How your rights were won 

Do you ever wonder how did we get the weekend? Paid holidays off work? Health & Safety at work? Or the minimum wage?

These rights and many others were fought for and won by workers getting together and forming a union. Here are some New Zealand examples.

The first strike in Aotearoa 1821 - kia ora!

The first strike by New Zealand workers was in 1821 in the Bay of Islands. Maori workers stopped work because they wanted to be paid “for their labour in money as was the case in England, or else in gunpowder.”    (Bert Roth - labour historian).

Sam Parnell won us the eight-hour working day

Sam was a British carpenter sailing out to New Zealand in the 19th century. The young colony was in full-on building mode at that time and word had gone out that there were lots of construction jobs. In the two months it took Sam to reach New Zealand he had plenty of time to think about his life and talk to others. He felt he had worked too hard in Britain - 12-hour days every day except Sunday. He thought that a worker should labour for only eight hours each day - then he or she would have eight hours for sleep, eight hours for work and eight hours for relaxation. 

The other tradesmen and labourers on the ship agreed and all pledged that once they got to New Zealand they would refuse to work long hours. And it worked! At a meeting in Wellington in October 1840 workers resolved to work only from 8am to 5pm. 

Another true story of how one individual made a big difference

Matiu Rata was a 19 year-old ship worker who risked his liberty to carry hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cash that kept hundreds of union families alive during the dark days of the 1951 waterfront lockout. These were the funds from Australia needed to support workers whom the government banned from returning to work. Anyone found helping these workers was liable to be imprisoned. 

But who would have suspected that the fresh faced young Maori boy working on a ship that went back and forth from New Zealand to Australia was carrying a fortune in cash provided by comrades in the Australian union movement? Matiu Rata went on to become a government minister and founded the Waitangi Tribunal.

Workers can make a difference in the wider world too

The union movement supported Samoans in their struggle to become an independent nation. 

Samoans were peacefully asking New Zealand for the right to rule their own country when 11 of their people, including their leader Tamasese, were shot dead by the New Zealand military police in Apia on Black Saturday 1929. Samoans rose up and demanded self-government immediately. The New Zealand government decided to send a shipload of police and army recruits to quell the uprising. They started training recruits at Trentham Military Camp just outside Wellington. 

The Seaman’s Union, though, had other ideas. Their union members supported the idea that Samoans be independent, so they refused to sail any ships to Samoa. The government couldn’t get their troops over to Apia so they were forced to negotiate a peaceful transition to Samoan Independence, which was eventually achieved in 1962.

Union members are still helping workers in other countries

UnionAid NZ gives financial support to workers such as the Untouchables in India who work as sweepers, cremation and graveyard workers for very low wages. NZ unionists’ support has helped these workers to be educated in basic rights and to organise themselves for better protection and pay rates. http://www.unionaid.org.nz/index.php/what-we-do/dalit-workers-in-india/