A reply to the RMTU on the anti-working class record of the New Zealand rail unions
By
Socialist Equality Group (New Zealand)
29 September 2017
The WSWS article “New Zealand rail union seeks to renew pay deal with private operator,” published on August 7, has provoked an outraged response from Wayne Butson, general secretary of the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU).
In a letter posted to the Socialist Equality Group (New Zealand) Facebook page Butson complained: “Your article is being distributed and people will be reading it and getting quite the wrong impression of one of New Zealand’s most effective unions.”
Butson desperately attempted to obscure the fact that the union has collaborated with Labour and National Party governments, councils and private companies, to cut staff, keep wages down and boost corporate profits. At the same time, he expressed deep hostility to strikes and the class struggle, defended the low wages paid to rail workers, and made clear the RMTU’s support for the opposition Labour Party in the September 23 election.
Butson’s statements provide an opportunity to clarify the anti-working class record of the RMTU and its predecessors. The union cannot, in any meaningful sense of the term, be described as a workers’ organisation. Like other trade unions in New Zealand and internationally, it is controlled by a privileged bureaucracy, which has for decades worked hand-in-hand with big business and the government to attack the social position of the working class.
The WSWS article explained important facts—not, as Butson asserts, “untruths, rumour and supposition”—about the RMTU’s role in recent attacks on workers:
- When the Wellington Regional Council privatised its commuter rail services in 2016, the union echoed…