John Pagani
The Mana Party and others well to the left of the electorate have been advocating that Labour should get stuck into the Ports dispute on the side of the workers.
It's no coincidence that their position lines up with the right on Auckland Council.
In both cases, the real agenda is not to help the union members in their industrial dispute, but to bring about a wider conflict that suits their aims: Chris Fletcher wants to put the unions in their place; The Mana Party want to force the electorate to polarise, driving more moderate centre left voters into their arms; Chris Trotter wants the dispute to be used as the opening battleground in a nationwide campaign against the further erosion of trade union rights and against privatisation.
Whatever the tactical merits of these lines of argument, what they reveal is that the call for Labour to intervene in the Port dispute is unprincipled.
Unprincipled.
First because they are using for their own ends working men and women who have a genuine dispute.
These are real people, with real families, and to intervene to achieve wider political goals is exploitative.
Check out the comments calling for the dispute to be used to vote for the ceo of the Port, for example.
Let's just say that a majority of New Zealanders want to vote for the ceo of the Port (nah go on, just try to imagine it; Remembering that this is the view of one of Labour's severe critics). Even with that popular support, to intervene on that basis is to ignore the workers who are going without pay, and suffering through a traumatic summer. What they want is a settlement for them - they are not doing this because they hope to defeat capitalism.
To use the dispute to make provoke wider political confrontations is unprincipled.
Second, interventionists are promoting a model of industrial relations that is not going to help other workers.
If its it's OK for Labour to advocate for the workers (or for the Port's owners, the public), then it is OK for National to intervene on the side of the "bosses" all the time and everywhere.
Either you have an industrial dispute system where politicians get involved in negotiations, or you have one where politicians set the ground rules, and then trust them to negotiate. If politicians do the settlements, John Key is not often going to be helping out working folk.
Third, the interventionists are unprincipled because, even if they support an industrial system where politicians do get involved, they don't have a principled basis for politicians to be involved in this particular one.
If an employer, or government, attempts to remove the human right to organise and belong to a trade union, then there is a principled cause for Labour to take a strong stance. If they try to remove the right of union members to negotiate, then that requires a response as well.
But, absent issues of that order, a cause for intervention can only be found in the substance of the negotiation. If you go to the substance then you will find a cause to intervene in any dispute. It's in the nature of a dispute that both sides will often have a valid point.
Therefore, what isn't a principle for the Labour Party is: "No worker employed by a publicly-owned entity should ever have their terms of employment reduced."
That probably is a good principle for unions - they exist to fight for better conditions and wages for their members. It is principled for the CTU to wade in. But it's not a Labour Party principle, because Labour seeks to govern also for the people who own the Port - Aucklanders - as well as for everyone else.
Next we come to those who think that refusal to intervene is a fudge.
A fudge is a refusal to make a position clear. Fudge means either that you don't know what you want to do, or that you do know and you don't want to tell voters because they won't like it. Voters don't like either.
But a fudge is the polar opposite of the actual position in Labour's industrial relations policy - one widely seen in the last election as decidedly pro-worker:
"While Labour will continue to set minimum standards by law to protect the most vulnerable, we believe that employers and employees, through their unions, are best suited to sitting down and negotiating the wages and conditions in their workplaces and industries."
Everyone who is calling on Labour to intervene is also saying Labour should repudiate that policy.
That is why the principled position for Labour is to stand strongly behind their policy and the principle that employers and employees through their unions should negotiate wages and conditions.
