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Matt says: Corporate sadists free to drive workers into dirt. And I agree with every word he has written here...
There's something really unpleasant going on among some of our business
elites. It's as if they hate their fellow New Zealanders - the ones who have to
work for a living.
When I was young I'd run into old communists who would regale me about the
evils of capitalism. They would warn me that our economic system was corrupt
because it encouraged one human being to exploit another. It did seem wrong for
someone with money, through inheritance or otherwise, to make money off another
person without doing any work themselves.
But given they would offer totalitarian states such the Soviet Union or Mao's
China as alternatives, I accepted that our system was a better default, despite
its shortcomings.
However, these empires that at least, in rhetoric, were workers' states made
our free-world capitalists share some of the wealth with the rest of
society.
Many state concessions, such as a free compulsory education, free public
health, decent public housing, legislated minimum living wages and universal
welfare benefits and pensions, were a way to keep the populace from challenging
the system.
The bogeymen in Beijing and Moscow kept our capitalist system in check.
But after the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and the morphing of China to
state capitalism, the constraints came off in the "free world". Whether it was
Thatcherism, Reaganomics or Rogernomics, the result was the same.
Public assets were sold to multinationals for a pittance; business
constraints were off; taxes were slashed for the wealthy; we got user-pay
education and health; the boot went into the poor and deregulation of the labour
market, with the subsequent drop in job security and income, became the
norm.
But even that's not enough. Since the November election, many corporate
bosses have taken off their gloves and put on their steel-cap boots. It seems
many greedy shareholders in our country have an insatiable need for profits. If
they can't screw their customers for more it seems their workforce will have to
cough up by doing more work, over longer hours, for less money.
I wonder if there's a deliberate strategy by some boards to employ
psychopaths as senior managers on huge incomes to screw their employees any way
they can to meet unreasonable profit expectations. It's the only way I can
explain how many giant corporations demonise their employees and are hell-bent
on doing them over.
How else do you explain multinational CMP meat factory last October locking
its Marton workers out of their jobs for weeks until they agreed to cut their
pay and accept inferior work conditions? After that sordid victory, the
Nelson-based Talley family followed suit last week and locked out 750 meat
workers indefinitely until they capitulate and accept lesser wages and work
conditions.
Then there's the multinational Oceania expecting its low-paid carers to
accept 1 per cent a year extra wages and give up their overtime rates. Line
these disputes alongside the debacle at the Ports of Auckland, where the company
is trying to advertise for Aussies to come to New Zealand to work on the wharf.
The going rate for Aussie workers is $47 an hour, according to their unions. Our
wharfies get $27 an hour. Duh!
The Prime Minister asserts he wants to close the gap in wages with Australia.
Who would have thought this could be achieved by asking Aussies to halve their
pay and move here?
Of course, it's all nonsense. There's no plan to lift wages; it's the
opposite. Screw the workers and drive wages down for short-term gain. The result
will be that the skilled workforce will move offshore permanently. Employers
will then whine they can't get good workers.
There's something deeply disturbing going on in the minds of the directors of
these three corporations that think it's acceptable to starve their workers into
submission.
Unless our more enlightened employers and politicians tell them to pull their
heads in, the New Zealand we know is stuffed.
By Matt McCarten |
We agree with you Matt. This is something you will be remembered for: Telling it like it is!
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