Housing NZ: Not for sale!

Housing protest, Glen Innes, Auckland

Housing NZ’s own press release admits cutting state housing: “The northern Glen Innes redevelopment project proposes the redevelopment of 156 properties to create at least 260 new homes, including: 78 that Housing New Zealand will own; at least 39 other affordable homes (possibly owned or managed through other social or community housing providers); the remainder for private sale”.‘Redevelopment’ in Glen Innes means selling off most of the land and halving the number of existing state houses!

Government attacks

The NACT Govt has announced its knives are out for more attacks on the social wage of the working class. Housing NZ has cut the accommodation supplement to income-related rents for beneficiaries and low-paid workers. The government’s propaganda line is to bring state rents into a “level playing field” with community trusts.  Yet the Housing Minister has also said “the state can no longer afford to meet the need for social and affordable housing by itself, and wants to encourage "third-sector" non-profit trusts”. We expect more cuts given the presence of welfare working group members on the latest government committee.

After the “Tamaki transformation” development, Housing NZ will only own and manage 30% (78/260) of the housing. Of course the prime land values will be go into private pockets as Housing NZ properties not sold off will be on the cheaper land (bottom of the hill – less sun, no views). HNZ is already in bed with private capitalists –Fletchers and McConnell Dowell have directors on the Housing NZ board.

 
Now Housing NZ and Auckland city council have sub-contracted the whole “transformation” to the “Tamaki Redevelopment Company”. Government has put $5 million in (and is 59% owner) the council has put in $3.5 million (for 49% ownership). The company wants the “private sector” to invest funds and make a profit. Instead of providing social housing the state will be collaborating in the profiteering of property developers. This is proof that Mayor Len Brown’s election promise: “I won’t privatise” was a lie.

Charity dumping

The NACT Govt is dumping housing responsibilities and cutting the contribution to the social wage made by state housing. They have contracted out more “social” housing through a ‘social housing unit’. An allocation of $8.81 million has also gone to Accessible Properties NZ, a wholly owned subsidiary of IHC, to provide accommodation for people with intellectual disabilities. A grant of $1.3m, went to the Comcare Charitable Trust for building 20 single person units around Christchurch – This is peanuts when you look at shortage of housing and the failure to replace and repair state housing that is red stickered.  But is enough to buy out Comcare so Annette Sutherland (their housing manager) is now working for the government on how to get out of “social” housing by part-privatising to more charities.

Local churches and charities may also be bought off by a government lolly scramble for $104 million available for “social housing funds”. Social housing was what State housing (Housing NZ) was all about, now the government is contracting this out to the private sector and trusts. The Ponsonby Rd Baptist Church has it's hand out. Their ‘Community of Refuge Trust’, “will receive $3.89m to build clusters of 31 one- and two-bedroom units”. This is a payout to the trust to echo the NACTs  own bullshit. Trust chief executive Peter Jeffries thinks, ‘government is prioritising social housing’. The 30% public/ 70% private sell-off in Glen Innes/Tamaki exposes that as an outright lie.

Charity is no long-term solution for meeting working class needs. Charities are under control of the state as they are dependent on state funding to expand – and charities that criticise or challenge the government are frozen out of existence by a freeze in state funding – while those that cosy up and spout the governments lies receive funding. The government can pick winners who repeat their lies, and try to meet the needs of the “deserving poor”. The losers will be charities that dare to question the government version of reality and the government’s continuing attack on the “undeserving poor” and “benefit bludgers”. Charities shift the debate from income based rents with plans to charge 70%-80% of market rents: cold charity.

Rents attacked

The Auckland housing need is growing at approx. 250+ new houses per month according to the City Council estimate. Yet only 50 per month are being built currently. The “market” will push up rents. Housing NZ rents are fixed at 25% of the tenants' incomes. But the Government is gearing up to attack income based rents. NACT complains about “giving” Housing NZ just over $600 million a year as the difference between market rents and rents limited to 25% of income. Through WINZ NACT pays $1.2 billion a year in accommodation supplements for 312,000 people, more that 50% of total private rentals; charity for private landlords and their capitalist bankers. 

How about meeting needs?

Capitalist developers are proven failures – building shoddy or leaky homes for a quick profit; going bust, leaving unfinished buildings and developments, and leaving people in sub-standard housing. Capitalism has failed to provide affordable housing!

It was a National government in the 1990’s that destroyed housing standards and set the scene for the leaky building problems. Allowing free-market cowboys to run the whole building and property development ‘industry’ – for profit, and not even able to meet basic housing needs. This government will not fix the housing shortage. Housing NZ has no plan to contribute to meet this need – instead they are privatising. Elderly applicants are told that they will die before they get into a HNZ house! We know that there are three families packed into 3-bedroom houses in Auckland, while others live in one bedroom boarding houses. The health system is burdened with diseases of poverty, including illnesses created by overcrowded and substandard housing.

No parliamentary solutions

Anyone who has any faith in a so-called Labour Party or the Mana Party needs to demand that their Party calls the asset sales “theft” and demand that they take the assets back without compensation – on winning the next election!

We have no confidence that those “left” parties will fight these assets sales. They are in the job of using Parliament to manage capitalism. Capitalism is facing a global depression and is desperate to restore profits. The only way out for them is to make the working class pay for their crisis: stealing our assets; attacking the social wage (health, education and housing) and driving down wages and conditions.  

The government is failing to meet people’s needs. They do not listen to the needs for housing – instead all they listen to is the capitalists desire to take profits and so they will sell, sell and sell. The asset sales are theft of state property paid for by the working class over the generations.  Housing represents part of the social wage defined as state provision of services paid for by taxation. While the capitalist claim the right to buy up public assets that are part of our social wage, we claim the right to expropriate their private wealth made on the backs of the working class! When the government doesn’t listen and doesn’t meet our needs we have to fight back – and we have to fight back in ways that they cannot ignore.

Take back all stolen assets/ no compensation!

For strikes and occupations – block the ruling class from their profit taking – then the State will know the power of the organised working class. Build strikes that shutdown production – that do not let scab labour in. Occupy factories and assets to show workers can control production.

For workers control of housing developments

Construction workers and HNZ tenants unite to plan and build new housing! The working class built those houses and will build the new houses to meet our needs only workers control! State housing began under a Labour Government when the working class was well organised and strong enough to win a good living standard. The Karl Marx Hof in Vienna (Austria) is another example of a state housing project provided by a ‘labour’ – social democratic government in the early 1930s.

While a fightback is on in Glen Innes, Mangere, Mt Roskill, New Lynn and Royal Oak are also in for a Housing NZ selloff. The outer suburbs will also be under the hammer. This is an attack on the social wage of the whole working class.

• For a workers council of Glen Innes! And when we say ‘workers’ we mean the whole working class, including beneficiaries and state house tenants.
• Smash market rents – for workers councils to set affordable rents in the area, and maximum of 25% of income.
• Occupations and pickets to stop house removals! No house removals unless they are under tenants and workers control to meet the needs of the community!
• For community self-defense squads! Prepare, be ready to defend pickets and occupations against police brutality.
• Smash the monopoly of Fletchers building and/or nationalise building companies under workers control with no compensation to the capitalist-share holders. Stop the finance capitalist profiteering from housing, for workers control of the banks!
• Socialise the building industry under workers control to build enough high standard affordable housing for all those that need housing!

Class Struggle in Aotearoa/NZ

Auckland Portworkers (Wharfies) mass rally March 10, 2012

The capitalist system is not working: profits are falling for the capitalist class. Their solution is to make the working class pay for their crisis. They are on the attack, across the world, the working class is under attack. In NZ National-Act support the bosses who are attacking unions and forcing down wages and conditions. National-Act is a government of the bosses. De-unionisation deregulates the labour market and lowers labour costs. They leave NZ a cheap labour country. This is a direct result of competitive pressure on primary industries in the global downturn. We look at the emergence of open class struggle in two key export industries in Aotearoa – Port workers, and Meat workers. There is no parliamentary solution to this all out attack on workers. We need a mass revolutionary party to fight for a Workers Government and a socialist planned economy!

Port workers struggles

he fight between shipowners, port owners and wharfies (portworkers) in Aotearoa is about driving down shipping costs to restore profits to the monopoly shipping lines. It is little surprise then that Ports of Auckland backed by the new right NACT regime came out in 2011 hell-bent on smashing the Maritime Union of NZ (MUNZ) the union covering wharfies, to drive down wages by contracting out jobs.

The board members of the ports of Auckland were picked as part of the restructure of Auckland in the invention of a Supercity. Where the elected Auckland Regional Council had run the port and used profits to subsidise public transport developments, the new board was hand-picked by Rodney Hide on behalf of global finance capitalism. The port was set up as Ports of Auckland Ltd (POAL), prepared for privatisation. It is ready for the next right-wing dominated council to privatise.

Already the Ports of Auckland have contracted out work. They set up Conlinxx as a 70% POAL owned contractor that drives shuttles moves containers between ports and the “Wiri inland port”. The other (30%) player in this is NZL, a Tauranga based capitalist logistics contractor. This is a part privatisation at the port. Other private contractors getting in behind the gates are Spotless and Labour hire companies.

National-Act attacks on the working class continue to create unemployment and at the same time they harass the unemployed into accepting any job at low wages. Marx described the unemployed as a reserve-army of labour: A part of the working class that is ready for work. Unless the union movement starts to protect the unemployed – the capitalist class will continue to use the unemployed as scabs in fights with organised unions.

As a direct result of the POAL dispute the NACT regime is writing new labour laws which support the bosses walking away from negotiations and screwing the working class and dumping unions completely. The new legislation will allow bosses to lockout workers and replace them legally to smash the unions.

The Labour Party plays it “safe”: Neither for nor against the wharfies. Auckland Mayor Len Brown and Opposition leader David Shearer don’t want to takes sides in a class war. They play the roles the capitalist class allows them – and are proven to be ineffective for workers needs in this fight.

While the current situation has reached a stalemate and no further contracting out is happening, workers have lost wages during the recent strikes and lockouts, and are now subject to total video surveillance on the job. Unless the union learns the lessons of its failure to mobilise the wider working class support to shut down the port, it is only a matter of time before the next round of attacks under the new labour law ‘reforms’ take place.

Break the labour law!  

Those labour supporters and union leaders who continue to think these attacks are just “rogue’ employers and possible to control those “bad faith” employers with “good laws” are foolish. Capitalist crisis is the underlying cause of these attacks on the working class as the capitalist class tries to restore their profits at the expense of the working class. Parliament will not tame capitalism. Only the working class taking control of ALL the workplaces internationally can end this crisis ridden system and build an economy planned to meet the needs.

The existing union leadership continues to follow the legal road when the capitalist state has them legally cornered. To break the law would jeopardise their role as the agents of capital in the unions. Under capitalist law unions are tamed: Real pickets (that shutdown the workplace) or “illegal” strikes risk financial penalties on unions and their officials. That is the way the capitalist state has neutered the official unions. We have to look back to unions who refused to operate under the bosses laws, for an example of unions who refused to be tied down by the capitalist laws: the Red Feds. Workers need unions since they give us the opportunity to organise collectively, but we also need maximum independence from the capitalist class.

There are two areas of rank and file struggle when unions have been tamed. We fight within the unions, to raise demands for the needs of workers to be met – and run into the limits of unions working within the system. So that we can be as organised as possible, and so every worker learns that unions are limited by capitalism within capitalism. We fight outside the union –as a party we aim to organise the wider working class. For example the occupy movement in California demonstrated how it could unite with rank and file unionists to shut down West Coast ports even for a few hours.

Further, the dispute at Longview proved that non-unionised workers in Occupy could join forces with the ILWU rank and file shut down the port to force the employers to negotiate a truce (agreement) with the union. In the process the union officials are exposed as doing deals to keep the lid on a union revolt that also organises non-union workers. Thus we can build a new labour movement uniting organised and un-organised workers by fighting for democratic, fighting unions that break from the bureaucracy and the bourgeois labour laws.

Meat workers struggles

The fight between Meat company bosses and Meat workers is also about casualising labour to drive down wage costs and the price of meat shipped offshore during a global capitalist crisis. NZs competitive advantage in producing meat for export depends on driving down labour costs further than its competitors.

The recent round of attacks on meat workers was started by the CMP (Canterbury Meat Packers part of the ANZCO group) who used a 65 day lockout at its plant in Rangitikei to force a 20% pay cut. ANZCO Foods Ltd, is jointly owned by the directors and managers, Itoham Food Inc and Nippon Suisan Kaisha Ltd. “Sir” Graeme Harrison is the Chairman of the Board and was awarded Wellington businessman of the year.

On 17th November 2011 another 50 NZMWU members from branches across the country converged on the plant as well as members of many other unions, joining the locked out workers in a 200-strong mass picket. Rather than let the scabs confront the reinforced picket the bosses closed the plant down for the day. This was a real picket because it shut down the plant. However the working class needs to be ready to do this for more than one day i.e. indefinitely, until the bosses concede to the needs of the working class.

Talleys – Affco tried the same as ANZCO, locking out the members of the Meat Workers Union at its plants while continuing to run on a scab workforce. Some families were split between those still working and those on picket lines! As we wrote in an earlier issue a picket that cannot stop family members from crossing it is not a picket! The only way for workers to shut down the meat works is for real pickets that stop the scabs.

Because of the weakness of the token pickets it was the Iwi leaders who came to the rescue. Iwi politics became the negotiators after Tainui workers put pressure on iwi leaders to help with negotiations. Contrary to the official union line, it was not working class solidarity but tribal ties to Iwi capitalism that threatened the Talley family to resolve the dispute.
 

Class not ‘family’ solidarity

The two meat workers disputes highlight what is progressive and reactionary in the NZ working class. At Fielding working class solidarity shut down the plant for a day showing that the way forward is the mass picket that defies the labour law. At the Talley plants families were split and the appeal to the Tainui leaders to pressure the Talley family was the result of working class weakness. Pressure by Iwi capitalists on Meat bosses has more to do with the backroom deals between bosses than trade union struggle. It poses the question put to Class Struggle by one Tainui worker after the settlement; why do we need unions?

Under the impact of the global crisis, NZ is reverting back to the extractive colony of the late 19th century when its role in the world economy was to provide raw materials for the mother countries. This trend will be reinforced by the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement that will re-colonise NZ. The only resistance that will succeed against global capitalism will be a mass movement of workers and poor farmers united across the whole Pacific to prevent the exploitation of raw materials and land in what is a rip, shit, bust process of recolonisation. Today this struggle cannot be won by indigenous struggles such as that of Maori nationalism. Maori are now divided along class lines with Iwi bosses voting for privatisation of assets, while the vast majority of Maori are at the bottom of the working class. We need to unite along class lines nationally and internationally across the whole Pacific to take back and take control of the resources we need to survive.

· We need to prepare for Strikes, Occupations and Workers Control!

· Mass pickets to defend the jobs, and protect union workers! Mass pickets to shut down workplaces!

· Occupy against the 1%, workers control!

· For Occupations and Nationalisations without compensation under workers control!

· For a General Strike to defeat the NACTs and for a mass Workers Party based on the rank and file of the unions!

· For a Workers’ Government and planned socialist economy!

· For a Socialist Aotearoa in a Socialist Asia/Pacific!

From Class Struggle No 100 May-June 2012

NZ: Unite! union fights for locked out call centre workers

Saturday April 11 Auckland, New Zealand

Workers locked out: bosses locked in.

By Workers Solidarity

Call centre workers at Synovate in South Auckland were today locked out by their employer. The workers had been negotiating for secure hours and a pay rise of a dollar when they received word by text last night that they would not be allowed to come back to work.

Upon arriving at the call center this morning union members found the front door padlocked shut by the company and a notice telling their non union workers to sneak in by the back door. In response to this attempt to use scab labour Unite Union officials and members added their own locks to the front door and used cars and locks to block all other entrances to the building. This effectively locked the bosses inside for two hours until the union allowed one car to be moved to allow delegates to enter the building to continue the negotiations.

Unite Union Secretary Matt McCarten told assembled workers that he had dressed in a warm coat and had a razor in his pocket so he could shave before court if he was arrested. Most of the workers seemed positive and genuinely angry at their working conditions particularly that their shifts can be cancelled with no notice. Several however talked about how they could not afford to miss work - this is what the company is undoubtedly relying on to break the unions strength on this site.

There has been a picket outside Synovate all day and members of the public are urged to come out to the site: 26 Aviemore Drive, Highland Park, East Auckland. At this stage the lockout is indefinte, more details will be posted here as they come to hand.

Follow the struggle online at twitter.com/uniteunion

Report by Workers Solidarity at :
http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display/77087/index.php

In addition to the above: The management offered these workers who are on the minium wage of $12.50 an hour, a 20 cents an hour raise! The same company pays its call centre workers in Australia A$22 per hour. The management called on other workers to replace the locked out workers. After lengthy discussions with these workers most went home or joined in with the picketing locked out workers and supporters. About 6 carloads of police turned up and issued the union officials with trespass notices. After a tense standoff the union unlocked the rear door to allow access. Only 3 of the replacement workers ended up going into work. Not nearly enough to replace the locked out shiftworkers. A good staunch picket that shows that unions can win by taking a strong stand and persuading workers not to scab on their locked out mates. Of course the pickets need to be hundreds strong so that the scab workers have no chance of getting in. But they will only get stronger if unions like Unite! take a militant stand and show the way to do it.