Linky Love - Volume 21

Standard intro - Linky Love is basically a cobbling together of posts I've noticed around the traps that have set off little tiny sparkles inside my head, and which I would possibly write about or comment on if I didn't need to sleep, eat, work, that kind of stuff. I usually put Linky Love volumes up weekly. I hope you like it.

As always if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight, please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.

Anarchia - A lack of language, an abundance of masks - Asher writes about mental illness and the difficulty of communicating about it with friends to get the support he needs.

Auckland's Burning - Photos from tent embassy - John has pics of the protest aimed at visiting Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, underway in Auckland.

Born on State Highway One - Chomsky Lite, with a Scottish accent - Ryan looks at the background to George Galloway's visit to our little nation, and comments on the Voices of Peace forum Galloway spoke at recently.

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty - Stand Down Margaret - Maia writes eloquently about how Margaret Thatcher still influences her nightmares, and the negative effect she had on hundreds of thousands of lives.

Contradiction - Actions and moral concepts - George reflects on how politicians seem to make their moral decisions.

eggs benedict and two flat whites - Reasons why it's good to live in NZ - Sandy asks for your top five reasons.

Feministe - The Disney Princess Industrial Complex is coming for your soul! - Vanessa writes about the heavy gendering of children's toys, from the perspective of a mother with a toddler-age daughter.

The House of Ghetsuhm - In ur internet, bringing u weird shit - Ghet has a truly absurd picture that I heart.

LAANTA - More and Better Aid - Terence provides his speech notes from a debate on whether the 0.7% Overseas Development Aid target will actually help.

The Legal Soapbox - Portrayal of the accused and the law - Legal Eagle writes about newspaper sketches of defendants and how they might influence public opinion of the merits of their case, against the background of the Haneef case in Australia.

Roger Nome's Progressive Politics - RN has a series of posts on why NZ needs its unions back, 1, 2 and 3.

Women's Space/The Margins - What Have You Done For a Girl, a Woman, a Female Person? - Heart asks her readers to share their stories of what they have done, as radical feminists, for other women. Comment thread at 52 and counting.

Previous volumes of Linky Love (1 - 20) can be found over here.

(Pic Via)

Locked Out but not down

I've been itching to write about the Spotless lockout at hospitals around the country but haven't had time. Luckily the following bloggers have:

• the gossip - when industrial action initially seemed likely, Spotless begins its lockout, and Finsec lends its support
• Capitalism Bad - Maia has written heaps of good stuff, including embedding footage of the pickets. Earliest to latest, her posts are here, here, here, here, this fantabulous post on why the lockout matters, and her most recent update here.
• No Right Turn - analysis of the situation as an example of the shortcomings of contracting out, commentary on Mark Gosche turning up to a picket, and details on the Pledgebank I/S has set up
• Anarchia - the feature Asher has written for Indymedia
• And binary heart has produced the fab badge on the sidebar, also adopted by Tony Milne, Terence, Idiot/Savant, Maia

I've written before about the stupid undervaluing of cleaners, and their consequent low pay. In this case these factors are exacerbated by a particularly nasty employer who has a history of testing the law to its limit, trying to find a way around legislative improvements made in recent years (e.g. the introduction of relevant daily pay plus time off in lieu for working a public holiday). Cleaning companies are not known for their generosity to their workers - but all the rest have agreed to a national collective agreement and national pay standards. Spotless had to derail that deal, and now they are making it even worse by locking out their own workers - leaving them with no pay at all until the company decides otherwise.

What can you do to show you care?

1. Join up with Idiot/Savant's Pledgebank here
2. Put binary heart's badge up on your blog, code here
3. Make a donation to the locked out workers by calling 0900 LOCKOUT ($10 per call), or making an electronic transfer directly to 02-0264-0294110-000 (BNZ Newmarket, use the reference LOCK OUT).
4. Keep up to date with progress on the SFWU's website and post your message of support there.

These workers are staunch and it is great to see their strength. Long may it last.

(Pic Via)

That taxing pay gap

I've had a couple of commenters (or maybe the same one twice) draw my attention to a Sydney Morning Herald article proposing that the pay gap between men and women could be bridged by cutting taxes to XXers. Here's the article's explanation:

Basically, their argument boils down to this: the supply of labour of women is more responsive to their wage post-tax, so a reduction in taxes would increase the labour participation of women substantially.

While it's an inventive solution, I don't really think it would address the causes of the pay gap and there would be many practical problems in such a scheme.

From my point of view there are a number of factors that have created and maintained a considerable gap between women and men in the money earning department, including:

1. Longstanding societal pressure on women to not see work as something they do for reasons other than necessity. While this has changed dramatically since the 1950s, there are still many women who grew up when working after marriage, and particularly after having children, was highly stigmatised. Some of these women see their work now as "pin money" and their husbands and children de-value it too. I often work with union members in this position and it's depressing to see the results - poor pay, patronising management, and a lack of support from their family and others when they want to stand up for their rights.

2. Similarly, it is only relatively recently that women have been encouraged to complete high school, let alone seek further training or tertiary education. Many jobs nowadays have set qualifications as a prerequisite, and, as with my previous point, there are many women still in the workforce who never saw university or 'tech as an option. My mother is one - a very smart and capable woman who was convinced from a young age that she was stupid and would probably be only marginally competent at most things she did. It was far more about her gender than her actual intelligence or ability. And while we'd all like to think that young women now are immune to the pernicious influences of such sexism, sadly I think it'll be a while before we have it licked.

3. Due to a paucity of workplaces with flexible working hours or supportive attitudes to workers with caring responsiblities outside work, many women work part time or in jobs with lower levels of responsibility (and pay) because they need the ability to work around their family responsibilities*. They are also less likely to rock the boat if they aren't getting their dues - they don't want to lose the position which has grudgingly allowed them to take the odd long weekend to look after an ailing parent in another town.

4. While there has been significant challenge to the idea that women workers should be corralled into certain jobs, many women still work in "traditional" areas. Which also means they work in jobs which are under-valued, under-paid and often highly casualised. Many of these industries had their unionisation rates decimated in the 1990s, and/or these sectors grew considerably during the time of the Employment Contracts Act when unions weren't able to focus on much more than staying afloat. I believe it is no coincidence that many of those areas with the lowest pay and worst conditions also have low levels of union membership, and often a high percentage of women workers.

5. I also suspect that women are less likely to get promoted into higher paid jobs, because they are women and because of some of the factors already mentioned above. On the one hand, women can be passed over because it is feared they will want to sprog at some point** or because it's assumed they can't handle Teh Pressure, or some silly rubbish justification for sexism. On the other, women sometimes don't put themselves forward, because of a lack of confidence and a concern that they will be seen to rate themselves. I read somewhere once that while around 75% of primary teachers are female only about a quarter of principals are. Not sure if that's true, but we can see the clear gender lines in the CEOs of major companies - yes there are some high profile women, but they are definitely in the minority.

6. And then there's the persistent undervaluing of the work women do - paid and unpaid. It's a theme underlying many of the points I've already made but it bears making explicit. Think of the poorly paid jobs and many of them were done by women without pay in the past, and on low pay now. Cleaning, caregiving, educating and caring for small children, cooking, serving people in various settings; all of this mahi used to be done by wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, grandmothers and other women for free. And now that it is (sometimes) paid work it's often at minimum wage rates, despite the level of skill required.

In my (not-so-humble) opinion, none of these factors would be addressed by giving women a tax cut and raising taxes slightly for men. It certainly wouldn't help those men on low incomes, or encourge them into the lower paid areas where more women are working.

If anything such a tactic could exacerbate resentment of women in the workforce, which would be rather counter-productive.




* And not just caring for their own children either. They could be looking after their mokopuna, their parents, siblings, friends, or their own partners. Or they may have to carry an unfair burden of the household tasks, resulting in less time and energy for any paid job.
** Why is this never a concern about hiring male employess??

(Pic Via)

Subway subtract worker's rights

When a Dunedin Subway manager fired Jackie Lang for sharing a staff drink with a friend and then laid charges with the police for theft I'm not sure he quite realised what a dick he would look. I hope the Subway chain realises how silly it's making them look, and thinking about how they might make it all go away in a manner that leaves Lang feeling happy...

One of the key principles of natural justice is that the punishment fit the crime. This applies in employment law, as it does in any other legal arena. It seems that in this case not only were there major issues around the disciplinary procedure for this Subway worker, there was also a massive over-reaction from the manager concerned.

What worries me is that a manager who would do this may also be acting unreasonably towards other employees at that Subway. If the culture in this workplace is to unfairly dismiss someone for something so minor, and lay charges with the police when they try to enforce their legal rights, then there should be a big red light flashing in people's minds: Workplace Bully Alert.

Big ups to Jeremy for firing Young Labour and nz pol bloggers into action! Perhaps John Key, Helen Clark, Sue Bradford and Peter Dunne have set us all a good example ;-) In the 'sphere, Maia also has a good post looking at the willingness of the police to prosecute this over other situations that are far far worse.

And good on the Autonomous Workers' Union for getting stuck in - they've also launched a "Paper Cup" fundraising effort to help cover the legal costs for their member and you can pick up the bank account number from this EPMU article on the case. There will be a picket in Christchurch on Saturday 12th May outside the High St Subway from 1pm - 2pm too.

Finally, all power to Jackie Lang, for standing up for her rights. It's not always easy, even when you know you have a strong case and you have the support of a union.

(Sl)ac(k)tivist

Like Maia I was a bad leftie yesterday and didn't do a May Day post (the April Bloggage doesn't count by any stretch of the imagination). Here's a poster I rather like in lieu.

Luckily brownfemipower has up an amazing array of protest posts, Our History of Protest. Also the gossip blogged about the difference between May Day in Europe and the way that New Zealanders celebrate workers' day - it's as if we were on opposite sides of the planet! Oh, wait.

Anyhoo, I missed the Auckland May Day march, managing to get there just in time for it to be all over. I did go to the CTU Hollow Men forum though, with Nicky Hager, Raymond Miller and Laila Harre, and hope to blog on that some time in the next week or so. Some very stimulating speeches and discussion, although I just shut up and took notes. Nice to also to put some faces to names and catch up with some old friends.

(Pic Via)

Growing profits through diminishing workers

I'm a bit late to this party, but the EPMU Our Media campaign is still just warming up, to protest the redundancies at TVNZ and in other parts of the NZ media.

Andrew Little makes a good point in a media statement about the out-sourcing of sub-editing at APN:

"This is a dark day for our members but also for news and democracy in New Zealand. APN already makes tens of millions of dollars in profit out of this country, now they're trying to squeeze out a little more and it's going to come at the cost of decent jobs and news quality."

Businesses, and their bosses, seem to be solely about maximising profit these days. There appears to be no other role for them, from their own point of view. And the bigger a company gets the more divorced its management is from the actual workers who do the work; the more expendable those people become in the thirst to win at Greed.

I was very sad to hear last week about Sleepyhead and Fisher & Paykel moving significant parts of their manufacturing offshore. As with Air NZ's recent round of job cuts, I feel as if we could never keep these jobs when the motivation to axe them is grounded in bigger profits no matter what. We have never been able to "compete" with cheap labour in countries with appalling work conditions. And we shouldn't try. To me it is shameful that companies that are actually doing fine are moving offshore anyway, to exploit workers where unions are busted or corrupt, fire exits are painted on, and they can get away with paying people $20 a day.

It's not exactly the caring face of business is it?

(Pic Via)

Work shouldn't be a death sentence

Today, April 28th, is International Workers' Memorial Day. As I'm sure you already know, it's the day when we remember all those killed or hurt on the job, and also highlight the importance of health and safety in the workplace because so many of those incidences are in fact preventable.

What's that? You didn't know? But it was all over the papers! On every telly station they covered the alarming number of workplace deaths and interviewed talking heads about the need to take health and safety seriously! Oh, wait...

Well, it's on the Council of Trade Unions website anyway. And it looks like it's a much bigger deal overseas.

So it should be. People deserve to be safe on the job. Obviously there is some work that is going to be dangerous no matter what, but every precaution that can be taken should be. Bosses should not be making choices between profit or safety and the role of Government is to ensure this through passing appropriate legislation and enforcing it. Where the State's machinery is lacking* unions should take on the leadership role in lobbying for improvements and monitoring it themselves, not to mention organising around these issues.

When I was at school I had a friend whose father was a wharfie. He had a big family - she was the youngest of nine kids. He was killed on the wharves a few weeks before retirement. All my working life, starting at the age of 13, I've worked in jobs that most people would consider "safe". But there have always been hidden risks. Even when I worked in a bookstore I had a close call - a shelf fell down from a high-up storage area, missing my head by about an inch. If it had brained me I possibly wouldn't be typing this now. It hadn't been properly secured, everyone just thought it would be ok. Luckily it was.

I worry too about the invisible risks and the damage we can't see - in particular the stress that we now seem to see as an accepted part of modern mahi, and the mental illness which is always explained away by non-work related factors. I read once that the life expectancy for school principals after they retire is about six months. I have no idea if it's true, but if it is then that is shocking. I wonder about the rates of cancer, strokes, heart disease, depression and other illnesses exacerbated by stress. Not to mention Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and related conditions - those affected often seem to have lived lives saturated in stress.

Workplace danger, be it overt or covert, seems to me to be a part of our system that we can't completely expunge. In Aotearoa we have brought in a democratic structure around the issue, but my perception is that it hasn't really been adopted outside of those industries commonly seen as perilous. Unions haven't always taken advantage of the opportunities health and safety issues give to organise and achieve positive change. And I can understand some of the reasons why - for example, workplace bullying, which I see as a leading cause of illnesses caused by the work environment, is not illegal and is difficult to fight. Ultimately the system we work under isn't one that can eliminate all the preventable illnesses and deaths - because actually money comes first.

Maia asked in one of her recent posts about Anzac Day why we don't have a memorial day for those killed in the workplace. The answer is we do, we just don't remember it.

* So basically everywhere, all the time. To be honest I don't think we can rely on governments to do this stuff for us - as workers we need to look after ourselves, together.

(Pic Via)

Union Myths #6 - Unions just go on strike all the time

We've all heard it, at some point in our lives, possibly from our parents or at our workplaces; all those bloody unions do is go on strike all the time, bunch of useless troublemakers.

Well I beg to differ. (Don't act all surprised now.)

Unions, and union members, do a lot more than strike. There are many unionised workplaces who probably haven't been on strike in the last decade. In fact, the gossip reports that work stoppages (i.e. industrial action, including strikes but also other tactics) fell by nearly a third from the previous year. Not only were there less stoppages in 2006 than in 2005, there were less work days lost, despite the 25 day lock-out of union members at Progressive Enterprises.

Here are a few other things unions do:

• lobby and campaign for the democratically decided policies of their members
• represent members when their employment agreement is breached or they are treated unfairly
• negotiate and organise union member deals and discounts, such as insurance, retail savings, and more
• train and develop union members, delegates, activists and leaders
• debate and decide the direction of the organisation, and the way it will spend its money
• support and advocate for members who are in trouble in their job
• negotiate collective employment agreements, constantly seeking to improve the pay and conditions of members
• get involved in supporting broader union and social justice campaigns that their membership think are ka pai, sometimes off their own bat, other times through organisations such as the Council of Trade Unions, or Labour Start.
• provide specific member benefits and services, like union health centres, bereavement payments for the families of union members who die, scholarships for members and their children, and hardship funds
• engage in professional issues, and industry wide planning, for the sectors they represent
• and much much more!

All of these aspects of unionism, and strikes too, are membership activities. A union is its members, and although some are bureaucratic and daunting to the newcomer all give their members a voice - within the union as well as to the outside world.

Yes unions strike, when they need to. It's a tactic of last resort in most cases, although sometimes you have a pretty good inkling before bargaining starts that you'll probably have to look at industrial action. There are strict legal rules around striking, or taking other forms of industrial action, and actually the legal windows when you can strike are quite limited. Long gone are the days of being able to down tools because you don't like the tea, if they ever existed in the first place.

Workers don't get paid when they are on strike, and while it can be a very exciting and invigorating time it's also a hard slog for everyone involved. In my experience union members don't vote to strike lightly. Most of the time workers aren't on strike, they're just doing their jobs, and being union in other ways entirely.



Previous posts in the Union Myths series:

• Compulsory membership (so 1980s) (#1)
• All unionists want to be Rick Barker (#2)
• Unions are just like businesses (#3)
• Unions just protect the incompetent (#4)
• Shortland Street tells it like it is (#5)

(Pic Via.)

Linky Love - Volume 13

Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.

Alas, a blog - Roundup of posts about Gonzales v Carhart - Amp gives us all a link farm all about the recent Supreme Court decision in the US to undermine a woman's right to choose.

Aucklander at Large - Racial predisposition - a@l uncovers some weird theories about the Virginia Tech shooting on the Herald Readers' Views site. Winston Peters would be proud.

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty - But we've got a world cup to win! - Maia writes about Sivivatu's discharge without conviction for domestic violence, and why that had more to do with his Silver Fern than anything else.

the gossip - Smashing stuff with the people's hammer - uncovering the radical union activist that is Spongebob Squarepants.

I Blame the Patriarchy - Some notes on revolution - Twisty puts the case that our society is a patriarchy and why it sucks so much.

Joe Hendren - Peaceful WTO protesters win $1 million compensation - Joe has the story that no doubt won't get anywhere near the coverage the original misrepresentations of the so-called "Battle of Seattle".

The Kiwi Herald - TV presenters to multitask - john puts a humourous spin on the lay-offs at TVNZ.

Larvatus Prodeo - Labor's "pragmatic" national industrial relations platform - Guy looks at Australian Labor's possible answer to John Howard's much loathed Workchoices. It looks like Kevin Rudd may have caught NZ (and British) Labour's Third Way disease...

Pandagon - The main downside is it's one more thing to dust - Amanda Marcotte gives her view on the Rapist #1 action figure furore, which is not what I had expected I must admit.

Parrot on Policy - Saving for Retirement: Sorry, too busy paying off debt - Policy Parrot writes about some of the barriers to retirement saving and some ideas to counter them. Good to see student debt on the list of barriers!

Policy Matters - Putting 'public' back into public policy - Grant Duncan discusses the different parties' approaches to these matters and asks for feedback on how we now conceptualise "publicness" in public policy.

Shakesville - Iraq's homosexual communities cries out for help - wkw reports on what sounds like a violent campaign against gays and lesbians, exacerbated by the US Occupation.

WellUrban - Whose lane is it anyway? Tom has an interesting post about public transport developments in Windyton.*

Your Dirty Answers - (no title) - Audra Williams with the pyjamas you never knew you needed. Paul from The Fundy Post, this is for you!

And don't forget, previous volumes of Linky Love (1 - 12) can be found in their own shiny category.

Here we go again

Ok, so I wrote about this already but it seems that a repeat attempt at explanation is necessary:

1. Only a very small number of unions are affiliated to the Labour Party. I can only think of four; EPMU (aka The Engineers), SFWU (Service & Food), Meatworkers and DWU (Dairy Workers). While EPMU and SFWU are amongst the bigger private sector unions these four are still couldn't reasonably be counted as "many unions" given that the whole NZ union movement encompasses over 33 unions (there are some not affiliated to the Council of Trade Unions and thus not on their list). If anyone has the skinny on any other unions, other than the four I listed, being affiliated to Labour, please comment now or forever hold your peace!

2. Many unions, and many union members, are public sector. Public sector unions do not affiliate to political parties and have policies of not giving donations to political parties either. Last I checked Labour was a political party, therefore they won't be getting any donations from those unions any time soon. That cuts out a lot of unions as possible donors under the current system.

3. Unions have to publish their accounts for their members, and as they are on the register of unions and often also incorporated societies there is auditing and so on that has to happen, just like (in fact probably more publicly) than companies. Any big dollops of union money being spent on stuff has to go through a democratic process, usually the union's Executive (or similar body) which is elected by the membership on a regular basis. They can't just secretly decide to give sizeable cheques to political parties without any membership scrutiny. It seems to be something that those without experience in unions struggle to understand - union members have a say in the running of their union, and hold its management accountable in ways that rarely happen in the corporate world. Those democratic structures aren't perfect, and many could be better, but they are there!

Okay, now that I've blurted all that out, yet again...

I'd also note that what everyone seems to be getting worked up about, when it comes to the proposals about changing the election funding laws*, has been put forward as something that is a million miles away from what has been reported.

The assumption in the broader blogosphere seems to be that unions will have an exemption from all the rules and can do whatever they please. The reality of the suggested change is that a funding cap would apply to third party campaigning (including unions and other organisations) and that the campaigning materials must be approved by the political party concerned. There would then be an exemption from this for organisations, including unions and companies (and no doubt others), for communications that they made directly to their membership. I imagine that there are several organisations that have memberships bigger than the biggest union, for example the AA, or one of the major banks, or Fonterra, or the University of Auckland. So it's hardly some kind of union specific gold-plated carte blanche to behave however they wish, as some have painted it.

So kindly cease and desist, all ye who reckon it's now going to be open slather for union election spending. Unions don't have that much spare dosh anyway.



* I haven't written on this yet cos I haven't read enough. I don't know if I'll have a chance anytime soon realistically.

Linky Love - Volume 10

Ok this is published a day earlier than usual, cos it's full and cos there are some other admin type things I need to put up tomorrow morning. Enjoy.

Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.

Adventures in Lame - Realization: I'm An Angry, Humourless Feminist - Reb delivers the rant that has many times sat just above my own heart at the hearing of yet another dumb "joke" that isn't actually funny.

DagCentral - Kiwis in Amurrica: nau mai, haere mai... - DC covers the recent Clark-Bush tet a tet, from the point of view of a leftie American who hearts NZ.

Feministe - Why Feminism Is Still Necessary - zuzu exposes one particular case of harassment against a woman blogger, but riffs on the general theme as well.

The Fundy Post - The dog ate my homework - wherein Paul Litterick eventually recreates a recent piece he wrote for Craccum and thus reveals to us all how hard it is to be a tory.

Larvatus Prodeo - WorkChoices one year on - Mark looks at the impact of the Australian employment laws brought in last year by Howard. Two word summary? Not good.

Liberation -The farce of democracy on the Representation Commission - Bryce Edwards writes about the bias of the Representation Commission (which decides electorate boundaries) and the irony of David Caygill representing Labour on it.

New York Times - Why I Was Fired - One of the US District Attorney's fired for "performance related" reasons (said "performance" being the loyal Bushie role he neglected to play) writes about the scandal.

Pandagon - Fighting the system - Sheezlebub follows up her post on the cost of our economic system (listed in Vol 9 of Linky Love) with some practical suggestions to challenge it.

Pandagon - As motherhood slowly changes into a choice - Amanda Marcotte writes in response to a Guardian article looking at three generations of women and the changes in attitudes to motherhood, birth control, and assorted related matters.

PunkAssBlog - On Trolling and PunkAssBlog - A damn fine post on what is, and isn't, trolling.

Sparkle*Matrix - Second Life: Rape games ~ update - Some pretty sick news about online role-playing game Second Life, brought to us by sparklematrix.

Tales from the Reading Room - Sleeping With The Enemy - litlove contributes her thoughts on reviewing a manuscript for a publisher, something every aspiring writer should check out.

WIMN's Voices - Top Model's beautiful corpses - Jennifer Pozner covers the America's Next Top Model scandal. Yes, I tend to agree with Pozner (and incidentally many others who have posted on this in US feminist circles) that taking photos of models made up to look like they died violent deaths trivialises violence and even dehumanizes women.


And don't forget, previous volumes of Linky Love can be found in their own shiny category.

A Question

I see that David Farrar has decided that there is one union strike he can support, namely the one called by those brave union members in Fiji who have decided to strike over the unilateral pay cut the dictatorship has imposed.

The irony of this is that NZ workers could not legally strike in an analagous situation under current employment law. Yes, that would be the same Employment Relations Act which Farrar and others on his side of the political spectrum currently attack as too pro-union.

So does Messr Farrar support a change in NZ's industrial laws to allow strikes here for political purposes and/or outside of bargaining? Or is that only ok when it's happening in a foreign place where you would like regime change?

PS - Go the Fijian Workers!

National hearts unions?

So National's new industrial relations spokesperson Kate Wilkinson has discovered that unions are not The Enemy. Hat tip to Aucklander at Large who has written about his scepticism, a sentiment I share.

One thing that bugs me about National and their approach to unions is watching John Key simultaneously sidle up to his idol John Howard. Howard has brought in some of the heaviest anti-union legislation seen in a long long time, far worse than our own Employment Contracts Act was. National has got to be looking across the Tasman with longing, especially given they all seem to believe that the unions provide the bulk of Labour's campaign funding (not true).

Kate Wilkinson is a loooong way down the caucus rankings, so her hold on the industrial relations portfolio suggests to me that National doesn't intend to do much campaigning in that area in the next year or so. This worries me. It means that that part of their policy isn't going to get much media scrutiny, and probably that journalists will be gentler in interviewing Wilkinson, as a newbie, than they would have been with the previous holder, Wayne Mapp.

Because surely we must all know that National will want to at the very least gut the Employment Relations Act? There is no consensus between the Big Two on industrial relations, far from it. And employment law affects every worker in New Zealand.

An unscrutinised industrial relations policy (or simply, an unstated one, as seems to be the case with most National policy these days) could mean some big surprises after the 2008 election for voters, if National take the Treasury benches...

Update, 15th March 2007 6.47pm: Bryce Edwards gives his take on National's new paramour too.

Linky Love - Volume 7

Standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.


Alas (a blog) - Workplace deaths are overwhelmingly male - Ampersand looks at the reasons why US workplace deaths are mainly amongst men, in particular occupational segregation. My perception is that NZ stats would be similar.

Auckland's Burning - Workers fired because of union membership - John has text and pics about a group of Unite members who had jobs at the Ascott Metropolis in Auckland, until they were fired for having the gall to be union members.

Contradiction - Recanting - George Darroch changes his mind about the post featured in an earlier Linky Love about banning gang patches. Good on him for doing so publicly.

Feministe - File Under: Get pregnant, lose your civil liberties - Jill shines a much needed light on yet another example of discrimination against pregnant women.

Feministe - The New Feminism - Another great post from Jill, this time about how a new reality TV show based on the Pussycat Dolls is apparently empowering to women. That would be why high heels are so uncomfortable to wear then - the pain is empowering me!

Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty - Expecting More - Maia rips apart the post by Russel Norman, Greens co-leader, about the trials of Rickards, Shipton and Schollum. She has written some amazing stuff on the trial and its outcome, including this, this, and this.

The Fundy Post - Listener now to be available as soothing Gel - Paul Litterick flexs his satire muscles in response to news of a declining Listener readership.

Hard News - Bad men - Russell Brown on the police rape trials, resulting in a multi-faceted comment thread which dips into trollville before being redeemed by D&D veterans. A thread to make you cry a lot, and, eventually, laugh a little.

The Legal Soapbox - The Old School Tie - Legal Eagle explores the issues lefties face when choosing between public and private schooling for their progeny.

The Legal Soapbox - Barefoot and pregnant with a gavel - Legal Eagle gets a second nod for a post on some really quite ludicrous reasons why women shouldn't be judges according to Shariah law.

A Long Time Ago and Not True Anyway - With these bombs democracy - Terence expands on a debate on Public Address System about imposing democracy, comparing Germany and Japan with Iraq.

Make Tea Not War - Know Your Rights - MTNW has a handy explanation of a basic consumer right; being able to return things wot don't work good. Includes a dandy letter you can use for your own broken stuff crisis.

Pandagon - Marriage's downward spiral - gay folks didn't do it - Pam Spaulding writes about the socioeconomic reasons why less Americans are marrying and concludes that it has little to do with homosexual marriage.

Single Malt Social Democrat - Charity begins in Parnell - Carl points out that it doesn't have to be private charity or government funding, and argues that the idea of citizens being totally reliant on charity is abhorrent.

stanselen - Ageism and Sexism - jo writes about her experiences within activist groups as an "older" (32!) radical feminist.

Tales from the Reading Room - Fantasy Podcasts - litlove muses on which great dead literary types she would love to interview, and what she would ask if only she could.

Previous volumes of Linky Love can be found in their own shiny category.

Union Myths #5 - Shortland Street tells it like it is

Readers may not have noticed, but there is a bit of a union-centred storyline running on Shortie St at the moment, irritating me no end with its inaccuracies*.

The premise is that Toni (head nurse) is the goodie just trying to manage her nurses as best she can and Brenda (who wants Toni's job) is the baddie backed by the union to unfairly make the boss's wife** hell.

The union in this case is called the "Nurses Association". There is no such union - and they were wise to not refer to the NZNO (known as the Nurses Organisation) by name as the portrayal of their role is rather a long way from what might happen in a real situation of this nature.

To start with, there is allegedly one "woman from the union" involved, and she is clearly on Brenda's side and offering nothing but criticism to Toni. In actual fact in a member versus member situation you will often have two union officials involved, one supporting and representing each side. Certainly as the union official there is a certain amount of sensitivity required when you are dealing with conflict between members, and I would expect the union character to be more circumspect in her actions, and in her comments to both Toni and Brenda.

Although in this case Toni is (partly) acting with her employer hat on, and as such would not usually turn to the union for help but instead to the DHB's HR department. But this is telly and apparently the mythical DHB and Shortland St hospital don't employ anyone in Human Resources, so Toni is facing this crisis alone as the union has abandoned her. The union official is certainly not normally in the situation of judge in these matters, but she is being cast that way (and as a biased decision-maker) on this occasion.

Furthermore, Brenda is throwing around threats of strike. There are only two situations in which union members can strike legally, under the current law:

1. During bargaining for a new collective agreement (does not appear to be the case, there's been no reference to it); or
2. In a health and safety situation where labour is withdrawn due to the risk (this could be the case here, I haven't been watching closely enough, but it's very very rare in real life. If anyone can think of an example in recent years of a strike for this reason then I'd love to hear about it in comments).

Union members only strike after a vote to do so. I've yet to see the nurses on Shortland St doing anything like voting, instead the plot is focused on Brenda as the baddie who they all blindly follow, and Toni as the martyr. My experience of union members is that they are not easily persuaded to strike and in fact want to avoid it for as long as possible. Particularly those whose jobs are vocational and involve looking after other people.

So in summary: Shortland Street - wrong about unions since at least 2007.

*And here's the index to the rest of the union myths series to date (can't believe I haven't written one since 2005!)
** For those not in the know, which I think I can safely assume is most of my readership, Toni is married to Chris who is the CEO of Shortland St Hospital. The other aspect at play here is that Chris has been having an affair (now ended) with another doctor who is encouraging Brenda in her anti-Toni crusade, in order to exact revenge on her former lover and blackmail him into giving her the Head of Surgery job.

Linky Love - Volume 4

The now standard intro - if you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else.

Also, if you want to suggest some new blogs to widen my reading please leave a message after the beep.

...the gossip - Well you can't please everyone - The unofficial Finsec (Financial Sector Union) blog has a pithy post on the political positions unions take.

Contradiction - Bio-terror George posts on the SPCA surprise inspection of a battery farm ALF had previously raided and reported. Despite the ALF raid, the farmers appeared to have improved little, but the SPCA may still not prosecute.

Feministe - Who are the extremists? Jill points out the extreme politics, including advocating for the assasination of scientists and political leaders, espoused by leading lights on the right of the US blogosphere.

Fighting Talk - Lyndon Hood writes wittily about literary references and NZ politics.

From the morgue - What's the matter with W Cres? morgue shares his experiences of Wilkie Cres in Naenae, which seems to have more than its fair share of murderous crimes.

The Fundy Post - Ash Wednesday Paul writes about the privileges complaint recently upheld against naughty Matt Robson, who had the temerity to make a comment about United Future's links with Big Tobacco in his email newsletter.

Hard News - The Report Card Russell Brown delves into some of the stats and reportage on the Unicef report on child well-being, and also links to a photo that very nearly made me cry. The ensuing discussion in PASystem is also of interest.

Left reckoner - a game of numbers Rob Davies has a humourous and interesting post inspired by some of the 2006 census results (more interesting than I am making it sound!)

The Legal Soapbox - Yet more thoughts on Anti-Semitism - Legal Eagle points out that Jews and Arabs are both Semites, and muses on the impact of white supremacy on the prejudices against these groups.

Natalia Anatova - Beauty and the B-list - Natalia channels her Gerard Butler obsession into a post on celebrity. I think she's really trying to pose the question we all want answered - is Butler the new Christian Bale?

Paper, Scissors, Rock - Male Pattern Stupidity - Ms Klake posts about her observation that men may just get more stupid as they age. I couldn't possibly comment ;-)

Women of Color Blog - Tim Hardaway hates Gays and plotting Queer liberation through sports brownfemipower covers the controversy that has erupted in the US sports world after former NBA basketballer John Amaeci came out of the closet.

Former Linky Loves (vols 1 through 3) can be found in the Linky Love category.

BEEEEEEP

Unfortunately Wrong-footed

I've come late to the online kerfuffle about the blog criticising CYFS workers, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it.

Those who have waded in so far include David Farrar, who wrote about the CYFS Watch blog and why he isn't linking to it. Conversely Idiot/Savant linked to it, and thinks suppressing it is a dangerous thing for our democracy. (Others who have written on this, please feel free to add your link in comments).

The Social Workers Registration Board has put out a release on Scoop about their accountability processes, which served to highlight that registration does not appear to be compulsory for their profession.

It's not often I find myself in disagreement with Idsy, but this is one of those rare occasions.

I take his point about freedom of speech. I think it is very important. But what's also important here is the rights of these workers, and I believe that both could have been respected if the CYFSWatch blog had been done differently.

In particular, if it did not include the names and personal details of the Child Youth and Family (CYF) workers and if it omitted the high level of personal abuse - if it focused its anger on the employer rather than the workers, basically.

There should be processes within CYF to raise concerns and have them addressed. As someone who deals with similar processes in a different setting every working day, some people will not have a legitimate grievance but will persist regardless. Others will have a strong case but not pursue it. Such a process will need to be able to soothe the former and encourage the latter. It will also need to respect the rights of the workers to natural justice and fair process, or the vicious circle will simply continue with a new person wearing the mantle of the aggrieved.

The process also needs to recognise that sometimes (I suspect often) the concern that has come about is due to flaws that go beyond a single social worker. Which is why the CYFSWatch blog is so wrong-footed. Because ultimately who can effect change to the system that is CYF? The individual social workers? Not so much really, particularly not if they act alone.

The blog has done some valuable work in raising awareness of the high level of frustration and rage felt by some who have had dealings with CFYS. There is always room for improvement, but I hope that the angry blogging has not prejudiced the ability to see the causes of that seething as something bigger than the actions of this social worker or that one.

I also sincerely hope it has not led to threats against any of those named on the blog, or their families. We have a chronic shortage of social workers, registered or not, and this kind of scrutiny, which goes against natural justice and makes those workers vulnerable, is hardly going to help.

And in the Blue Corner

And so the debate about the make-up of the Labour caucus continues - Carl has posted about the shock news that there are some unionists amongst the Labour MPs, while Insolent Prick has analysed the Red Team to portray it at (what he considers) its worst. You'd never guess he has strong associations with National.

But let's turn the tables a little here - let's look at National for just a few moments. I know that in general people don't like to overly scrutinize National MPs, goodness knows why, but perhaps they deserve a little bit of our attention.

In comments to my post refuting Fran O'Sullivan's attack on the make-up of the Labour caucus, Psycho Milt postulated that a change of Government probably wouldn't see that journalist similarly writing about the lack of "union activists, teachers, lecturers, community workers and nurses" the National caucus has.

So just how many does it have? I live but to serve...

Nurse aide, community worker ("welfare representative") - Paula Bennett
Secondary teacher - Gerry Brownlee
Primary and secondary teacher - Brian Connell
Nurse - Jo Goodhew
Community worker ("youth education coordinator") and union member (4 years in the Clerical Workers Union* in the mid 80s) - Tau Henare
Legal academic - Wayne Mapp
Secondary teacher - Allan Peachey
"Junior lecturer" - Lockwood Smith
Physics teacher (secondary) - Maurice Williamson

As with the Labour MPs, I've looked only at their bios on the Parliamentary website, for consistency's sake. Feel free to make additions/subtractions in comments.

I'd note that "community worker" is about as hard to pin down as "business person" and "entrepreneur" were for the Labour list. Further I haven't included Nick Smith, as he was a tutor at university, not a lecturer, or Nicky Wagner (a lecturer, but at a polytechnic which doesn't quite fit the Labour stereotype) but I'm willing to argue the toss on whether they count or not.

The above is a considerably shorter list than that produced by applying O'Sullivan's list ("Business people, successful entrepreneurs, military men, scientists, accountants, farmers, diplomats and even a few lawyers") to Labour MPs.

Psycho Milt's list works out at:
Union activists - maybe one**
Teachers - four
Lecturers - two (four if you include Smith [N] and Wagner)
Community workers - two
Nurses - one (and one nurse aide)

So what we can conclude here is that the stereotypes applied to Labour MPs apply even less to the National caucus than the reverse.

Newsflash indeed!



* The Clerical Workers Union amalgamated with what is now the Service and Food Workers Union during the 1990s.
** Despite David Farrar's pronouncement in comments over on a post about this at Just Left that many National MPs would have been union members over the years only one listed it. And I note that the one who did is an import from another party.

Radiating that happy feeling

Because the radiation therapists have reached an agreement* with the DHBs, phew.

This strike (or rather series of strikes) has been very tense. On the one side you have workers who really deserve more recognition (pay and otherwise); a mainly female workforce who perform vital health tasks and are in demand here and overseas, facing great financial temptation to flee NZ. On the other side there are the DHBs, who are not exactly known for their friendly attitude towards their workers, but are elected boards running our health systems, and as such at arms length from the Government itself.

And then in the middle are the patients and their families. People who are in a bad state, going through the worst part of their lives in some cases, and already facing considerable uncertainty about their health anyway.

But all the radiation therapists have had to bargain with, ultimately, has been their labour, or rather its absence.

Like Maria Von Trapp I thought Bishop Randerson was quite wrong with his call for the radiation therapists to return to work for the good of their patients. These are people who have studied for some years, at considerable personal cost, and who do a difficult and highly skilled job, not for the money but because they care. Radiation therapy is not a profession you go into for the dosh - but it is not unreasonable for those working in it to expect fair remuneration.

Everyone, actually, is entitled to be paid at a rate they deserve. In our economic system what you deserve is not possible - instead you get what you can negotiate, and sometimes part of negotiation is taking industrial action, including striking.

I'd also note that a lot of people, including Randerson, have been calling for some kind of arbitration to break these deadlocks. Funny thing is that we already have a form of this, brought in with the 2004 amendments to the ERA (I think) and now called facilitation.** It's for exactly this kind of situation, where bargaining has been protracted and the relationship is fractured. I don't understand why the parties haven't gone there with this dispute, although it does require the consent of both sides, so I'm assuming one or tuther didn't agree. Either that or they did seek it but just continued to refer to it as "mediation" publicly.

Left Reckoner though had it right - the dispute had got to the point where the public relations battle was being won by the DHBs and time was running out for the radiation therapists.

It always strikes (hah hah) me as somewhat ironic that the very people we trust to care for us, or our loved ones, are the same people we, the public, often demand ignore the needs of their own families to serve us. It's a false dichotomy - radiation therapists are part of the public too, they have needs as well, and I know that they will have tried everything they possibly could before striking.

What stinks here is how the DHBs are getting off the hook. They have run the line, successfully, that it was the radiation therapists holding the patients to ransom. But who actually has the purse-strings here? Who was in fact holding out? The DHBs. Remember that the radiation therapists were in fact losing money whenever they went on strike, as they wouldn't be paid whenever they were taking industrial action. Some might say that not having to pay the strikers would have been saving the DHBs money, possibly even enough money to fund the extra pay claimed, but I don't have that kind of inside information. Would be interesting to do the figures though.

While this dispute sounds like it is at an end, this could be quite a big industrial year.*** And much of that will depend on what the Government decides to do with the contents of its coffers, and how hands-off Clark, Cullen et al decide to be.

* I'm assuming they are now going to have to seek member ratification, which actually means it isn't totally over yet, but I suspect that the union involved wouldn't have withdrawn the strike notices unless the agreement was within parameters members had previously indicated were ok.

** And it has been used - I can remember three cases off the top of my head where facilitation has been applied for, although only one of those actually ended up being facilitated I think.

*** In addition to what is happening in the medical sector, there is a great deal on the negotiating table this year in education, and no doubt in the broader public service. I note that the police will not be in talks though, as they settled late last year.

The Secret to Job-hunting

Over at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty, Maia is chronicling her battle with Work and Income to get the unemployment benefit.

It's the kind of real-life writing that deserves regular publication in all our major daily newspapers - if it's this tough for someone like Maia I can only shudder when I think of how others might fare, those with children, or no transport, or cruddy health, or a foreign accent, or no union experience, or brown skin, or visible tattoos, or a nasty former boss, or poor English, or overseas qualifications and/or work history etc etc ad nauseum. I've fitted in to a few of those categories in my time, and any of us could find ourselves trying to row that boat, sans paddle, in the future.
Anyway, go read it, and keep reading it as the episodes of Maia vs WINZ unfold:

Part 1 - WRK4U
Part 2 - The Forms
Part 3 - The Reality
Part 4 - The Call Centre (added 4th Jan)

I'm just waiting for the case manager to mention the importance of smiling.