Workers in the Margins: Union Radicals in Post-War New Zealand

Locke, Cybèle

doi:10.7810/9781927131398

Cited by 5 publications

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“…Under the threat of closures and unemployment, large-scale wage cuts were imposed, and unions and workers were forced on to the defensive, often waging struggles over redundancy payments. By about the early 1990s, this resistance had largely dissipated (Locke 2012;Webb 2015).…”

Section: The Effectiveness Of Informal Resistance and Its Attempted Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Wildcat Homers, Gamifying Work, and Workplace-Whānau in the Meat Industry: Re-Examining the Subversiveness of Informal Workers' Resistance

Boraman¹

2017

Journal of Labor and Society

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Studies of labor struggle often concentrate on overt resistance, such as strikes, and neglect the rich variety of subterranean acts of workplace dissent. The few studies of this informal resistance that exist are largely a‐historical and Eurocentric micro‐studies that generally argue such dissent lacks radical content. Drawing on two unorthodox Marxist currents, including “autonomist Marxism”, this article presents a historical study of everyday resistance by meatworkers in Aotearoa New Zealand during the 1970s. It is asserted these struggles often hampered profits and production, complemented overt resistance, and were frequently collective rather than individualistic in nature—indeed, in many plants dissent was based on informal work groups of workplace‐whānau. These were multiethnic extended family‐like informal groupings that were influenced by Māori culture. While capital comprehensively restructured the meat industry in the 1980s and 1990s, it has not meant the “end of resistance” today.

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Section: The Effectiveness Of Informal Resistance and Its Attempted Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Wildcat Homers, Gamifying Work, and Workplace-Whānau in the Meat Industry: Re-Examining the Subversiveness of Informal Workers' Resistance

Boraman¹

2017

Journal of Labor and Society

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“…Alongside this indigenous activism, New Zealand has experienced waves of mobilisation and political activity centred around the trade union, anti-apartheid, peace/anti-war, environmental, unemployed, women's, disability and gay, lesbian and bisexual and trans rights movements (Alice & Star, 2004;Coney, 1993;Downes, 2010;Locke, 2012;Locke, 1992;Richards, 1999;Taylor, 2008;Tennant, 1996). Pivotal landmarks in left activism in New Zealand include the bitter waterfront dispute of the 1950s which involved 22,000 workers engaging in industrial action for 151 days in pursuit of improved working conditions (Scott, 1954).…”

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confidence: 99%

Enhancing Activist Scholarship in New Zealand and Beyond

Came¹,

MacDonald²,

Humphries³

2015

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Aotearoa (also known as New Zealand) is a jurisdiction that must respond to the inequitable elements of the multi-facetted oppressions of its colonising past and present if it is to live up to its claim to being an honourable nation. Early intensification of colonising practices embedded European values over those of the indigenous people with lasting devastating effects. In search of a national integrity, activist traditions of exposure, resistance, dissent and non-violent direct action to injustices are longstanding in this land. Activist scholarship however, is a more recent phenomenon. We explore the potential of activist scholarship to contribute more directly to transformations that will embed justice in the diverse socio-political economic context of New Zealand. We outline what we understand by activist scholarship and how we believe it can strengthen both socio-political activism and academic scholarship in synergistic ways. We propose seven principles of activist scholarship, generated through on-going dialogue with our activist scholar peers. We offer them as a starting point for discussion and critique until a collective statement emerges. We showcase Ngāpuhi Speaks as an example of such potential synergies.heather came school of public health and psychosocial studies, aucKland university of technology

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“…Following the transition to neoliberalism as the hegemonic cultural and economic paradigm of the majority of Western liberal democracies, a preponderance of academic works have incorporated theories of neoliberalism in the analysis of all manner of subjects, and within a range of disciplines, from economics and social policy, to cultural practice and discourse analysis. Several New Zealand studies have explored, through interviews, oral histories, and historical analysis the impacts of neoliberalisation and structural change on specific communities, for example, farmers (Wallace, 2014;Hunt et al, 2013), union members, 'working people on the margins', and beneficiaries (Locke, 2012), and 'voluntary organisations' (Tennant, 2007). However, scholarly works from within Aotearoa New Zealand on neoliberalisation and structural reform beginning in 1984 generally focus on either the history and causes of reforms, their substance, the continued influence of neoliberalism and neoliberal policies on subjectivities, and their social, economic and, increasingly, environmental impacts.…”

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confidence: 99%

Cultural Pragmatics and the Re-Fusing of Collective Memory: A Study of Trade Union and Community and Voluntary Representatives' Collective Memory of Neoliberalisation in Aotearoa New Zealand

Neilson¹

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That there has been sudden and significant social transformation resulting from neoliberalisation in Aotearoa New Zealand is clear. Few Western liberal democracies experienced the impacts of neoliberalisation to the extent and with the speed New Zealand did beginning in 1984. Owing to the speed and scale of reform, coupled with its implementation by a traditionally social democratic Labour Government, 1984 is itself collectively remembered by many communities within New Zealand as being symbolic of a significant rupture within New Zealand history, as a breach within the Labour Party, as a break from the values and principles of the labour movement, and as heralding a period of monumental social, cultural, economic, and political change. Through interviews with twenty-one representatives of the trade union and community and voluntary sectors, my research presents a collective memory of neoliberal structural reform in Aotearoa New Zealand. In doing so, I argue a case for the application of cultural sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander’s theory of cultural pragmatics in the analysis of collective memory, in which social performance is collectively and mnemonically dramatised and analysed as analogous to theatrical performance. I utilise analysis of collective memory of this period in order to delve deeper into what these memories can tell us about the narrativisation of social memory and change, the continued impacts of neoliberalisation, and the present social, cultural, political, and economic conjuncture. By examining communities’ narrativisation of the past through collective memory, and the work of sense-making on the part of those who remember, the theoretical framework adopted in this study can aid the researcher in bringing to light the enduring meaning of events in a shared past, and the continued construction of this meaning through the present and future. In doing so, the applicability of Alexander’s theory of cultural performance, in exploring the narrativisation of drama in social and political life, is shown to aid in mnemonic re-fusion—or the memory and meaning-work of amalgamating component parts of cultural performance for the purpose of constructing a collective narrativisation of the past.

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Workers in the Margins: Union Radicals in Post-War New Zealand

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Wildcat Homers, Gamifying Work, and Workplace-Whānau in the Meat Industry: Re-Examining the Subversiveness of Informal Workers' Resistance

Wildcat Homers, Gamifying Work, and Workplace-Whānau in the Meat Industry: Re-Examining the Subversiveness of Informal Workers' Resistance

Enhancing Activist Scholarship in New Zealand and Beyond

Cultural Pragmatics and the Re-Fusing of Collective Memory: A Study of Trade Union and Community and Voluntary Representatives' Collective Memory of Neoliberalisation in Aotearoa New Zealand

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