By Omar Hamed
“SHE
Works her hands
On the factory floor.
Sweat pours down her body.
Airtight suffocation.
Clock in clock out.
Spasmodic moments
of freedom.
Wage packet goal of survival.”
Rapped the middle aged Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua to an audience of about six hundred, mostly young people, at the Auckland Town Hall. The occasion was a public rally against youth rates and low wages, and in support of the Unite! Unions workers mostly young and mostly Polynesian who will be taking strike action in the coming months to end youth rates and gain a $12 minimum wage and secure hours in their contracts.
The concert was part of the supersizemypay.com campaign, which aims to bring together a broad coalition of social justice groups and the labour movement to put public and political pressure on the government and employers to live up to three demands-a $12 minimum wage, an end to youth rates and secure hours.
It must have been one of the most diverse line-ups ever to grace the town halls stage in a long time. Speakers like the Green Party’s Sue Bradford and the Maori Party’s Pita Sharples alternated with musical acts like Olmecha Supreme, NZ Idol Rosita Vai and Auckland Ska Band Geneva.
The concert proved that the campaign for workers rights in the fast food industry had come along way from International Workers Day, when Radical Youth stormed Starbucks and then occupied McDonalds, shutting down Queen Street and resulting in twenty arrests, including of Tearaway Journalist Cameron Walker, for taking photos of police making brutal arrests. The occupation and subsequent arrests proved the inspiration for a public rally against youth rates in the weeks before the election, which brought together the Green Party, Unite! Union and Child Poverty Action Group, three of the main participants in the supersizemypay.com campaign against youth rates. The supersizemypay.com campaign has gone from strength to strength, with many strikes, pickets and a media conference raising the issue in the national arena.
It was inspiring to see so many young people involved in taking back their rights at work. Firstly, there were the Unite! members, like Nick, the worlds first Starbucks worker to go on strike, who were taking back their rights to a living wage and freedom from age discrimination in youth rates. Secondly, there were the McDonalds workers like Mele and Meleane Manumoa who were taking back their rights to fight for a fair wage even after they were threatened with legal action from one of the world’s biggest corporations.
The public rally showed that youth do have rights and if they join together and fight for them they can win. One Starbucks worker told the crowd that they were fighting a culture of apathy, but said she believed that together we could overcome that apathy. And she’s right, because if we want to make poverty history we first need to do it in our own backyard. Possibly the most pressing reminder from the concert was Sharples reminding the crowd of Nelson Mandela’s words, “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”
Check out Unite and their campaign website for Supersizemypay.com
Tags: corporations, Media, music, Politics, poverty, unions, youth activism