Locked Out
About a year ago my friend Larry* and I were talking about unions with an unorganised worker. This guy was quite hostile, and he was repeating quite a few anti-union myths. For some reason the guy started ranting about 1951 - talking about how those striking workers should have gone back to work. I'd been doing most of the talking, but at this stage Larry said: "It was a lock-out, not a strike".
This was all a little bit hilarious - of all the inaccurate ideas this guy was throwing around, the nature of a dispute that took place half a century ago didn't make really make. But right now I kind of understand where he was coming from.
The workers at the Progressive supermarket distribution centres can't go back to work. The company will not let them back unless the union drops its claim for a nation-wide agreement.**
If you can contribute any money please click on the button on the right. Even better if you can contribute time, do. In Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch just head down to the picket line and there'll be plenty to do. If you live elsewhere then find some other people who are also keen and there's a lot you can do to help make the workers stronger and the company weaker. In Wellington people have been collecting money all week and the response has been amazing.
* My aim is to give nicknames to all my friends when I write about them on the blog. This has absolutely no value for anyone else, but gives me the opportunity to create silly in-jokes - a pass-time I enjoy way too much.
** A lot of people who have been writing about this clearly have no idea how collective agreements work. The only limit to a collective agreement is that the union members and employers must agree on its contents (and there are certain clauses a collective agreement must contain). A collective agreement could say that everyone whose surname began with 'S' got paid an extra ten cents an hour. Everyone who keeps on saying that the company is perfectly right not to want a nationwide collective agreement because a nationwide collective agreement couldn't do 'X', is wrong.
