The New Zealand labour movement used to have its own newspaper. A group of us thought that now might be a good time for it to be digitally reborn: The Standard v2.0.
Watching this new ad from the Australian Council of Trade Unions on employment law reform was kind of depressing - while the Aussies are looking forward to getting their work rights back under a new government, ours is drafting up legislation to take them away.
Time for a change eh? Guess we should have read the fine print.
“We say to your workers here, be very careful, you don’t want to go backwards to the early 90s, it’s a world that is not good for working people. Rights at work are fundamental and I would urge all of your workers to make sure that political parties here, if they want to change the government, actually, do the right thing by workers.
Certainly when we look across the ditch….we see you with a rights base that’s been reconstructed after the era of the early 90s that does much better things with collective bargaining, much more respectful of workers. And we were so envious of that in the last eleven years. So be careful, don’t go backwards, that’s our message.”
It highlights that Labour Relations is core policy for the left. The extent to which National can make itself a small target on this one will be really interesting.
UPDATE: Radion NZ podcast here.
