AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

1,400 Sacked

From Workers’ News Aotearo/New Zealand, March 2001

Almost 1,400 workers will lose their jobs in July when 60 stores of the retail chain Deka close. Most of the workers will not receive redundancy pay, though some will be offered jobs in other oulets.

Deka management has attributed Deka’s failure to compete effectively with The Warehouse as the main reason for continuing losses, and the decision to close.

From Workers’ News Aotearo/New Zealand, March 2001

Three of 28 T-shirts were temporarily removed from an art exhibition at the National Museum, Te Papa (= Our Place).

Supermarket chain Pak’n Save, retail goods chain The Warehouse and KFC had objected to T-shirts in the exhibitin featuring theri logos with F...’N Save, The Whorehouse, and KKK.

The T-shirts were removed until the museum could confirm that trademark laws were not breached.

Auckland artist Shigeyuki Kihara who is half Japanese and half Samoan questioned the firms’ sense of humour. “I wonder if such companies are out of touch with reality and don’t know what their customers are thinking.”

“Part of it is to do with the corporate giants and comapanies who my Polynesian people have slaved for since they arrived in New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s.”

From Workers’ News Aotearo/New Zealand, March 2001

14 workers made redundant when the Monteith brewery company suddenly closed the factory in Greymouth on the West Coast of South Island regained their jobs after influential ex-West Coast residents organised an effective national boycott to reopen the plant.

The brewery wished to relocate to North Island.

The Service and Food Workers Union said the company had breached legislation and the workers’ employment contracts by not consulting staff about plans for the brewery.

From Pete Lusk, ALU contributor

An illustration of the depths of disregard for human life by a multinational corporation occurred recently at the Firestone tyre factory in Christchurch, New Zealand. Workers attending the funeral of a work-mate killed on the job were called back to work by the boss before his body was put in the ground.

Adam Hopkins was crushed in a machine while working with a work-mate who had not been properly trained. When the machine jammed, Adam reached underneath to clear a blockage and became stuck. His mate pushed the emergency button, but this was the wrong thing to do - a section of the machine closed on Adam, and he could not breathe. Others rushed to help, but there was no way to reverse the machine, and essential safety equipment was missing. By the time they found gas-cutting gear, Adam was dead.

The union called in the government safety inspector because the machine had long been unsafe. But even after the company claimed to have repaired it, the emergency button still failed to work. So workers refused to use it.

Management made no apology to Adam’s family for his avoidable death. Their only concern was to get the factory running again. Three hours before Adam’s funeral, the union delegate received a company notice slipped under his door at home. It threatened to sue workers for loss of production if they were not on the job by midday.

After the first part of the funeral, but before Adam’s body went in the grave, the delegate called the 60 workers together and told them of the boss’s threat. Fearful of the consequences, they all returned to work including one who was a coffin bearer.

The manager of the plant was interviewed in a 20/20 TV documentary on the tragedy. He said the men had to return or the loss of production could mean the factory closing down. Firestone must remain competitive, he explained.

The company banned Adam’s work-mate of the fateful night from speaking to the media, but he got around the ban by relaying what he wanted to say through his wife. And workers smuggled a video camera into the plant to get footage for the documentary. So the company did not get it all its own way.

But the fact that the tyre workers did return to work illustrates the weak state of the labor movement in New Zealand, where tariff cuts have savaged manufacturing. In earlier times, things were different. For example, when a coal miner was killed, everyone walked off the job immediately, plus took a full day off for the funeral. This was not just a mark of respect for a dead worker ­ it was also one of the few ways to make the mine-owners pay. This is a working class tradition we need to re-establish at a global level.

Note: Firestone is owned by Japanese-based multinational Bridgestone which has annual sales of $17 billion.

Firestone in the US has been in the middle of a huge controversy where some of its tyres used on light trucks and sport utilities (mainly Ford) have contributed to the deaths of 148 people and over 525 injuries. 6.5 million tyres have been recalled. Workers at the plant attributed the tyre failures to poor quality-standards caused by overwork (12-hour shifts), and scab workers introduced during a strike who were not properly trained.

In 1997, the Firestone factory in New Zealand reduced pay by 20 percent and rostered workers over a seven instead of a five day working week. 12-hour shifts replaced the usual 8 hours. This was in response to threats from the parent company that unless the factory reduced its costs by 30 percent it would be closed.