Workers Solidarity Movement

While the dust settles and Christchurch recovers from the 7.1 earthquake, people have begun to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives. But for many working class people this is not so easy. Those most affected by ‘natural disasters’ — whether by the tsunami in the Pacific, earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and now Christchurch, NZ — are those already on the margins of despair.

Many trade union activists have known for years that “social partnership” comes at a huge price for union independence and the ability of trade unions to defend the interest of their members. The myth that government and employers on one side and workers on the other side have some form of common interest has been peddled for over twenty years.  This has resulted in a trade union movement whose leadership seems incapable of independent thought and whose membership has been browbeaten into accepting pay cuts, ‘pension levies’ and various attacks on our working conditions and living standards over the past couple of years.

Unite Union's Christchurch office has been flooded with phone calls and text messages from worried workers in post-earthquake Christchurch.

A new report has revealed that workers in the North are twice as likely to die as their counterparts in the UK because of a high accident rate. However, Northern Ireland does have a higher proportion of tradespeople. Work-related ill health and accidents costs around £250 million a year with seven people losing their lives in work-related accidents in 2009, which is a 60% reduction on the previous year's figure.