Special

"The workers can't afford it!" protested Muldoon, and Talboys, looking tough as he took over the top job while his boss left the country, echoed the cry.

"That's precisely the point", replied the workers. "But if you think that by holding down wages you are going to stop us taking strike action to try to get a fair deal, you've got another think coming!" And on Thursday, 20 September, hundreds of thousands of workers up and down the country staged New Zealand's first general strike since 1913.

With a mere 54 hours notice, no one could have expected a 100% response. On top of that, some union leaders had not done as much as they perhaps could have in the previous weeks to familiarise their members with the conditions of the Remuneration Act and likely options for action. Nevertheless, industry and transport ground to a halt, a high percentage of Government employees responded to the recommendation to go out, and many service sectors closed their doors.

From a numbers point of view, the strike was a success. Its effectiveness can already be seen in the fact that since the Government's intervention in the Driver's settlement, two more major awards have been settled at a level higher than the unofficial 10% cut off point and the Government has not intruded.

But if the trade union movement is to be properly effective in stopping the erosion of the living standards of its members and keeping the Government out of wage fixing procedures, there must be a lot more united and determined action still to come. For the trade union movement, from the rank and file all the way up, and for all those others in New Zealand who oppose the Government's attempts to use working people as the whipping boy in its economic policies, this round of the struggle has just begun.

This Salient Special looks at events leading up to the strike, comments on some of the leading protagonists in it, analyses the conflicting reports on the strike's effects, and examines the options left up to the various parties as they decide on their on-going strategy. There is also a special article on some of the previous major industrial disputes in New Zealand's history.