Teacher Notes History BOOK OVERVIEW Workers in the Margins draws on oral history of workers and trade unionists. The book stems from doctoral research by the author and has been extended by further research. This history focuses on those workers who were traditionally hired last in times of plenty and the first to be fired in times of economic recession. UsING WORKERS IN THE MARGIN IN yOUR HIstORy PROGRaMME 2.4 Students write and deliver speeches from the perspectives of Māori and Pākehā, men and women, unskilled and skilled workers, in the trade union movement. 2.5 Students use the text to identify and describe consequences of the 1951 waterfront dispute on workers and the trade union movement. 3.2 Students prepare for and debate the topic 'that NZ in the 1900s was a workers' paradise'. Students describe the role that marginalised workers had in the trade union movement, analysing what impact these workers had on the larger trade union movement.
This article analyses New Zealand seafarer Gordon Harold (Bill) Andersen’s growing class consciousness as he experienced class relations at sea and in port during the Second World War. Oral histories of New Zealanders who served in the Merchant Navy demonstrate that, despite the pressures of patriotism to supply the war effort against fascism, there were efforts to form solidarities and enact everyday resistances to the brutal conditions experienced on ship and in port.
In 1982, an incident occurred at the Auckland Trade Union Centre in New Zealand. A small group of Maori radicals, called Black Unity, who ran the Polynesian Resource Centre were accused of antitrade unionism and racism and, consequently, were evicted from the Auckland Trade Union Centre with the assistance of the New Zealand police. This chapter explores the radical ideas of Maori sovereignty and Black feminism propagated by Black Unity that inflamed Auckland trade unionists, focusing on the writings of the group's spokeswomen, Ripeka Evans and Donna Awatere. It chapter examines the philosophical position that Maori nationalist members of Black Unity espoused. It explores the historical context for the demand for Maori sovereignty first articulated by Black Unity in 1981; explains why the Maori sovereignty position was also a Black feminist position; and asks what led Maori women to turn with such anger on the radical Left in the early 1980s Finally, it analyzes the longer-term affect of Maori sovereignty demands on the Maori protest movement, the women's movement, the sectarian Left, and the trade union movement.
The restructuring of capital and the transformation of the workforce in the late twentieth century has produced a newly-shaped working class; one that encompasses those in insecure work and unemployed workers. With this repositioning has come new political organizations of unemployed workers, of which Te Roopu Rawakore o Aotearoa, the national New Zealand organization for unemployed workers, is an example. This organization of unemployed was not only significant for its existence in the face of poverty, status disintegration, and a perceived sense of social worthlessness, but also for the tripartite ideology its members employed. Unemployed workers in New Zealand combined the identity politics of race and gender with a class-based critique of society to demand "the right to work and a living wage for all."
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