Happy Holidays

A safe and happy holiday season to everyone, I hope you have a well-deserved break. For those of you who are working, here is information regarding your entitlements during the season, as the whole thing can be a bit confusing. It's been a good year for workers, from the smoking legislation (for many service workers), the union bargaining legislation, to the rise in the minimum and youth wages. Spare a thought for next year though, election year. Every worker needs to consider what will happen to the rights and conditions of workers, what will happen if Labour retain power or if National take power. Here's my two cents: a vote to the right of Labour is a vote against workers. But don't take my word for it. Go research it yourself, read the speeches of the politicians, read policy papers and trawl their websites for policy statements and look at the viewpoint of their speeches: what kind of person would be pleased by this kind of speech, who benefits from this particular policy? Look at concern for minorities, concern for workers, for the elderly, there are a lot of things that you can glean about a political party by the way they state their position. Labour National Greens Alliance Act NZ First United Future But finally, don't be fooled into believing the rhetoric that strong unions are bad. That may have been true when workers had no control over their unions, but those days are well in the past. If your union isn't democratic, then there's a problem. If you can't voice your opinion to your union delegate or organiser then there is definitely a problem. The laughable thing is that you don't get an equal employer/employee by smashing unions. You get an equal relationship by improving conditions to the point where you don't need to go onstrike every year to get a pay rise. Anti-union aims such as those put forward by Don Brash, himself a hard-bitten economist with a bad reputation from the 90s, do nothing to endear National to workers. All I can say, is check it out, think about it, talk about it. It's worth doing so. Oh and don't forget to vote... Merry Christmas!