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WAR ON THE WATERFRONT |
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a declaration of war
In November wood industry giant Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) declared war on South Island wharfies by beginning its attempts to introduce on-call, causal labour to replace the unionised, permanent workers who loaded their logs onto ships. CHH has given its own puppet union/company, the Tauranga-based "Mainland" Stevedoring Union, the job of signing up scab workers from the North Island prepared to toil on a casual basis for lower pay than the southern wharfies. "Mainland" Stevedoring's sponsor has its eyes firmly on the prize of a totally casualised waterfront workforce, and has thus been happy to fly the scabs south and pay for their accommodation in hotels and motels. CHH, which is New Zealand's second-largest company, recently announced yearly earnings of $176 million, up 214% from last year, leading trade unionist and wharfies supporter Paul Goultier to remark that "this is not a struggling company which needs to penny pinch. It is a company which does not need to cut corners by employing casual labour on an as-needed basis, working long shifts with insufficient breaks." The fear is that capitalist companies like CHH want to bring back waterfront conditions of 50 years ago, when they could pick and choose labour from yellow unions, and that this sort of "casualisation" eventually could be visited upon the whole workforce in Aotearoa. |
CONTENTS
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the counter offensiveWharfies have not taken CHH's attacks lying down: since November they have organised dozens of pickets of CHH ships in Bluff, Port Chalmers, Timaru and Nelson. These pickets have often lasted the 48 hours it takes to loading or unload a shipment of logs, and have been typically been attended by 100-200 people. Picketers have included the families of wharfies, other unionists, radical activists and members of the communities CHH has attacked. These pickets seem to have widespread support in the local community, which is excellent for small, conservative, provincial towns. For example, in Port Chalmers some residents and local businesses have given free food, beer and accommodation to picketing unionists and their supporters, whilst shunning out of town scabs. Even the Port Chalmers Community Board has voted to support the wharfies. Demonstrations of solidarity with the wharfies have occurred in other parts of New Zealand and internationally. In early December Carters building suppliers stores were picketed from Auckland to Invercargill, and near Christmas there was a protest outside CHH's head office in Auckland. There have also been some attempts to boycott Carters retail stores and products and Carter-derived products like Treasure's disposable nappies, Softex tissues, Libra tampons, Handees paper towels, and Purex toilet paper. Internationally, Korean watersiders have instigated "go-slows" when unloading logs from CHH ships in Korea, and the Maritime Union of Australia, which three years ago fought its own, largely successful battle against casualisation, has shared its experiences with the wharfies and their Watersiders Workers' Union (WWU). war on two fronts?The wharfies' spirited pickets have tended to succumb to baton-wielding cops using "flying wedges" to "escort" vehicles containing scab labour to CHH ships. Dissatisfaction with leaders of the WWU and the umbrella Council of Trade Unions (CTU), leaders who seem to want only the sort of "symbolic" pickets which stand to the side of the road and let vehicles past, has been growing amongst the wharfies and their supporters. Recently popular political commentator Chris Trotter reflected this dissatisfaction by writing an open letter to the CTU leadership which criticised their low-key approach to the wharfies' fight, and called for them to initiate a mass campaign of support for the South Islanders. Chris Trotter is a social democrat, a co-founder of the Alliance (aka the New Labour Party), and his well-intentioned letter is full of the contradictions of social democracy. Chris condemns the CTU big wigs, yet goes cap in hand to them with his proposal for a "grassroots"campaign. He condemns the Employment Relations Act's bans on sympathy and secondary strikes, yet hopes for the people who wrote and implemented the Act - CTU and Labour leaders - to support any workers who defy these bans by striking in support of the wharfies. Chris acknowledges the power and ruthlessness of the forces arrayed against the wharfies and their supporters, yet recommends that we counter company goons and violent, biased cops with passive-ist 'civil disobedience'. Undoubtedly the largest and most revealing contradiction in Chris's letter is contained in the call for his "grass roots" campaign to be "led from the top" - i.e. centralised and administered - by CTU big wigs.
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on the waterfront: |
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spontaneous lib-left responseAnarchists and libertarian socialists have been fairly active in support of the wharfies. In Port Chalmers, near Dunedin, they have been very busy on the picket lines. In Auckland, libertarian leftists have pushed the issue onto the agenda of a local union and produced a poster publicising the call for a boycott of CHH-products (check it out at http://www.geocities.com/the_third_eye_website_pdfs/carter.PDF). In Wellington the newly formed Libertarian Communists have held a public meeting on the subject of the links between the current dispute and the great 1951 Waterfront Lockout. What libertarian leftists ought to do now is wade in to the broad debates taking place inside the left about suitable strategies and tactics for the waterfront battle. In opposition to the vanguardist, hierarchical ideas put forward by the social democrats and their parrots in the Leninist microparties, we need to argue for our ideas of militant direct action and decentralised democratic organising as the best route to a victory over CHH. It is important that we understand that many of the wharfies and their supporters share our views on strategy and tactics. Their impatience with the methods of the social democrats was vividly expressed recently in Nelson, when picketers simply ignored a union leader's megaphoned order to "stay calm and let the scabs through" and stepped into a direct confrontation with cops wielding long batons. Other forms of direct action have appeared spontaneously in the course of the waterfront dispute. In Port Chalmers, for instance, some people have been busy swapping the barcodes on CHH logs in an effort to stuff up their cataloguing system and make loading more difficult. Around the South Island tyres on vehicles carrying scabs have been slashed... |
on the waterfront: |
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let's win this oneThe stakes in the waterfront war are high. If casualisation is introduced over the dead body of what has traditionally been one of New Zealand's most militant unions then it may well spread until it affects every part of the workforce. Of course, we shouldn't expect that the Labour Party will stop the imposition of casualisation. Helen Clark has already said that she realises the importance of CHH as one of the largest companies in New Zealand, a statement which amounts to an admission that she refuses to upset their profit margin. At her urging, WWU leaders and CHH have gone to 'mediation' over the dispute, a move which Clark hopes will take the wind out of the wharfies' sails by substituting paperwork for their direct action and shifting the public gaze from the waterfront. For his part, Alliance head honcho and Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton is so committed to the wharfies' cause that he was reportedly courting "leaders in the wood industry", including Carter Holt hacks, in the same week in late January that picketers in Nelson were being batoned and arrested by riot police. Apparently Anderton, anxious to secure the capitalists' 'cooperation' with his forestry-based 'regional development' scheme for poor communities on the East Coast of the North Island, feels it inadvisable to say anything in public about their attacks on poor communities in several regions of the South Island! Helen and Jim and their buddies in the CTU leadership can't win the waterside war for workers, but direct action and widespread solidarity can. |
 
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