POAL: Mr Twyford speaks out

Mr Shearer may still be waxing his board, but Mr Twyford has come out against casualisation in the POAL dispute. This certainly reflects the thinking of Labour MPs and Labour supporters. Casualisation is another clear route into lower wages. Often, profits increase because labour costs are transferred from the enterprise to the employee, but the long-run effect is lower skill, less investment in training and development, quality and H&S issues and so on. Casualisation, at best, brings short-term gains for Capital, and long-term adverse effects for the economy and employees. But then, we have a short term management tradition in NZ, in which 6 months is a lifetime.

I'm pleased to see that the CTU is winding up the campaign on POAL. It has been active in the background for some time, but the importance of the dispute is clear to the CU leadership and more resources are being devoted to the campaign. Now that Labour has taken a position on casualisation, the acid now falls ever more strongly on Mr Brown and his council to take the same view. He may think that taking an anti-casualisation view carries political risks, but he should be clear that his activist support bases will collapse if he doesn't.