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An urgent warning: NZ Labour government moves to seal Pike River mine
The New Zealand government’s Pike River Recovery Agency (PRRA) resumed work this week on installing the first of two seals in the Pike River underground coal mine.
The Labour Party-led government is intent on ending an underground investigation into the November 2010 disaster in the mine, which killed 29 people. It has brushed aside the objections of the Pike River Families Group Committee, which represents the majority of the 29 families. These families are demanding that the investigation proceed into the mine workings to examine crucial evidence about what caused the underground explosions. They are backed by several international mining experts who have explained that this can be done safely.
New Zealand nurses’ union cancels strike after pay offer
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) announced Friday that it had cancelled a strike notice for July 29, following talks with the country’s 20 District Health Boards (DHBs). Some 30,000 nurses and health care assistants struck on June 9, after rejecting a derisory pay offer of just 1.38 percent and voted for three further nationwide strikes on July 29, August 19 and September 9.
Nurses march through Wellington during the June 9 strike. (Photo: WSWS Media)
The DHBs’ original offer was a pay cut relative to inflation (which is 3.3 percent) and contained nothing to address the staffing crisis in hospitals. The Labour Party-led government has announced a three-year wage freeze for the majority of public employees, including healthcare workers and teachers. It is imposing severe austerity measures to make workers shoulder the burden of the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
About 30,000 nurses, healthcare
assistants and midwives in public hospitals around New
Zealand voted earlier this month to hold another three
nationwide strikes. The members of the New Zealand Nurses
Organisation (NZNO) held an eight-hour strike on June 9
after rejecting a derisory pay rise offer of just 1.38
percent. The District Health Boards’ offer was effectively
a pay cut relative to inflation and contained nothing to
address the staffing crisis in hospitals.
The Labour
Party-led government announced a wage freeze in May for the
next three years for the vast majority of public sector
employees, including healthcare workers and teachers. The
government is imposing severe austerity measures to make
New Zealand bus driver explains why union-backed sellout was rejected
On June 23, hundreds of NZ Bus drivers in Wellington voted to reject a sellout deal hatched between the company and the Tramways Union. It was the third offer rejected by the drivers, who are among the lowest-paid workers in New Zealand, many receiving the minimum wage of $20 an hour or less.
Since then, the media and the union have remained silent, as union officials re-entered negotiations, keeping workers in the dark. Only some details of the rejected offer were made public. It would have increased wages to $22.10 per hour, funded not by NZ Bus, but by a subsidy from the Labour Party-led Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC), which contracts NZ Bus and other private companies to provide bus services.