MANY CONSERVATIVE New Zealanders look back with gratitude on Bill Birch’s Employment Contracts Act. Ever since the advent of compulsory union membership in 1936, the National Party had pledged itself to a fundamental shake-up of the laws regulating industrial relations. That it took the party 55 years to make good on its promise is still considered scandalous in some quarters. Never mind, Birch’s legislation stands as one of those ‘better late than never’ interventions. Certainly, it was responsible for reducing the private sector trade unions to pale shadows of their former selves. More importantly, with the passage of the ECA, the working class ceased to be a major player on the New Zealand political stage.
Appearances, however, can be deceptive. What looked like an unqualified political success for the National Party, was, in reality, a sad reflection of the unqualified failure of New Zealand’s working class leadership.
According to Michael Laws, who worked for a while as an Opposition researcher in Birch’s office, his boss fully expected to have to concede a third of the clauses of the Employment Contracts Bill. In the face of what Birch assumed would be prolonged and furious industrial action from the Council of Trade Unions, major concessions were accepted as the price the National Government would have to pay for the restoration of industrial peace.
Birch’s assumptions seemed to be borne out when mass rally after mass rally of unionists voted overwhelmingly for the CTU to call a General Strike. That such a strike would embroil tens of thousands of workers was considered highly likely – especially in the wake of what Brian Roper of the University of Otago has calculated to be the largest sustained protest wave in New Zealand history. In March and April of 1991, well over 100,000 trade unionists took to the streets. There were noisy demonstrations not only in the four main centres, but also in a host of much smaller provincial towns and cities – where such activity was (and still is) exceedingly rare.
But, of course, there was no general strike. At a special affiliates’ meeting of the CTU, convened in Wellington on 18 April 1991, the attempt to call a general strike was defeated 250,122 votes to 190,910. With the notable exceptions of the Engineers Union and the Financial Sector Union, the private sector unions all voted staunchly for mass strike action. Those voting against were overwhelmingly the representatives of state sector workers. (Although there is scant evidence that the opinions of those workers were ever seriously canvassed by the people wielding their grossly undemocratic ‘card votes’!)
Why was it defeated? At the highest levels of the CTU there was a conviction that the unions – both private and public – were big enough and strong enough to weather the storm. This was, of course, wishful thinking. Stripped of their state protection, workers were acutely vulnerable to their employers. If the boss was sending out anti-union signals, then identifying yourself as pro-union was not the smartest of moves. Matters were not helped by the country’s rapid descent into an unusually deep recession. In such circumstances, unions are a ‘nice to have’, but what really matters is holding on to your job.
Raw economic necessity was not, however, the only factor at work. For five years, the Trade Union Education Authority (one of the few left-wing measures of the Lange-Douglas era) had been training the most active and politically conscious workers to become fully-fledged trade union delegates – the face of the trade union movement in their workplace. When the content of Birch’s Employment Relations Bill became known, these delegates mobilised their workmates, producing in very short order the outpouring of protest action described above. These were the people who led the push for a general strike. When the near unanimous votes in favour of this tactic, recorded at the mass rallies held around the country, were overturned by union bosses convinced they knew better than their members, the dismay, disillusionment and embarrassment of these delegates may easily be imagined.
The cream of the trade union movement curdled overnight. Workers, betrayed by the leaders their union dues had turned into well-upholstered bureaucrats, simply said “Fuck it” and walked away. Turning their backs on collectivism, they quietly resolved that, henceforth, the only people they could rely upon were themselves.
Bill Birch got all his clauses.
There are lessons to be drawn from this history: lessons that may be applied to the political crisis currently unfolding in the United States.
For five years, Donald Trump has been promising working-class Americans that he would restore American greatness. For five years he has marshalled them into a powerful political force. For five years he has warned them that the Democrats – in collusion with the Deep State and the news media – would attempt to steal the 2020 election. For five years, at rally after rally, these energised, politically-aroused Trump supporters never tired of telling their champion to bring it on – they were ready. In October, barely five weeks ago, Trump told them to “stand back and stand by”. Now, outraged at what they have been told is a Democratic Party power-grab, Trump’s working-class supporters are only waiting for the word.
But, what if the word never comes? What if, like the CTU in 1991, Donald Trump decides that discretion is the better part of valour? What if the 71 million Americans who came out and voted for their hero are forced to watch him slink away to Mar-a-Lago with Mike Pence’s last-minute pardon in his pocket (along with tens of millions of dollars of “Stop the Steal” contributions from working-class Americans’) leaving them to watch Joe Biden take the Oath of Office on the Capitol steps? What then?
If the experience of the New Zealand working class is any guide, a great many of Trump’s working-class supporters will simply say “Fuck it” and walk away. What had seemed to them the last, best, hope for a dramatic change in their fortunes, will have proved to be a mirage. Trump was crazy, they all knew that. And shameless, they knew that, too. But that was the whole point: only someone utterly shameless and crazy stood the slightest chance of changing – really changing – America. It was going to take guts. It was going to take blood. But that was okay, too, because they had plenty of both – and they were Trump’s if he wanted them.
And that’s the only question that matters now, isn’t it?
Does he want them?