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by Simon Edmunds - Otago & Southland Organiser for Unite union

Striking senior doctors and NZNO members picketed outside Lakes District Hospital on 1 May calling for better investment in health and safe staffing levels across the region to reduce the amount of patients needing to be transferred because of the lack of local facilities that have failed to keep pace with population growth.

The doctors’ strike took place in the context of nationwide stop work meetings involving a multitude of public and private sector unions, as they try to fight back against a coalition government hell-bent on attacking the rights of workers to organise for better wages and working conditions.

From pushing through two years of real-term minimum wage cuts, to removing the living wage in government jobs, repealing fair-pay agreements, extending 90-day trials, restricting the right to strike, removing union protections for new workers, reducing the ability of workers to take personal grievances and lowering payouts even if they’re successful, limiting unjustified dismissal claims and limiting contractors’ rights, our government has pursued an ideologically driven barrage of attacks on working people’s rights led by an extremist ACT party Workplace Relations minister who refuses to even talk to unions.

In Queenstown, with its extreme cost of living, acute housing problems and outrageous rents, the need for local and migrant workers to be able to unionise is more important than ever. Not only do unions provide a way for us to collectively organise to negotiate better wages and conditions, but they also function as much needed checks and balances on breaches of employment law that are unfortunately common in the area.

Migrant workers, who make up a high percentage of the local workforce, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuses of power - as demonstrated by the region’s unusually high number of Migrant Exploitation Protection Work Visas issued to those with nowhere else to turn.

Our local MP Joseph Mooney cannot be relied on by local working people - his National party is more interested in ‘solving’ the housing crisis here by gutting the few protections tenants have against no-cause evictions and rent rises, and overseeing a massive transfer of wealth from working people to landlords and the ultra-rich. Nor can we look to our Mayor Glyn Lewers who seems focused on hiding questionable spending, avoiding media scrutiny and punishing councillor whistleblowers who fight to protect our local democracy and environment.

Instead, we need to organise ourselves, in unions, to create a more just, fair and welcoming community for the people that actually make Queenstown run - local and migrant workers. This is what May Day is all about.