New Zealand

New Zealand McDonald's workers beat zero-hours contracts

Unite Union has reached an agreement with McDonald's over ending zero hour contracts and other issues in dispute with the company. "This is a historic agreement" says Unite National Director Mike Treen. "Now all the of the major fast food chains have committed to ending zero hours. This is the culmination of a decade long campaign for secure hours by Unite Union. It will be welcomed tens of thousands of workers in the fast food industry and hundreds thousands more who will ultimately benefit in other industries. It represents a fundamental shift in the employment relationship of the most...

The battle over Anzac Day

25 April 2015 will be the 100th anniversary of the landings by British, French, Australian, and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli, in Turkey, in an unsuccessful effort to seize Constantinople (now Istanbul) during World War One. More than any other imperialist sally, this one has become a nationalist legend. This article by Tom O’Lincoln, abridged with thanks from the Australian socialist newspaper Red Flag , recounts the history. From 1916, 25 April was officially named Anzac Day. Australian troops marched in London, and a sports day was held in the Australian camp in Egypt. In the Sydney march...

New Zealand fast food workers beat zero-hours contracts

Restaurant Brands, which owns the KFC, Pizza Hut, Carl's Jr and Starbucks chains in New Zealand, has committed to end zero hour contracts by July this year in a new collective agreement negotiated with Unite Union. Unite has 2,000 members at the chain and is recommending the new terms to members in a vote to be held over the next week or so. The Unite bargaining team was unanimous in its support for the proposal which promises staff at least 80% of the average hours will be guaranteed using a three month rolling average of hours worked up to a maximum of 32 hours a week. "This is a gigantic...

New Zealand fast food workers fight zero-hours contracts

Mike Treen, National Director of Unite New Zealand (a union organising workers in fast food restaurants, cinemas, and other workplaces) reports on recent and upcoming struggles for their members. This article first appeared on The Daily Blog. The original can be read here . Union members will be bargaining for a new collective agreement in fast food and cinemas in 2015. The new agreements start from April 1, 2015. Very soon we will be discussing what claims members want to make on the companies. Usually these claims cover thing like increased pay, breaks, and more secure hours. Unite has...

Cloudy Sunday

Cloudy Sunday is the first novella by Mike Kyriazopoulos. Mike will be well-known to many members and sympathisers of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, in which he was active until 2007 when he moved to New Zealand and joined the Workers' Party/Fightback, as well as to reps in the Communication Workers' and Public and Commercial Services Unions in which he was also active as a postal worker and civil servant. He began writing Cloudy Sunday earlier this year after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease. For a short book of seventy pages, Cloudy Sunday packs a lot of historical and other...

"The fundamental element was our confidence in the working class"

Mike Treen, the National Director of the Unite union in New Zealand (no connection to the British union of the same name) spoke to Solidarity about their drives to organise precarious workers in the fast food and service industries. The “Supersize My Pay” campaign in the mid-2000s established Unite in the fast food industry. We won agreements with the major chains — Restaurant Brands (which owns Pizza Hut, KFC, and others), then McDonald’s, and finally Burger King. It was a long and exhausting struggle. We realised that, given the competitive nature of the fast food industry, we needed an...

Wellington seafarers and the invasion of Finland

Readers with a knowledge of the history of Trotskyism will know that the USSR’s invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 marked a turning point for the movement. It triggered a fierce debate, and eventually a split among the US Trotskyists. What is less well known is that a contemporary parallel development emerged among the Wellington [New Zealand] seafarers. The Evening Post of 7 December 1939 reproduced the full text of a long resolution passed by a stop-work meeting of the Federated Seamen’s Union which expressed its “profound sympathy with the people of Finland now suffering under a brutal...

“Live life to the fullest, make a better world”

Mike Kyriazopoulos, a Workers’ Liberty supporter based in New Zealand/Aotearoa and active in Fightback, died on 18 January 2014 after a long battle with Motor Neurone Disease. This is a letter he wrote to comrades in April 2013. Early this year I was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. It appears as though the “progress” of the disease (oddly Stalinist terminology) is quite rapid. So I wanted to thank all of you who know me for your political guidance, solidarity, friendship and love over the years. I first came across the AWL at York University Labour Club. But I realised the group was...

Narrow win for New Zealand Tories

New Zealand’s Tories, the National Party, have been returned to lead the government, but only by the narrowest of margins. National won 59 out of 121 seats in Parliament, and is reliant for a majority on the neoliberal ACT party and centre-right United Future, who got one seat each. Turnout was the lowest since the 1880s - about a million people (26.8%) on the electoral roll did not vote. The saving grace of the election was the result of the concurrently held referendum on the voting system — Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP) will be retained. In 1990 National gained a similar...

Survey: intifada in West Bank; union recruitment campaigns; Labour Thatcherites in NZ; Natal's civil war

In response to the uprising (intifada) in the West Bank, which started in December 1987, Israel should be made to get out of the occupied territories and allow the formation there of a fully independent Palestinian state. The GMB and TGWU unions have started a scramble to recruit hitherto untapped sources of union membership - public work schemes, young people, part-time workers, especially women. Roger Douglas, minister of finance in New Zealand's Labour government, introduced a sweeping Thatcherite programme - flat-rate income tax, big privatisations - without even consulting the Labour...

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