On Thursday 23 October, workers in Health, Education and essential public services are going on strike. This is set to be one of the largest strikes in the country in decades.
The mega strike has been triggered by the Government’s measly pay offers. Public sector workers are being offered pay rises far below the rate of inflation. This amounts to a pay cut in real terms.
The government shows no signs of budging. After months of negotiations going nowhere, the unions have been forced into action. It’s about time!
It is not just about pay, but all of the other problems too: downgrading of essential services, job cuts, understaffing.
Since it came to power, this coalition government has launched multiple attacks on the working class. They got rid of the fair pay agreements. They carried out huge job cuts in the public sector. In May this year they scrapped the pay equity legislation and tore up thirty-three existing pay equity claims.
These attacks have hit some of our lowest paid workers in aged care, community health, and social services.
Public services have been chronically underfunded for decades. Instead of coming up with the money, the government wants to force fewer workers to do more work for lower pay.
The government responds
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Judith Collins has written an open letter giving the government’s response to the upcoming strike, which can be boiled down to these lines:
“…there are thousands of appeals for increased spending as well as for wage increases.
“The country is simply not earning enough to meet all these calls.”
The New Zealand economy can’t afford it! There is no choice but to suck it up. Accept all the attacks and toil away on slave wages, forever. This is a total indictment of the whole system.
Union response
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CTU [Council of Trade Unions] President Richard Wagstaff has released a statement, which among other things, says:
“The Government argues it can’t afford it to meet the claims. But workers are well aware that the Government found $23 billion over the past two budgets for tax cuts for high income earners, and tax breaks and write offs for landlords, tobacco companies, and businesses. Workers understand its all about priorities, and that ministers could choose to prioritise the essential services and workers we all depend on.”
He wants the government to address “…the concerns brought to the negotiating table by the people who do the work.”
A fighting campaign
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The government has shown that it is a government of the bosses, for the bosses. Why would it suddenly have a change of heart?
Workers are sick of the government getting away with its attacks on workers. The October 23rd strike is a chance for workers to stand up and show what workers’ power means. We are the ones that actually make society run.
The government figures that it can ride out the strike and any followup action. Let the workers blow off steam for a bit. Then when nothing changes, the union leaders will come back and accept whatever deal is on offer.
To make sure that this doesn’t happen, comrades of the RCI say that October 23rd should build momentum for a campaign that mobilises, at the grassroots, wider and wider layers of the working class around some concrete demands:
– No funding cuts!
– No job losses!
– Wage rises indexed to inflation!
– Reverse the attacks on fair pay and equity!
Imagine the effect (in the middle of an election year) of mobilising workers for a general strike around these demands.
The way forward
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The NZ economy shrank by 0.9% in the first half of 2025. Under capitalism, the working class will be forced to pay in job losses and funding cuts. The only way out is to mobilise against it.
The government has accused the unions of politicising the struggle. They would prefer workers to concentrate on bread and butter issues in each workplace. Struggles of isolated group of workers are easy to pick off one by one. Instead, workers should be generalising their experience and linking up on the regional, national level and international level. Strength is in unity.
The government accused the PPTA [Post Primary Teachers Association] of bringing up the “unrelated” issue of Palestine. But the issue of Palestine is a working class issue that goes beyond borders. The same ruling class that attacks workers in Aotearoa also lines up behind imperialism and is complicit in Zionist oppression.
An inspiring lesson on international solidarity was shown by the general strike of the Italian workers in support of the Gaza flotilla on 23 September. The teachers’ union went on strike for higher pay – and at the same time in support of their fellow teachers and students in Gaza.
Things like “politicisation” and support for the Palestinian struggle are not a smear but a badge of honour, that can bring in support from wide layers of the public. The best way to support the Palestinian struggle is to engage in our own struggle at home.
Events in New Zealand are just a local symptom of the decline of capitalism on a world scale, and a reawakening of the working class movement to defend itself. The fundamental task is to overthrow this dead-end system and replace it with socialism, a higher form of society. This requires a revolutionary party that absorbs the lessons of the past to lead the way forward. Comrades of the Revolutionary Communist International in Aotearoa New Zealand want to build an organisation that can lay the foundations for such a party. If you agree with this, join us!