunuchs” by Western interpreters) have traditionally lived in their own communities, but have recently begun political activism for recognition and rights from the mainstream.
Gender-variant individuals were known as two-spirits in many Native American cultures, and often held important social roles such as healers, orators or craftspeople. The great war leader Crazy Horse, for example, is said to have had at least one two-spirit wife. A good resource for knowledge on other historical alternatives to the two-gender system can be found in Transgender Warriors by the American communist trans activist Leslie Feinberg.
Identity
We can learn from this that gender is neither simply a matter of innate biology, nor a matter of social conditioning. The experience of intersex people, as well as the tragic outcomes of unethical experiments such as that performed by Dr John Money – who performed vaginoplasty on an infant boy and told his family to raise him as female – show that an inbuilt “sense” of gender is not simply social programming. New Zealand transfeminist blogger Megan explains: “Gender identity is an intrinsic part of most people’s psyches, though like many things about their bodies, people don’t notice it unless something is wrong.”
As with homosexuality, a search for the “cause” of gender diversity (nature or nurture?) is not only futile but can lead to a reactionary interest in finding a “cure”. So why exactly is gender diversity still able, in the era of late capitalism, to unnerve and threaten mainstream society?
The 19th century socialist writer Friedrich Engels argued that nuclear family evolved as a way for men to control women’s fertility, and to enable the inheritance of property to the offspring of the male. It also means the privatisation of child-rearing and social reproduction – this becomes the unpaid labour of women, who survive on the income of a man participating in the labour market. Anything which is “off the books” is effectively free, as far as capitalist economics is concerned.
Families
In this sense, when religious and social reactionaries call for “defence of the family”, this is what they mean – defence of an institution founded on women’s sexual subservience to men. And this is clearly threatened, not only by feminism and by homosexuality but by anything that questions the very categories of “man” and “woman”. It is interesting to note that fa’afafine have always played an important role in the Samoan sa (extended family). Their persecution and marginalisation began with the Christian missionaries and.their imported ideology of the nuclear family as divinely inspired.
But gender is also useful to the ruling classes as another way to divide and control oppressed groups – similar to ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. Encouraging sexist attitudes in working-class men is a good way to split the workforce and thus lower wages and conditions of all workers – and, sadly, we see deeply ingrained sexist ideas asserting themselves even in radical social movements. Meanwhile, appealing to gender as something not only innate but as the “real” division in society is the modus operandi of bourgeois feminism which seeks to encourage women to climb the capitalist hierarchy, rather than confront it.
A third way in which gender is vitally important in modern society is that it is a commodity. Like any socially enforced division, gender is a taboo which it is impossible to avoid transgressing at all times. Consumer industries – magazines, clothings, personal hygiene, cosmetics, medications to prevent erectile dysfunction or delay menopause – make big money over gender insecurity. Buy this, we are told, to reassure yourself of your manhood, or your womanhood!
Gender police
These gender boundaries are rigorously policed, not so much through the formal apparatuses of state, but by culture and peer pressure. Parents are bombarded with messages that by allowing their boys to be “feminised” – even if this only means wearing pink clothing – will either “turn them gay or trans” (as if this were possible!) or, at least, deprive them of the masculinity they need to survive and thrive in society. Children imbued with these messages can be relied on to bully other children – as can teachers, who often find a child’s gender-variance a useful “button” to repress and control their behaviour.
Rape is – for people of all genders – one of the ultimate weapons of gender policing. From effeminate or weaker young men in boarding schools or other male-dominated environments to lesbian women in South African townships, rape is the unspoken but very real threat of what can happen if you transgress your “proper” gender boundaries. Witness the threats of rape and other forms of violence routinely dumped upon women who complain about sexism in computing, science-fiction fandom or even the atheist community.
Socialist approach
It should be clear from what we’ve seen so far that gender diversity is a far greater issue than simply the plight of the transsexual or transgendered (those assigned as one of the two “primary” genders at birth, who live their lives as the other gender). Trans issues are everybody’s issues, in that social enforcement of a rigid two-gender system is a symptom of alienation from an individual’s own preferred self-presentation. Violence and shame are the social fate of intersexed people, queer people, “feminine” men and “masculine” women for stepping over boundaries of social control. This weakens social solidarity and self-confidence, the basic building blocks for the working people to create a new world.
A socialist approach to gender diversity should, in one sense, come directly out of our commitment to socialist-feminism. If we support the rights of women to control their own sexuality and fertility – no tolerance for rape, safe legal and free abortion and contraception on demand – it is only obvious to suggest that, for example, transgendered people should have the right to safe and free surgical and pharmaceutical therapy to alter their bodies’ gendered characteristics – as well as the right not to do so, with their identity still respected. Confronting and dismantling rape culture, too, is of vital interest to all gender-variant people.
Working-class and socialist solidarity must apply to everyone up at the sharp end of capitalism’s tricks of social division. In our own organisations, we must rigorously combat any patterns of behaviour which reinforce male or “cis-gender” privilege. This may be the most effective way we can show solidarity to Chelsea Manning and CeCe Macdonald.
4pm-5-30pm: Presentation by Kassie Hartendorp & Ian Anderson on socialists in the struggle for queer liberation
5:30-6:30pm: dinner
6:30-8pm: Facilitated discussion on the role of Tauiwi in the struggle for Tino Rangatiratanga
A gold coin donation for Room Four would be greatly appreciated, and some loose change towards shared dinner if you’re able.
The talks are separated by a break & dinner so if you can only make it along to one of them you’re very welcome!
Room Four, 336 St Asaph St, Christchurch, Wellington
[Facebook event]
Workers at the state owned Fijian Sugar Corporation (FSC) have voted to take strike action after they were offered a 5.3% pay rise. This equates to just $7.10 a week after tax, or in terms of purchasing power, enough to buy half a chicken. The bigger issue though is that wages for sugar workers in Fiji have declined 40% since 2006 when the government was deposed by a military coup.
The Lautoka sugar mill workers, who crush sugarcane to extract sugar, have also been impacted by a decline in the country’s sugar crop over this time, from 3.8 million tons to 1.6million tons annually, resulting in less weeks of work each year, in some cases people were without work for eight months of the year. The Fiji Sugar and General Workers Union (FS&GWU) had been demanding a wage review for two years.
Just days before the vote to take strike action, a worker was fatally injured on the job. Samuel Sigatokacake was admitted to Lautoka Hospital ICU Unit with burns covering over 50% of his body. The accident occurred when the support structure of an evaporator gave way, pouring extremely hot water onto the factory floor. Further investigation found the release valve on the vessel, which stored water at high pressure, had not functioned since 2010. The vessel itself was in very poor condition with corrosions found on the inside. Earlier that same week it had l burst through the cracks in the welding, but cracks were re-welded and operations continued as normal. The union has since made a Criminal Negligence complaint.
The management of the mill have intimidated workers, some requiring them to fill in a form indicating if they were going on strike. Others were threatened with termination if they took industrial action. Almost a third of the 770 workers did not vote in the secret ballot, likely a result of this intimidation, but of those who voted 90% were in favour of strike action. Management has also offered five year contracts to retired workers to take on the work of the strikers, and threatened to bring in workers from overseas to replace them.
Fiji’s Attorney General and Minister for Industry and Trade Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum urged workers not to go on strike “We [the government] have made a substantial investment to rescue the industry from collapse. This investment has begun to turn around the Fiji Sugar Corporation, without a single job being lost, and it is in the national interest for this to continue.” Of course, workers have seen little benefit from this investment, instead they have seen seven years of declining wages.
“It is a sad indictment on the Regime where the workers real wage is allowed to decline by more than 40% forcing workers into extreme poverty.” Said union president Daniel Urai “Workers deserve recognition from this Regime in the development of the Sugar Industry and indeed in all other industries in this country. Workers create the wealth and sustain the economy despite the hardship, intimidation and the bullying by the authorities and they deserve better.”
On August 21st two truckloads of military officers today drove into Lautoka. Workers were warned that should they go on strike they would not be allowed to return to work and would be dealt with by the military. As we go to press no industrial action has yet occurred and the company continues to refuse to negotiate with the union. Unions in New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere have expressed solidarity with the sugar workers and condemned the actions of the regime. Sugar is Fiji’s largest industry, with sugar processing making up a third of industrial production in the country.
This article, by Fightback member Jared Phillips, was originally written for The Socialist, the monthly magazine of The Socialist Party (Australia).
In late August David Shearer resigned as leader of the opposition New Zealand Labour Party. Labour has suffered from poor poll results since it lost the 2008 election. Since then Shearer has been the second opposition leader to resign.
Much of the commentary of late has referred to a leadership crisis in Labour and pointed to this as the main reason for the poor poll results. This is true enough but very few people have explained the roots of this crisis.
Labour’s woes are deeply political. They have besieged the party since the 1980s when it began to carry out sweeping neo-liberal counter reforms. To this day Labour remains deeply wedded to maintaining the capitalist system. This forces the party to adopt policies that are at odds with its working class voter base.
During the post war boom this contradiction was somewhat papered over but now in the era of economic crisis it is much harder hide.
The vote for a new leader is split between Labour’s five affiliated unions (20%), Labour’s MPs (40%) and the party membership (40%). The affiliate unions are using this mechanism to encourage their members to vote for one of the three contenders. They hope that in mobilising members to vote for a candidate it will logically follow that these members will be more encouraged to vote Labour at the election. [Read more…]
article by Anne Russell, reprinted from Scoop.co.nz.
The Queer Avengers (Wellington) are holding a solidarity action with Chelsea Manning on 2pm Saturday the 7th of September, at the US Embassy [Facebook event]
For the most part, gender minorities operating in the public sphere are recognised by their gender first and the content of their work second. This is why Rolling Stone articles on“Women Who Rock” kettle together artists as musically and lyrically diverse as Taylor Swift, Missy Elliott and Sleater-Kinney, as though ‘woman’ is a subgenre of music. Even at comparatively progressive activist events, cisgender women and transgender people—particularly trans* women—rarely dominate the overall speaker line-up. Rather, they are given separate sessions to discuss sexism and/or transphobia, implying that these issues are only problems for the oppressed parties in question.
In contrast, issues like mass surveillance and military crimes are framed as issues that everyone should be concerned about, evidenced recently by the scale of controversy around the NSA leaks and the recently-passed GCSB Bill. This is not to say that they are not important or damaging problems, merely that they receive much more cultural attention than the routine struggles of oppressed gender minorities. While the soldier formerly known as Bradley Manning was hitherto widely considered a hero in radical movements, figures like radical activist and trans* woman Sylvia Rivera are not widely known outside the trans* rights movement itself. It is arguable that the activist world, like everywhere else, is still somewhat divided into gendered categories, at least on a surface level: the cis men examine military documents while the cis women and trans* folk talk about unequal access to healthcare, cultural invisibility and sexual harassment.
Private Manning’s recent announcement that she is a transgender woman—to be known as Chelsea Manning from here on—thus represents a stunning collision of different activist factions. Manning released a statement last week announcing that she identifies as female, and wishes to undergo hormone therapy as soon as possible. This is not entirely new or unexpected information, as Manning’s chatlogs with informant Adrian Lamo in May 2010 read: “I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the possibility of having pictures of me… plastered all over the world press… as a boy.” Moreover, her lawyers attempted to use gender identity disorder as a defence in her trial. However, many of Manning’s supporters felt uncomfortable referring to her as female without the explicit go-ahead from her.
That time has come, and yet many commentators remain confused orhostile(trigger warning: transphobia) to the announcement. Manning’s requests have been fairly straightforward—“I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun”—but many media outlets, particularly Fox News and CNN, continue to use her historical name and masculine pronouns. Since swathes of information about transgenderism are merely a Google search away, this misgendering demonstrates how heavily entrenched transphobia and the gender binary remain in public discourse. [Read more…]
report by Mike Treen, Unite general secretary. Reprinted from The Daily Blog. Fightback analysis to come.
Unite Union is in the process of ratifying a new collective agreement with McDonald’s that is a significant step forward in getting improved security of hours for that company’s 9500 employees. It comes after negotiations broke down at the end of April and four months of action by members and supporters at stores around the country.
Unite delegates training at day at the Unite office
The new fairer rostering clause is the most important change in the agreement and applies to all members. The power to roster someone or not is the most important weapon for controlling and disciplining the workforce.
The new clause affirms the the importance of “rostering employees fairly and reasonably”.
It says that “Where additional hours become available in a restaurant current employees will be offered additional shifts before new employees are employed.” There is an added obligation that “additional shifts will be notified to employees on the crew notice board”.
When hours have to be reduced in store then the reduction “will be uniformly applied” so they can’t cut just some members shifts while other stay the same or even get more.
Where members have problems with their shifts they can raise the matter with their manager, get their own wage and time records, and if they are not satisfied with the response have the issue escalated to the HR department who must “investigate and share relevant information.”
A union representative can be involved at any stage of that process. If the union believes there is a store wide problem it can be taken to the HR department “who will investigate and share relevant information.”
The obligation to “share relevant information” is an important obligation as it has often been difficult in the past to get information from the company regarding rosters and hours in a store.
The company has also committed to stronger education of managers and monitoring and enforcement measures, including the issue in crew questionnaires and posters in store explaining the policy and the escalation process crew can use if they aren’t happy.
Union member only payment
All union members who joined before April 29 (when negotiations broke down) will receive a special payment when this agreement is ratified. Nonunion staff do not receive this payment. In return for this payment the union agrees to allow the company to pass on the terms and conditions to nonunion staff. The amount paid depend on the average hours worked in the previous 8 weeks. Union members who work over 30 hours on average get $200 (gross). Union members who work 21-30 hours on average get $125 (gross). Union members who work 20 hours or less on average get $100 (gross).
Improved breaks clause
An important part of the new agreement is ensuring that the current legal obligations to provide breaks (which is being repealed by the government) is maintained. The company had also wanted to go back to a 10-minute rest break. Unite has been able to get the legal rest break of 10 minutes increased to 15 minutes in all its collective agreements.
The new clause ensures a 15 minute paid break in the 3-hour minimum shift. The 30 minute unpaid meal break is required for working more than 4 hours and a second 15 minute break kicks in for working more than six hours. This is the first time it has actually been in the agreement that the second rest break must happen for working more than six hours.
Workers will be compensated an additional 15 minutes pay is they miss a rest break. We believe workers should also be compensated for missing the meal break but the company and union are in dispute on that issue with differing interpretations of a clause in the old collective agreement and will probably end up in court over the issue. If we are successful workers could be owed several million dollars.
In this agreement we included a clause that the union had the right to seek a penalty and compensation for individual workers if they miss their meal break. The company has also committed to doing a more thorough auditing process of stores to ensure compliance with the breaks clause.
Wage increase modest
The wage increase is modest and constrained by the 25 cent an hour minimum wage movement. This was increased to at least 30 cents an hour for most workers but McDonald’s still remain behind rates paid at KFC – a gap which we had hoped to close more.
There were other small improvements around training being available to everyone within three months of starting and the higher rates that result from completing the training to apply from the date their books are submitted. The agreement also spells out that no one can be forced to work outside their availability – especially overnight shifts.
The new collective agreement will also be made available to all new staff with a membership form attached for those who want to join the union. The collective agreement itself has been radically rewritten to make it make more user friendly and is now half its previous length because a lot of company propaganda has been removed.
The on-line vote on the new collective agreement is currently running at 90% in favour so it seems that the members agree that the agreement offers us an opportunity to push back against the casualisation that has marked the fast food industry since the deunionisation of the industry in the early 1990s.
In 2003 when Unite Union decided to start reorganising some of the sectors of the economy that had largely lost union representation and collective agreements we were horrified at the prevalence of what overseas has been dubbed “zero-hour contracts”. Most of the workers we represent today in fast food, movie theatres, security, call centres, and hotels had individual employment agreements that had no guaranteed hours. Workers also rarely got their proper breaks – especially in fast food.
In the UK the fact that an estimated one million workers are on zero hour contracts has become a national scandal. In the USA there is the beginnings of a widespread revolt against insecure hours and low wages with nationwide strikesplanned for yesterday.
Whilst we haven’t eliminated those problems we have introduced clauses in all the main agreements that affirm the right to secure hours and constrain the employers right to hire new staff before offering the hours that are available to existing staff first. Each new collective agreement has tightened up on the clauses to increase the protections. With the most recent Restaurant Brands agreement (covering KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks) and now the McDonald’s agreement we have included clauses that demand the sharing of information with members and the union when disputes over staffing and rostering happens. We think this will significantly strengthen our position when we get into arguments over whether the company is actually complying with its obligations under the collective agreements. However Wendy’s is the only company we have an agreement for guaranteed hours for crew after 2 years service.
It is probable that the percentage of workers on zero hour contracts in New Zealand is larger than the UK. The labour movement as a whole should be making the issue a national scandal in this country.
In 2015 Unite will be renegotiating the major fast food contracts with the goal of moving from secure hours to guaranteed hours for most staff.
All original content licensed under the Creative Commons attribution non-commercial license.
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