27 Feb 1951: Lest we forget
On 27 February 1951 the government deployed the army onto the wharves in an attempt to break a union. My summary of the Waterfront Dispute: the workers took action as part of a pay dispute by refusing...
View ArticleWorker organised resistance
Once again Indymedia is the only place providing coverage of worker organised resistance against the current government’s policies. While the media, major political parties and even the left wing blogs...
View ArticleA May Day Reminder.
For workers around the world, May Day is not just a statutory holiday. It represents over a century of hard won rights, rights that in most cases were won in the face of considerable structural and...
View ArticleThe Blues go Black.
The announcement that National will undertake labour legislation reform has revealed the dark side beneath its happy face veneer. Riding high in the polls and 14 months before having to call an...
View ArticleUnions are to capitalism what opposition parties are to politics.
In the debates about the proposed labour law reforms there appears to be fundamental misunderstanding or ignorance by National and ACT of the purpose of unions in capitalism. The latter are seen by...
View ArticleLessons from The Hobbit: more unionisation, not less
The Hobbit saga has been an ugly but edifying lesson in the realities of how industrial action interacts with political posturing and national identity. My own view is that Actor’s Equity did their...
View ArticleEnemies like these
I’m getting used to being vilified by the orthodox Marxist left, such as in the latest round of debate with Chris Trotter and some of his commenters, and to an extent in the response by Scott Hamilton....
View ArticleThe Road to Academic Taylorism.
The labour dispute involving the University of Auckland and the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) is the culmination of more than a decade of escalating conflict between the university management and its...
View ArticleEnough rope
On Mike Hosking’s Newstalk ZB show this morning, a discussion of the gender pay gap and Catherine Delahunty’s bill on the topic — and an object lesson in not believing your own hype: Alasdair Thompson...
View ArticleAccumulation versus Distribution.
The bottom line of any political economy resolves around the question of accumulation versus distribution. Productive activity that generates surpluses (profits) can be accumulated by those who control...
View ArticleWhither the class line?
In 1995 I published a book that explored the interaction between the state, organised labor and capital in the transitions to democracy in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The book was theoretically...
View ArticleUnions, Parties and the decision to strike.
For the bulk of my academic career I worked on issues of regime change and interest group intermediation, with a particular interest in Latin America. I wrote a couple of books (one co-authored) about...
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