New Zealand

The world's biggest fast food corporation, McDonald's, is facing a summer of strikes, pickets and a boycott as 1300 union members escalate their campaign in the wake of yesterdays conference of McDonald's bosses refusing to lift pay rates or offer the same security of hours that Restaurant Brands union members get.

The strikes started on September 19th with workers working out of Otara McDonald's, to be accompanied on the picket line by a giant inflatable rat. October 3 saw staff at six different McDonald's walk out, five in Auckland and one in Hamilton.

Lockout Notice and Union media release | Workers Party: Background to Wellington Bus Lockout

Indymedia Exclusive: The company is accusing Wellington Tramways Union President Nick Kelly of stealing a bus and taking it to a union stopwork meeting.

A Fairfax spokeswoman announced that both papers would come out on Friday, but refused to comment on whether weekend papers would be affected.

The second day of the strike at Brackenridge Estate, a Ministry Of Health run complex for the care of intellectually disabled adults, saw around 40 workers and their supporters on the picket lines, under shade from the 30 degree plus heat. Friday, the first day of the 48 hour strike, saw around 100 people on the lines.

Mediation between the Maritime Union and Port Company is taking place currently, in an effort to stop moves by the Port of Napier to contract out stevedoring work which threatens 25 permanent and 60 casual jobs, with workers to be thrown on the scrap heap just before Christmas.

A Peoples’ History of Auckland- From the general strike to the ADB summit. 1912-1995
IWW, 1912

The action involved striking for 55 minutes of every hour, 24 hours a day in a struggle for better wages and conditions.

About 140 Reefton and Dunollie miners were due to meet in Runanga at 1pm to decide their next step.

In an escalation of previous action, the Spring Creek miners walked off the job on Friday morning.

The miners are seeking a 5 - 5.5% pay increase, while Solid Energy (which directly employs 1/3 of the miners and the rest indirectly via contractors) has refused to go higher than 4%.

The strikers confronted the shared hostility of governments, employers and union leaders alike. The text also deals with how the racism prevalent in the labour movement affected the conduct and outcome of the strike.

"THIS IS A STRIKE that has vanished from history. In August 1925, the seamen of Britain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand walked off their ships in protest against a ten per cent wage cut. It was one of the few genuinely international strikes, directed against a powerful international cartel. One would have expected it to be widely debated. Yet, newspaper coverage apart, history has largely been silent.

This text is taken from the December 2006 issue of the Industrial Workers of the World Australia's newsletter, Direct Action.

Auckland Newstalk reported that union members in various parts of the organisation carried out lightning strikes between four and seven o'clock. They also took industrial action before One News aired on Friday night.

This article from 2004 discusses several episodes of resistance to austerity in New Zealand in the 1990s.

The dancers are part of a performance group, "Mauri", which provides regular shows at the attraction. They walked out during the middle of an $85/head dinner and performance, then went to the offices of the attraction to stage a haka dance.

Customers filled shopping trolleys with goods then used them to block the aisles of the Foodtown Tauranga supermarket. Each trolley included a message of support for the locked out workers.

A short account of a little known political death in New Zealand. In 1982, an anarchist punk rocker attempted to blow up the Wanganui police computer. He blew himself up in the process

[1,300 words]

http://libcom.org/blog has received reports from Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Brazil, the USA, New Zealand, Ireland and Turkey so far, with actions ranging from university occupations and school walkouts to protests against French consulates and businesses.

See also French version below.

The protest ended with some violence and a sit-down protest in a major intersection.

Students from schools including Auckland Girls Grammar, Selwyn College, Epsom Girls and Senior College went to a rally during school hours to demand equal pay with adults.

After the strike, the company retracted their threat issued last night to sue any of their workers who went on strike today.

The symbolic strike was in response to a number of Unite union members being rostered off by the company on Sunday February 12, when it was agreed the workers would be paid to go to a union stopwork meeting at the Town Hall.