National’s Blitzkrieg Against New Zealand Workers Continues!

^{This blitzkrieg against workers first began with
the passing of the 90 Day "Fire At Will" law under Parliamentary urgency which
enables bosses whose businesses have fewer than twenty workers to dismiss staff
for any reason within the first ninety days of employment. Such workers have no
right to seek personal grievance claims. This has enabled bosses to subject
workers to numerous abuses without being challenged as workers who dare to
complain are threatened with dismissal. Such workers are then subjected to a
thirteen week stand-down by Work and Income when they apply for the unemployment
benefit because they were dismissed. Under orders from the head office of the
Ministry of Social Development the benefit applicant is automatically regarded
as a liar if there is a contradiction between what the benefit applicant and
their ex-employer state.}

^{Within the last week the government has
announced proposals for a series of anti-worker changes to current employment
legislation including:}

^{These attacks come on top of a planned increase
in GST from 12.5% to 15%, ACC levy increases and power price hikes which will
impact upon workers the hardest as their wages are already inadequate to meet
their basic needs, a fact shown by the brute reality that as many as one million
New Zealanders are reliant on at least one form of assistance offered through
the Working for Families package to supplement their income.}

^{Though it is commendable that the Council of
Trade Unions has organised protests against these attacks against the working
class it is disappointing that this condemnation has been muted, especially at a
time when workers have come under assault from many different directions from
the ruling elite that runs New Zealand.}

^{The Council of Trade Unions and non-aligned
trade unions need to take a more proactive stance in challenging these
unprecedented attacks on the working class. Even from a reformist perspective
the blitzkrieg being unleashed upon the working class is not only setting this
country’s industrial relations back to the level they were at the time of the
Great Depression in the early 1930s but they also breach international conventions.}

^{Article 20(1) of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly
and association."}

^{Article 23 states: "(1) Everyone has
the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable
conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone,
without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3)
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring
for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and
supplemented, if necessary by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone
has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his
interests."}

^{Article 24 states: "Everyone has the
right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and
periodic holidays with pay."}

^{Article 25(1) states: "Everyone has
the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of
himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical
care…."}

^{As has been clearly seen the 90 day hire and
fire law, proposals to ban trade unions from the work place, increases in GST
and ACC levies and proposed changes in basic annual leave provisions are a clear
breach of international law and must be opposed. Merely organising a protest
outside a Party Conference is not going to achieve anything more than to provide
a news story on a slow news day.}

^{In the short term the very minimum the
trade union leadership must do is to call and organise for a 24 hour
General Strike.  What these attacks by the Nats show is that the hard won reforms
of the past are no longer affordable by capitalism system.  If the capitalist
systtem cannot afford the basic human dignities for all then it as to
go.} 

In the final analysis only the socialist
transformation of society can guarantee these basic human rights, here in New
Zealand and internationally.  That’s why it is necessary to
nationalise the multinationals, and banks with compensation based
upon proven need, so that all the wealth created can be
democratically managed by workers and society run in the interests of working
people

  ^{Socialist Appeal demands the
following:}