Launch of the Council of Trade Unions Political Strategy - infosheet

CTU conference, October 17 2007. 

Our political strategy sends a strong and unequivocal signal that there is a very significant role for unions in politics. 

The union movement is positive, growing and determined.  We have grown strongly – up 75,000 since 1999.  We have become a more active and visible union movement over recent years.

Protecting and enhancing workers rights, stronger public services, and higher wages, which combined we believe will lead to a more sustainable society.  These are the planks of our political strategy, and the ground on which we will campaign in election year. Importantly, they spell out a vision beyond 2008.

Protecting and enhancing your rights at work
We want to keep building stronger support for worker participation on key issues such as health and safety and the right to learn new skills. We want to see progress on minimum rest and lunch breaks, enhanced paid parental leave, tackling excessive hours and greater support for hours of work and work practices that take account of family, caring responsibilities and ‘whole of life’ needs.  We want to introduce measures to address casualisation, labour hire and those on precarious work arrangements.

A fundamental right that New Zealand workers expect is the right to be treated fairly. Last year an attempt to strip workers of their rights during the first 90 days in a new job was resoundingly rejected by working people, who knew that the bill would make it easier for employers to get rid of people for no good reason.  Working people saw it as unfair.  And they will not tolerate it if it comes up again.  We expect a government that will protect the right of all workers to a fair hearing, and we challenge anyone to front up and tell us why this shouldn’t be the case.

New Zealanders expect and demand high quality public services that are accessible to all.
Public services play a critical role in the lives of New Zealanders.  We do have quality public services in New Zealand and we should all be proud of them.  The greatest thing that all our public services have in common is that they are for all people.

Quality public services developed by workers and citizens. A fully funded universal quality public education system, responsive to learners needs. To maintain and improve our public health system. Public investment in housing, roading, infrastructure and public transport.  Preserving our national parks and reserves.  Protecting our borders.  And keeping the ‘public’ in public services – not privatised.

Higher wages
We will campaign to lift wages to close the gap with wage levels in Australia. We are calling today for a minimum wage to be fixed at two-thirds of the average wage - this would put the minimum wage at $15/hour.

Working people want to see minimum standards in wages and conditions across their industry or sector, regardless of their employer.   In addition to lifting the minimum wage the Employment Relations Act needs to be revised to ensure that multi-employer and industry bargaining is firmly established.

There may be tax cuts coming – but they must not undermine the public services we need now and in the future. And they need to be fair. And from a union perspective, we will continue to argue that the main problem with take home pay is the low wage paid by employers.

Doing our politics differently
We will be developing an explicit political role for our union member leaders.   Many unions already have networks of union members who have put their hand up to be more involved politically.  We will be strengthening their role, and empowering more workers to get involved in political activities.  Next year a key role will be ensuring all workers are on the electoral roll and understand their responsibility to vote.

We will actively seek to facilitate political discussions and actions around issues and educate union members on the issues that matter to them, not only through site meetings but in one-to-one conversations.

Union members are members of communities and we will be encouraging greater links between union and community campaigns.

We are also mapping our combined capacity as a union movement, and a campaign audit of our existing campaigning systems and strengths is now underway, and is looking at our future focus in areas such as outbound calling facilities.

In summary, this is about doing our politics differently. It is about recognizing specific political roles for union members, and it’s backing up our political strategy with union activism. This work programme is about building a social movement, and building our political voice.

We are focussed, determined and unified.
We have worked all year developing the basis to our political strategy. We have researched the views of working people. We have talked to our members. We are focussed. We are determined and we are unified. 

These areas capture our priorities and highlight the areas we want to protect and build on – these are central union agenda issues for working people– if we don’t advocate and highlight them – no one will.  The CTU wants to know where all political parties stand on the protection and enhancement of work rights, stronger public services and higher wages.

Put simply, our political strategy is about fairness and respect at work and in our communities.  We know that it’s unions that make the difference and we intend to keep on doing so.

Click here for the other documents in the CTU political strategy launch