Friday, May 15, 2009

global solidarity

As part of May Day 09 celebrations at Blackball, Tina McIvar of the CTU spoke persuasively of the importance of union solidarity throughout the world as part of her launch of New Zealand's Unionaid project.

This issue of global union solidarity raises so many important issues, most particularly because of the implications of free trade agreements. In New Zealand, almost every time we buy clothing from a mainstream shop, we are living off the sweat of workers who labour under conditions which have (perhaps) not ever been known here in New Zealand. The extent to which our own comfort rests upon the labour of those who sweat and toil without dignity is so massive that I think it is almost beyond what we will take on board and change. For me, thinking about this issue has helped explain why so many people accepted the African-American slave trade for so long. If we can shut our curtains, we can ignore so much and pretend it isn't really so bad because surely it just couldn't be that bad.

I've felt very uncomfortable with some of the comments around our own migrant workers within New Zealand recently. I'm still unhappy with the comments which Andrew Little made about migrant workers being made redundant first. Of all the internet reflections which I have read relating to this issue (and my reading is by no means exhaustive), the one which I liked the best comes from John Minto and can be found here. The quote below comes from his article:

The real problem was not overstayers in the 1970s and neither is it workers
from overseas today but an economic system which sees workers, migrant or
otherwise, simply as a disposable resource to be flicked off when times get
tough. New Zealand workers and migrant workers have much more in common and
working together in mutual support is important to avoid the divide and rule
scapegoating which so often comes to the fore in an economic downturn.

This quote had powerful resonance again this week as I read in the Guardian Weekly of a trade union activist in the Honduras, Norma Estela Mejia. Mejia worked in a clothing factory in Chaloma where her horror at the conditions led her to become an active trade unionist. At the beginning of 2009, the two unionised factories servicing a large US clothing manufacturer were closed down, citing unionism as the problem. Mejia has contended with death threats as well as unemployment since then and yet she still knows she did the right thing, fighting for justice and dignity. The full text of the article is here.

The tune of 'Solidarity Forever' still comes to my mind readily when I think of the wonderful weekend of commemoration of the roots of the NZ union movement in Blackball in Easter 2008. How we can mark and deepen our lived solidarity with workers throughout New Zealand and the world is our challenge as we develop the resources for the museum and the traditions for May Day. I'm wondering about developing resources which look at the processes which a piece of coal can go through and the workers involved. There is a lot of coal coming oout of Roa (up the road from Blackball) at the moment and yet the work involved does not stop in New Zealand. What is that coal being used for overseas and what are the lives of workers in those places?

Any thoughts? I'd love some feedback.

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Sunday, May 10, 2009

Paul Watson's contribution to Mayday forum.

HAS CAPITALISM HAD IT”S DAY
Intro

Paul Maunder asked me recently if I’d like to contribute to the renowned Blackball Working Men’s club May Day debates. I happily accepted.

Since then some family circumstances have intervened which prevent me from participating personally today but here’s my brief contribution which I should state at the outset are my personal views and not those necessarily held by the NDU. They are views that I hope motivate discussion.

Hope everyone has a good day.

Paul

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Core Comment:


MAY DAY – as we all know is a day to celebrate the historic and current struggle of the working class.

It is also a poignant time to reflect upon the current global economic crisis and workers relationship with the capitalist system.

Workers were not the architects of the current crisis but there’s no doubt they are it’s first victims to feel the effects of it.

The current rate of job losses globally is staggering as workers across the developing and developed nations are being hurled out of work leaving bewildered families and communities struggling to cope.

In the US about half a million workers a month are loosing jobs.
The cumulative impacts defy belief at times. For instance this year just on one day corporations across Europe, Asia and the US announced 80,000 jobs would be axed. On that particular day some 20,000 workers from one firm got the bad news. The unaccounted impacts in developing nations will be of course be worse.

Underpinning every axed job is personal social and economic loss which for workers and their families often goes unheard but is nevertheless hugely devastating.



Many workers are struggling with why the global financial crisis has so brutally and unexpectedly affected their lives.

How can we pay the bills, what about the kids needs?
How does the mortgage get paid? – Well for many the mortgage simply can’t be paid and the house keys get handed over to banks and families get evicted into the streets.

Relationships get tested as financial pressures escalate. Children become very vulnerable and the sense of security and well being becomes eroded.

Domestic violence and crime intensifies as societal violence and crime intensifies.
.
So what should be our response to all this ?

Do we simply leave it all to the politician to sort out – I don’t think so!

It is fair to say many governments are struggling to find solutions to the current crisis. – and it is worrying that very little debate is being held among governments or within mainstream media questioning deregulation and the free market principles underpinning the capitalist economic system.

Government responses internationally have been to primarily inject stimulus packages that hope to re energise financial institutions that bought them down in the first place.


In the US and Europe extraordinary amounts of money have been printed as bail outs to banks , financial institutions and in some cases corporations.

When the T word (Trillion) starts to be used in the context of economic stimulus packages eyes roll comprehending these figures. A Trillion is a thousand Billion or put another way (to do your head in completely) a Trillion amounts to a Million Million.

So as my son quaintly said to me the other day why don’t governments just keep on printing money and everything would be OK.

Well that’s one strategy which Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe has tried. The only problem with it was the value of a million dollar note could only buy you half a bus ride.

This is not the same of course in the case of the US and UK trillions stimulus packages. That has a real value and its all debt – and someone along the way has to pay for it.

So guess who will be bearing the greatest brunt paying this off this debt in the years to come !.

The workers of course.

The very workers who are victims of the current financial crisis are destined to experience a future economic climate where state and private sector workers will increasingly be confronted with demands for wage restraint and potential concessions of current employment conditions.


The horror stories of the 90’s welfare cuts, concessionary bargaining and unscrupulous employer behaviour are on the horizon as the competition for jobs grow as the effects of the recession deepens.

Why then should workers be strapped to the back seat in this economic debate ? They shouldn’t - We need to demand a place in the front seat with a firm grip on the steering wheel;

For instance We Need to Demand that;

 Politicians accept that the current international financial system has failed and engage in a “real” debate about alternatives at a global , national and local level.

 Organise Regional community based “New Economy “ forums where alternative economic models are discussed and recommended and broad based community representatives are elected to participate in a National Hui whose purpose is input regional views into forming a new genuine political and economic change. This should occur irrespective whether the current government opposes it.

 Some principles underpinning future economic models need good debate but could include ;

- People to have a real voice in their future

- The future has to be sustainable for people

- State ownership and control of strategic assets and our productive capacity should be given priority.

- Economic activity should be orientated towards redistributing more wealth staying in this country and not siphoned off shore.

- Monetary institutions to have much greater regulation and accountability over financial transaction activity.
- Disbursement around economic recovery packages to sustain welfare provisions, employment, families and communities.


Put simply people need to demand a better system – the current system is a failure and even if we claw our way back to where we were under the current model – predicted by some to be ten years or more away – what would have changed in real terms to prevent it happening all over again for future generations and at what cost will it have all been to those most vulnerable in this world. !

There has arguably never been such an urgent need to turn the tide against a capitalist system that has failed so many people so quickly and so brutally.

Most people actually want a future world where corporate greed, corruption, excessive consumerism, high household indebtedness, and social disharmony become mere distant, albeit painful, memories that form no part of their lives any more.

If that is really what we want then its up to all of us to get involved, get active, work out what we do want and get our hands on that steering wheel in the front seat.

E ND

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Report on Blackball Mayday Celebrations 2009

by Paul Maunder
The celebrations began on the Friday night with a singalong with The West Coast Wobblies, who presented traditional union anthems, some originals, plus a sequence from a Euan McColl radio documentary from the early sixties, based on stories from the Welsh mines. They were followed by local folk singers, Arthur and Christine Toms.
Saturday morning saw a forum, facilitated by Leigh Cookson, at the Working Men’s Club, on the topic of The Legacy of Neo-Liberalism There were members of the EPMU, NDU, SFWU, Unite, NZCTU and the NZ Writers Guild present, plus representatives from Alliance, The Democrats, Labour, The Anarchists, ARENA and Gatt Watchdog, The Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Party, the local Grey Power and The West Coast People’s Centre. As well, there was a teacher, a midwife, Blackball citizens and a poet.

Paul Maunder, the promoter of the topic, began by framing the discussion. With the current financial crisis seriously diminishing world wealth and causing ongoing suffering amongst working people, one would expect that people would be revolting against the corruption and greed revealed at the heart of neo-liberalism and the obvious failure of ‘the market’. At the same time warnings of environmental disaster continue. At the social level, increasing dysfunction is being faced. Yet the response has been muted and apathetic. Nor is there a clear sense of a different, hopeful future.

Thereafter, a series of provocations were delivered.

The first, by Te Whaea Ireland, a young teacher, was framed by the key competencies outlined in the new curriculum. There are five:
Thinking creatively and critically, understanding and being curious;
Being able to use language, symbols and texts;
Managing self- being reliable and resilient;
Showing relatedness, communicating and sharing;
Participating and contributing and joining in the world.
Teachers are finding themselves increasingly having to teach the last three, the social skills, rather than the first two areas, which were the traditional task of the teacher. Children are no longer being taught the social skills within the family setting. Focus and stillness are lacking. Children’s minds are more fragmented. Reasons? Obviously TV, diet, the lack of the father role, but as well, in her view, children are desperate for one on one contact with adults. Parents love their children but the children are stressed. Families are stressed through everyone working long hours to survive economically. Children are arriving at school earlier, then there’s after school care, there’s no adult with the time to help with homework, no time for mooching- that stress-free space which generates self management, relatedness, creativity etc. The family is no longer functioning as a nurturing unit. She saw among her peer group, the stress in terms of a young couple trying to acquire a home and to have a family. She saw the traditional homemaker, once gender equality is accepted, as a valid and vital role in society.

Caroline Selwood, a midwife, saw increasing numbers of very young women planning early pregnancies as a life choice, and a growing number of babies born into dysfunctional situations. Yet each child, at birth, is a ‘hopeful consciousness’. But that hope is so quickly dissipated. There is a lack of community awareness and a lack of willingness to work for the community.

Matt Winter, EPMU organiser, reported on worker stress, a similar lack of time because of long hours, financial commitments and so on. Trevor, a delegate, stated that it is difficult to get people to take on the delegate role, or for union members to participate in union activities.

Sandra Quick, a part time teacher and mother, spoke of the time required to grow families and communities. Lots of people are working invisibly to care for family and others and yet men and women reliant on benefits are still pressured to work in spite of their roles caring for the very vulnerable.

Grey Power reported on elderly frustration in their interactions with WINZ, an apathy from staff, with bizarre interpretations of regulations. But also that older people were increasingly minding the grandchildren, providing child care, and were too busy to volunteer for anything else.

There was some general discussion on the provocations so far. People remembered the ‘single wage supporting a family’ negotiation position in the fifties and sixties. There was a call for role pride for young men and young women, an unease in what had been discussed so far, at a possible return to women captured and oppressed by the nurturing role, although, as it was pointed out, that role has been de-gendered. There was a feeling however, that we have to make a society where family is possible, where unpaid work is respected, before we can tackle the dysfunction.

Kevin Hague, Green MP, began his provocation by stating that it is unwise to be romantic about the past. As a Gay man, life would have been very uncomfortable.
He talked of the two weeks of Shock and Awe in parliament prior to Christmas. Then he reflected on what had happened in 1984, with the Treasury briefing documents to the incoming Labour Government. In these documents there was a clear ideology which has become embedded in society: the minimalist state, that people act out of self interest, that they act as individuals, that they are valuable only as consumers, or as a resource for production. As a consequence, people become alienated from their work and from one another. The system is designed around this. Because of interest, the economy has to continue to grow and needs to extract more and more from the environment and from people. In order to restore the environment and society, we need to change the economic system.

Kent Gallagher, a high school teacher, spoke of the need for a cultural evolution, of the need for people to get smarter in terms of what is real wealth, real relatedness and so on.

Paul Watson, NDU organiser, had prepared a paper for the forum. In it, he talked of the phenomenal loss of jobs world-wide, and that behind each loss was a family bearing the consequences. And then, the extraordinary amounts of money being pumped into saving the financial system, and that the debt will have to be repaid by working people, who will be faced with wage restraint and loss of conditions when it comes to bargaining. Accordingly, it is necessary for the working class to have hold of the driving wheel when it comes to decision making in the future.

During the forum, Hungarian poet, Eva Brown, read from her poetry, to provide a creative vision to the thinking.

It is difficult to summarise the debate, except to say that there was a felt need to return to some basic working class values, of the struggle being for a society where working class family life is possible once more. A feeling that many of the progressive causes have been unable to seriously challenge neo-liberalism, of the need to refind the basis of struggle without losing the social advances that have been made in terms of gender, sexual preference, ethnic justice and so on. But as well, this refinding will necessitate a willingness to rethink some frameworks, both economic, political and cultural.

On reflection, and this is a personal musing, to form a further provocation, can we turn this into a meta-narrative (I feel the lack of a meta-narrative)? Is the basic task of our species, like other species, the task of reproduction of the species? That is after all, what drives life. Why should we be different? Yet, consciousness allows us to be aware of this task. So, for example, we are aware of the balance between competition and co-operation, that predatory behaviour always threatens the balance, yet balance is usually restored (until technology).
We can see the five key competencies of the new curriculum as framing the task in the 21st century: to produce members of the species with these competencies. In the light of these competencies, ethnic cleansing is not part of the task, nor is ethnic or gender romanticism, nor is imperialism. How to distribute resources effectively is key. Hard to argue why one family involved in the task of reproduction should have millions of dollars of income, while another lives in poverty. The task feels like a socialist one to me. Nor, given what we know, can we, as a species, make life impossible for other species. So our reproduction has to be ecologically wise.
What family shape? The competencies would seem to preclude internal oppressions a la the patriarchy, homophobia etc. In mammal species, gender roles can be varied in terms of succour and food and shelter provision. Given consciousness and recent struggles against social oppressions, variants of family shapes are obviously acceptable, as long as the key competencies are produced.
One would however, look with suspicion I think, at any tendency to employ other people, to contract out the primary family tasks, this being the tendency of ruling classes in past societies (wet nurses, cooks, maids, governesses etc). It can be argued that this contracting out can be socialised, but evidence (USSR, Israel) would suggest it does not produce the key competencies, but rather overly obedient citizen/soldiers.
Reproduction of the species takes up to the first fifty years of life. What then? And what of those who are infertile or do not mate, or wish to mate with their own gender, or do not wish to reproduce? Given the level of surplus of a modern society, and the tasks of health care, education, culture production, and environmental repair and so on, that go to assist the reproduction of the species, as well as the normal task of production, there is plenty to do. But what is done, supports and celebrates the central task, in all its complexity; this new meta-narrative: the survival of a competent human species.
This is perhaps then, the legacy of neo-liberalism, that we have to reject it, in toto, as a death force, and seek life again.

The forum ended with some banner making, introducing slogans from the discussion, to be added to the traditional ones:

UNITY SOLIDARITY COMMUNITY

LOOSEN THE NOOSE REDISCOVER WONDER

THE ENEMY REMAINS THE SAME
FOR THE GOOD TO HAPPEN THERE MUST ALWAYS BE STRUGGLE

These banners were then carried through the village in the annual march, at the end of which Tina McIvar spoke about the Union Aid project.




In the afternoon, there were workshops on the memorial/shrine project (hopefully to open this Labour Day).
One group discussed events/rituals during a year. It was considered absolutely necessary to get unions to own the memorial through making annual small financial contributions toward ongoing infrastructural costs.
A Workers Memorial Ceremony should be held annually (names of the fallen, songs, speaker)
Mayday – get local workers involved. Ask local miners councils to put on transport. Have hour long ceremony. Choir could tour local working men’s clubs beforehand. Get the lyrics of the songs out there, for many workers know nothing of the history.
The web site is vital.
The local school is keen to get involved. Have them build a cairn with the names of the ’08 strikers on the stones.
The possibility of building a wall with the names of those killed at work through the years. (it will become another project for it will be a very long wall).
The second group worked on the draft wording for three of the twelve panels. Mark Derby is preparing these, and given his comments re layout, the group felt he was on the right track.
The third group looked at a schools programme. They felt that we should work with Shantytown on this programme, for Shantytown often bring school parties out to Brunner. They could include Blackball.
Education resources should be on the website and linked to the curriculum.
We should seek input from teachers.
Creative writing from students should be put on website.
Need to employ someone to develop the education programme.
Important to cater for children on Mayday.
Look at ACTU’s resources for schools.
Maybe a children’s book on the ’08 strike.
Have oral histories, MP3’s available for ‘wanders through the town’.
Cater as well for adult groups.

Saturday night saw the premier of Paul Maunder’s play The Curator of Baghdad, a story from Guantanamo. The story teller, confined in a cage in the middle of the Blackball Church, told his story, assisted by two other actors who played various roles. The inspiration came from the sacking of the Museum of Baghdad shortly after the invasion, and the painful decision that the prison at Guantanamo Bay is the spiritual centre of the US Empire.

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Thursday, May 7, 2009

Welcome to our world

This blog is part of an invitation to all people to engage with our stories here in Blackball. The Blackball Working Class History Project has been going for several years now and our official website is here. Here on this blog, we want to present both stories from now and from our archives. We've got a wealth of oral histories and plan to share some of them here. We're all pretty opinionated and are aware that the gains of our forbears in Blackball, in the union movement, in working people's lives, involved courage, struggle and speaking out. Hopefully this blog is a space for people to speak out, to make connections between our present and our past. A place to forge bonds which help make the Blackball experience more meaningful for those of you who physically visit us and for those of you who connect across the internet from further away.

Over the next few weeks, we will share something about ourselves, reports from May Day and hopefully the first podcast. That last one is my new technical challenge for the month! Please do post comments and let us know what you would like to see on this blog. I've left anonymous comments enabled at the moment as I know not everyone who wants to share has a blogging login.

Sandra

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