KICKING ANDREW LITTLE UP THE BACKSIDE

Of course I would never actually do it, but sometimes I think it would be quite nice to kick Andrew Little up the backside. It would be nice to kick the colourless President of the Labour Party and the national secretary of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) up the bum and demand that he had his fellow well-paid union bureaucrats start putting up some real resistance to what is going down in this country right now.

In recent times union leaders have been all too ready to raise the white flag of surrender or simply act like rabbits in the headlights of an on-coming car. They just seem paralysed by the economic crisis.

Personally I want Andrew Little to get angry. I want him to get some fire in his belly. I want him to stop being a dreary technocrat and start acting like a proper trade unionist.

Hell, there must be something happening that gets even Andrew Little's blood boiling, his passion ignited. The rocketing unemployment figures perhaps ? The attacks on beneficiaries? Maybe he's upset about the well-off getting tax breaks and the poor getting nothing? Perhaps he's angry about the threat of more privatisation in the state sector?

You'd think by now that Little would have marched along to the office of the CTU President and angrily told Helen Kelly that enough was enough and that it was time for militant action - and by militant action I don't mean a strongly worded press release.

But we've barely heard a squeak from Little and the other union top brass.

When they do surface in the media they mumble the usual bullshit about being 'disappointed' by a decision and 'concerned' abut the consequences. And then they disappear to from whence they came.

I long for the day when a union leader says to camera: 'Screw you, John Key. We ain't going to take it no more.'

Okay, I'm engaging in a reasonable amount of hyperbole here but the song remains the same - our union 'leaders' are a bunch of do-nothing gutless wonders.

Imagine for a moment if things really got bad and we saw the rise of a neo-fascist government in New Zealand. Imagine if political activists were rounded up and put in detention camps.

What do you think Andrew Little's reaction would be? I'll tell you. He'd say he was 'very disappointed' by the government's actions. Then he'd call for talks to come to ' an agreement that all sides are happy with.'

I'm not joking.

In fact, I'm probably being too kind to Little and his cronies. They actively collaborated with the Clark Government and they are continuing to do that with the Key Government.

Amazingly, despite the intensified offensive against the New Zealand working class, there has actually been a decrease in the number of industrial stoppages.

The CTU has overseen the orderly closure of plants, the introduction of shorter work weeks, and the suppression of any worker resistance. Despite the attacks on jobs, wages and conditions, in 2009 there were just 18 recorded strikes, involving just 2,010 workers — a historic low.

Who is defending workers from the Government's austerity policies? It certainly isn't Andrew Little and co.

Some people might be thinking I need to have a cup of tea and a lie down. I need to view the situation in a more dispassionate light.

Stuff that.

Yes, I do know that the CTU'S strategy is to divert workers into a dead end street, namely supporting Labour and the Green's.

But sometimes prosaic analysis isn't enough.

Sometimes you just want to say that you are fed up with the bullshit and want to kick Andrew Little up the backside.