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FROM THE PICKETLINE |
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a report from port chalmers
“Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet
In short, CHH are taking a punt in the short term to destroy workers conditions and representation with the aim of increasing profit margins in the medium to long term. In the 1920s there was the corporatist movement. It became the fascist movement of the 30s. Today, fascism doesn’t come in the night wearing brown shirts. It comes in reassuring paternal tones via TV advertisements etc. It expands because governments see to it that economies are geared to corporate interests instead of societies. Corporate fascism has a riason d’etre, the profit margin; a god at whose alter everything will be bled dry; available profits extracted; withered husks discarded. So I’m at the pickets.
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CONTENTS
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The port pickets are a possible focus for revealing aspects of the bigger picture to more people. But that involves, first, building broad based community support for the wharfies, winning and then pushing forward. But opportunities are being missed. As an analogy, imagine a game of football. The ball, the immediate issue, belongs to the wharfies. The opposition is the Business Roundtable and CHH. You can gain the initiative but over 90% of the guys in your team have elected a captain and refuse to handle any passes that don’t come from him. So you have to pass the ball that way. He gives it away. Every time. And then passes out an order not to tackle the ball carrier. Or that’s how it feels to me. On the 27th of December Dunedin Activist Network (DAN) and others were yet again on the Port Chalmers picket. It is not a strike picket. The following dynamics are typical. Members from such diverse groups as the Alliance, the ‘Wobblies’, International Socialists, SWO, Service and Foodworker Union, anarchists, even just members of the public with no professed political angle had been calling for effective non-violent civil disobedience. Leaflets were handed out listing the basic 'dos and donts' about sitdowns. Les Wells (WWU President based in Lyttelton) is against sit downs and refused to even give union members the choice of doing it. The captain ‘gave the ball away’.
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on the waterfront: |
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The van drove in. Later that day the union did finally agree to have a pre-picket tactics meeting in the New Year. In the evening Les was approached with the suggestion that everyone should go to the pub. Slowly. First one there buys the drinks! That’s a 2km walk along a bounded road with the scab van crawling behind. The Union President said no (apparently picketers would fall under the van). The van departed. Two guys were arrested but the wharfies spontaneously laid siege to the police behind the gate and took up the call to have them released. At some point Les stepped aside with the police and negotiated their release. But first every one had to disperse. To our astonishment the police did actually honour the deal and let the guys go. The best moment of that day was after most folk had gone home. Owens were transporting their machinery away. Some wimmin were waiting for them at a pub across from the port gates and pelted the windscreens with eggs. It was just heartening to see that folk can organise themselves when free to do so.
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on the waterfront: |
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I’m writing this on the 29th Jan. To date:
Many of us will continue to plug away at the WWU leadership, but at the end of the day, with ever
increasing numbers of police present at pickets, it’s going to take numbers and DEMOCRATIC modes of
organising to stop CHH and their cronies. |
 
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In 1999, Mainland Stevedoring was formed and its management formed the Amalgamated Stevedores Union. Carter Holt Harvey award all of their tendered out loading contracts to Mainland, except in Lyttelton where they still use Broken Hill Proprieties, the local company, whose employees are Waterfront Workers’ Union members. They (CHH) fly workers down from Tauranga, put them up in hotels and transport them around the South Island.