NZ protest events this weekend

Kia Ora Gaza

Recent huge Auckland march against Israel’s war on Gaza.

WHANGAREI:

Candlelight Peace vigil

from 5.30pm to 7.30pm Friday 1 August.

The Community Arts Centre – Whangarei Old Library Building

7 Rust Avenue, Whangarei, Northland

EVENTS PAGE LINK: https://www.facebook.com/events/493887867413522/

 

AUCKLAND:

Auckland Rally for Palestine:

2pm Saturday 2 August. Queen Elizabeth Square, Downtown Shopping Centre.

International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
.

PHRC Monthly Rally – first Sat of each month at Downtown Shopping Centre, Cnr Queen/Customs Streets, Auckland

EVENTS PAGE LINK: https://www.facebook.com/events/170471706456396/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

 

WELLINGTON:

Wellington March for the Children of Palestine

12 midday Saturday 2 August at The Bucket Fountain, Cuba Street, Wellington.

EVENTS PAGE LINK: https://www.facebook.com/events/666956313393401

 

CHRISTCHURCH:

Movie Screening: ‘Palestine is Still The Issue’ by John Pilger

Sunday 3 August at 6:00pm at 59 Gloucester Street.

EVENTS PAGE LINK: https://www.facebook.com/events/1443105292621465/

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US Fast-Food Workers Intensify Fight for $15 an Hour

From The New York Times

By STEVEN GREENHOUSEJULY 27, 2014

ADDISON, Ill. — As labor gatherings go, this one was highly unusual — 68 workers arrived on charter buses from St. Louis, 100 from New York City and 180 from Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas. Fifty flew in from Los Angeles and two dozen from Seattle.

Robert Martin, of Greensboro, N.C., displays a button in support of a higher minimum wage for fast food workers. The convention was held four miles from McDonald’s headquarters

These were not well-paid carpenters or autoworkers heading to their annual convention, hoping to sneak in a round of golf. Rather they were fast-food workers — 1,200 of them — from McDonald’s, Burger King and other chains, eager to pursue their ambitious goal of creating a $15-an-hour wage floor for the nation’s four million fast-food workers.

Crowding over the weekend into an expo center in this suburb west of Chicago, many wore boldly lettered T-shirts proclaiming “We Are Worth More” and “Raise Up for $15.”

The Global Labour Institute International Summer School

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Dear friends

I am writing to tell you about the Global Labour Institute International Summer School. It’s an annual event held in Barnsley, England, that brings together trade union activists from across the world to talk about the most pressing issues facing our movement.

This year, we had speakers from the US fast food campaign, the director of a film about the Marikana massacre, leaders of Bangladeshi garment workers’ unions, Chinese labour activists, Swiss unionists using that country’s system of referenda tactically to fight for change, and much, much more.

It’s one of the most inspiring and crucial events in the international trade union calendar.

If your union isn’t involved, you should be. Send delegates next year!

For more info, contact Dave Spooner.

USi live streamed and recorded the event this summer. The content is below, and it gives a flavour of what a unique event this was.

Please share it widely!

Video

The plenary sessions were filmed and live streamed, and they are all available at this playlist. We have more unedited footage too, and we hope to add that soon.

Sessions

There is a record of the sessions at the usilive.org/iss14 page. The same content is also available on the Global Labour Institute website. There is a page for each session that was live streamed. The page includes a video of the event, the slides, a reading list, some images of the speakers, and where possible a transcript or some text of the talk. If you participated in one of these sessions and feel that information is missing, please get in touch and we will add it.

• #ISS14: The International Trade Union Movement
• #ISS14: Capitalism, Anti-Capitalism and the Trade Union Movement
• #ISS14: The Fall and Rise of Labour?
• #ISS14: The Long March of Chinese Labour
• #ISS14: Politics, Organisation and Education
• #ISS14: Organising Informal and Precarious Workers
• #ISS14: The Slow Death of the Socialist International
• #ISS14: Union-Party Relationships: Stay together for the sake of the children or get a divorce?
• #ISS14: Unions, Climate Change and the Great Inaction
• #ISS14: The political vision and strategy of the international trade union movement
• #ISS14: Are we socialists, and what do we mean by “socialism”?
• #ISS14: Question Time: live discussion with Sharan Burrow, ITUC

Labour promises $2 boost in minimum wage

Labour leader David Cinliffe

From the New Zealand Herald

By Derek Cheng

Wednesday July 30, 2014

A $2-an-hour boost to the minimum wage, scrapping the 90-day work trial, and a Commission of Inquiry to set industry standards are part of the Labour Party’s work and wages policy, launched today.

Labour leader David Cunliffe said within the first 100 days of taking office, he would repeal the 90-day trial for new workers, implement the Living Wage for public servants, and raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and to $16.25 in early 2015.

The lie that “There is no alternative” to neo-liberal economic policies

Supporters of President Maduro in Venezuela rally

By Mike Treen

Since the 1980s we have had drubbed into our heads that there was no alternative to the economic and social policies unleashed at that time. It even had it’s own acronym – TINA.

The brutal reality was that wherever these policies were applied with force and rigour the growth rates declined and inequality and poverty grew massively.

This was true for New Zealand, the US, the UK, and most of Latin America.

Unfortunately for the Anglo-Saxon world there has not been much change. But in Latin America we have seen dramatic shift to the left in governments across the region. This includes Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Chile. Left wing presidents in Honduras and Paraguay were overthrown in 2009 and 2012 respectively in US supported coups. There has beeen a flowering of social and economic policies that have recalimed national resources and directed social supports to the poor. As a consequence economic growth rates have improved (despite the 2008-9 world economic crisis) and poverty and inequality has been reduced in country after country.

The range of policy options are pretty broad.

We have the relatively mild left seen in Brazil under President Lula and now Dilma Rouseff from the Workers Party (WP). The WP never had a majority in their congress so it is hard to know what they would have done in those circumstances. However, they did preside over a major decline in extreme poverty rates from a relatively simple policy called bolsa familia which provides a cash payment family benefit to millions of poor families with the only condition being that the kids go toschool and get health checkups. Paying cash directly to families with children met stiff opposition. New Zealand also used to have a universal benefit that paid a cash benefit for all children. That was eliminated in the 19080s and been replaced with in work tax credits for the working poor.

More speeches from antiwar protests in Auckland

GPJA

July 26:

Billy Hania speaks followed by Kia Hania reciting a poem in solidarity at Gaza/Palestine Rally – Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand 26 Jul 2014

Billy Hania speaks outside US Consulate at at Gaza/Palestine Rally – Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand 26 Jul 2014

July 19:

Mike Treen speaks of Israeli Racism against Palestinians at Gaza/Palestine Rally – Auckland, Aotearoa

Young Palestinian girls speak at Gaza/Palestine Rally – Auckland, Aotearoa 19 Jul 2014

Robert Reid, First Union speaks at Gaza/Palestine Rally – Auckland, New Zealand 19 Jul 2014

Sue Berman a Jewish woman from Auckland speaks at Gaza/Palestine Rally – Auckland, Aotearoa 19 Jul 2014

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Unite & other speakers at Palestine solidarity rally

Joe Carolan-Unite Union speaks in solidarity at Gaza/Palestine Rally – Auckland,NZ 26 Jul 2014

 

YES, WE ARE MARCHING AGAIN…

Yes, we are marching again – as the bloodshed in Gaza gets worse by the hour, our protests need to get bigger & louder…
Rally & march this Saturday 26 July, 2pm at Aotea Square, Queen St.

[Wellington people: Rally 12noon at Cuba St Mall.]

This carnage has to stop!

Massive protests are erupting all over the world – a new ‘super power’ is emerging on the world stage: ‘people’s power’ will prevail.

While our leaders remain silent, humanity demands that Israel’s massacre of Palestinians ends now.

Please bring at least 5 others along to the rally on Saturday. Make your own placard.

Free south Auckland bus departs the Mangere East Community Centre, 372 Massey Rd at 1pm. Ring 275-6161 to book a seat.

DONATE TO THE GAZA EMERGENCY MEDICAL AID APPEAL:

Over 3000 Palestinians have been injured during Israel’s current genocidal onslaught. Their illegal siege on Gaza has left the medical services without basic supplies.

URGENT: Updated Trade Union Call: Stop the War on Gaza: No Arms for Apartheid Israel

To endorse the Labor for Palestine statement below (with 43 initial signers), please email your name, labor affiliation/organization (including local number, if any), union position (if any), and location to laborforpalestine.us

Due to the urgent situation, the deadline for additional signers is Friday, July 25, 2014, 9am EST.

Please also forward this message privately to others (but do not yet post publicly) who may be interested.

Thanks,

Michael Letwin
Labor for Palestine
New York City Labor Against the War

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Trade Unionist Call:

Stop the War on Gaza: No Arms for Apartheid Israel — Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions!

Labor for Palestine (U.S.), July XX, 2014

 

“For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”

Beyond Vietnam, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967

“We call on the UN and governments across the world to take immediate steps to implement a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on Israel, similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid.”

Palestinian Trade Unions and Civil Society, Stop Arming Israel, July 20, 2014

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As workers and trade unionists, we join with Palestinian trade unions, the South African Congress of Trade Unions, Unite (UK/Ireland), and labor organizations around the world to urgently condemn Israel’s barbaric war on Gaza, which has taken thousands of lives since 2006, including many hundreds in recent days.

Part-Time Schedules, Full-Time Headaches

From The New York Times

A worker at an apparel store at Woodbury Common, an outlet mall north of New York City, said that even though some part-time employees clamored for more hours, the store had hired more part-timers and cut many workers’ hours to 10 a week from 20.

As soon as a nurse in Illinois arrived for her scheduled 3-to-11 p.m. shift one Christmas Day, hospital officials told her to go home because the patient “census” was low. They also ordered her to remain on call for the next four hours — all unpaid.

An employee at a specialty store in California said his 25-hour-a-week job with wildly fluctuating hours wasn’t enough to live on. But when he asked the store to schedule him between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. so he could find a second job, the store cut him to 12 hours a week.

These are among the experiences related by New York Times readers in more than 440 responses to an article published in Wednesday’s paper about a fledgling movement in which some states and cities are seeking to limit the harshest effects of increasingly unpredictable and on-call work schedules. Many readers voiced dismay with the volatility of Americans’ work schedules and the inability of many part-timers to cobble together enough hours to support their families.

Photo

Courtney Moore took a second job at McDonald’s after her hours were cut at Walmart.CreditMaddie McGarvey for The New York Times

In a comment that was the most highly recommended by others — 307 of them — a reader going by “pedigrees” wrote that workers were often reviled for not working hard enough or not being educated enough. “How can they work more jobs or commit to a degree program if they don’t know what their work schedule will be next week, much less next month?” the reader wrote. “It’s long past time for some certainty for workers. They drive the economy.”