The Campaign for a Living Wage was launched by Unite earlier this year. The aim is to collect 300,000 signatures by May 1, 2010, as the first step to holding a citizens’ initiated referendum. Even if this campaign does not succeed in its stated goal, it sets an ambitious target and encourages people to set their sights higher.

One of the problems with Labour is that elections raise people’s hopes only to dash them when, in office, promises are left unfulfilled. A campaign like this one, which is also used as an organizing tool for a fighting trade union, does not make promises to working people, but instead makes demands.
If this campaign does fail then it will not be for want of public support but for want of organisation. If every trade unionist in the country signed the petition we would have the numbers for a referendum now. The failure of the CTU to act on its supposed policy is a sign of the weakness of mainstream unions. The straightforward politics of the campaign are a relief after decades of leftists scrabbling to find ‘popular’, media-savvy slogans that would avoid the tired old issues of workers and wages. The Unite campaign has put those issues back where they belong – at the heart of the project and certainly, there is no lack of interest and support.

Why we support Unite

Unite is a fighting trade union. Since the 1980s, or even the 70s, the union movement has been on the defensive, trading away strength to preserve past gains, thus paving the way for future defeats. Unite, by contrast, started out by organising the supposedly unorganisable. The leadership – including people like John Minto, Mike Treen and Matt McCarten – is experienced in political campaigning and Unite tactics are more creative than any other union. McCarten is a former leader of the Labour left and the Alliance party, but he started his political career in his early 20s, organising transient workers in the Queenstown hospitality industry.

McCarten vs Field

Unlike former colleagues, like Phillip Taito Field, McCarten has constantly worked towards building an independent working class movement; he split from Labour and then Alliance to turn back towards building the movement from the ground up. The successes of Unite – their spectacular growth, the wage rises they have won for members and the abolition of youth rates testify clearly to the effectiveness of this strategy. The campaign for a living wage and supporting Unite provides a great opportunity for socialists in relatively isolated cities like Dunedin to have a national impact and raise the expectations and strength of working people and students in this city.

Long road to freedom

The successes that Unite has enjoyed so far should not lead anyone to suppose organising a working class movement is easy. As McCarten says, “we are playing chess, not checkers”. This is the beginning of a long process of rebuilding basic working class organisations and a revolutionary political current. We cannot rely on any of the traditional institutional supports for progressive politics – whether in government departments, the universities, the education sector, mainstream union leadership, the Labour or Greens party, or any section of business. We want to build a working class movement that can win the support of small business, but that can’t be done by building a party that represents small business or manufacturing and workers equally, as the Alliance tried to do.

Demanding work

This task will demand hours of work and constant organisation from hundreds, if not thousands of people, in the same way workers parties of the past were built. You should wear out your shoes and lose your voice more than once, without any expectation of financial benefit or a cushy job. Revolutionary organisation demands that socialists forsake the safety of institutional politics and rely on the support of the as-yet-silent working class majority. In fact, in the face of renewed attacks on health and education, on jobs and benefits, and suicidal environmental and military policies, we are convinced that this is the only safety to be had. Join the struggle – study, organise, build a workers party.

Andrew Tait