JOB LOSSES AT CADBURY: LABOUR AND THE GREENS SAY NOTHING

When Cadbury – from somewhere deep in Australia – announced that 145 workers were going to lose their jobs at its Dunedin factory, the silence was deafening. Even the Cadbury workers themselves said nothing.

Although Cadbury denied it, the work staff were told not to talk to the media, and most of them didn’t. Why? Because it was probably an attempt to shorten their odds of being one of the unlucky people who get sent down the road. Best not let the boss catching us talking to a journalist, eh?

Although Cadbury are in the chocolate business there’s nothing sweet about their attitude to their workers. Like other major corporations, its all about profit margins and dividends.

As usual when job losses are announced we also got exactly no response from the Labour Government.

Of course this isn’t surprising – they are, after all, the prime architects of the free market and free trade policies that have wrecked the economy.

And Labour supporters have kept their mouths shut too, just like they do on most embarrassing issues.

On the one hand they pontificate about ‘social justice’ and berate the National Party for being in league with big business, all the while turning a blind eye to job losses at companies like Cadbury and Fisher and Paykel.

It’s rank hypocrisy and they’re not even embarrassed about it!

I’m sure that tomorrow I’ll be reading some pro-Labour blogger telling me that Labour ‘cares’ for ordinary people – as opposed to nasty John Key, who only cares for big business.

They are as bad as their mates in the trade union hierarchy, presently busy trying to keep the industrial scene quiet so in order to boost Labour’s re-election chances.

Meanwhile the pathetic Greens get even more pathetic. Unable to make a stand on anything substantial, in case they annoy Helen, they are reduced to organising guided tours of the supermarket where ‘consumers’ can learn to be more ‘conscious and ethical.’ Well, that’s what militant firebrand and Green MP Sue Kedgely was doing last week.

But at least one party has spoken out.

Once again the Alliance takes the lead in speaking out for ordinary people.

This is what Alliance Dunedin North candidate Victor Billot said:

“We are seeing a slow motion disaster for working people as secure jobs evaporate in Dunedin and throughout the nation as major players like Fisher and Paykel and Cadbury shut down plant and lay off the workforce.”

He went on to say:

“We have to start asking ourselves whether we need a system where working people and communities control and own these enterprises rather than to be continually cast aside and have their lives disrupted. We need a regulated economy with a strong local manufacturing base, where secure jobs are seen as more important than private profit.”

“New Zealand’s economic base is on the fast track to becoming a farm with a golf course in the back paddock. That is not the recipe for an advanced 21st century society, that is a recipe for an imbalanced economy and a wealth and social class divide.”

Well said, Victor. At last someone actually saying something relevant.