Despite getting a nice old government subsidy to implement the 'nine day working fortnight', Fisher and Paykel have gone ahead and sacked another fifty workers.
But wasn't this scheme supposed to save jobs?
Exactly the same thing has happened at Summit Wool Spinners in Oamaru. Forty-eight workers were given the boot but the Summit owners still got the subsidy.
Prime Minister Key said that under the scheme, the jobs of 350 workers at Fisher & Paykel's Auckland factory were guaranteed for the next six months.
Well, that 'guarantee' has proven to be nothing of the sort.
What's Fisher and Paykel's excuse? These dismissals apparently don't count because the unfortunate workers concerned are - were- employed in 'different divisions of the business.'
Eh? They still worked for Fisher and Paykel, right? Fisher and Paykel are having a laugh, right? And they are allowed to get away with this self-serving rubbish?
What make this situation even worse is that our gutless trade union officials have been promoting these shonky deals.
Paul Watson from the National Distribution Union thought the deal at Summit was great. I wonder if Watson told the sacked workers that or did he just issue a press statement from the safety of his office?
Meanwhile at Fisher and Paykel the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union officials have been promoting the 'nine day' fortnight as the best thing for workers. Yeah, right. The 'best interests' of workers or the 'best interests' of a trade union hierarchy desperately trying to suppress worker militancy?
Next the EPMU will be telling us that 'business friendly' national secretary Andrew Little doesn't sellout workers.
All this is happening while official unemployment statistics - which always conceal the true figure - say that 17,0000 jobs were lost in the last year.
Trapped in its failed neoliberal economic orthodoxy - policies that kicked the world into an economic meltdown - the National Government have no answers to the crisis.
The government fiddles while the economy burns.
And there's nothing for the Labour and the Greens's to get smug about either. Because they are also wedded to the same neoliberalism, they are as much a part of the problem as National.
Where is the backbone in our Unions? Where is the will to fight? Who'd have thought that Unions would end up negotiating worse conditions for their workers?
ReplyDeleteI see recently that Finsec is attempting to petition the government to force banks to retain jobs as a condition of being bailed out by the state - Give me a break. A Petition? Seriously? Its Tokenism at its best. If Finsec was committed to protecting workers it would be prepared to engage in industrial action to save jobs. This means sacrifice and determination. Instead Finsec is out there collecting worthless signatures.
And the Labour Party, that party that calls itself a 'workers party', is happy to promote the 9 day fortnight with Phil Goff demanding the Prime Minister extend the scheme to small businesses. So workers in small businesses can enjoy less pay. Fantastic.