Wrong: Eddie at "The Standard"

"Eddie" of the The Standard tells us that Labour should keep out of the POAL dispute. His or her thesis is that:

There is no ‘national interest’ in POA getting what it demands. This dispute is about a business trying to cuts its wage bill so that it can undercut a competitor.

And that’s why, for now, Labour and the Greens are smart to stay out of this, and why the union wants them to stay out. The parties wouldn’t do any favours to the workers if they turned what is essentially a story of a greedy company and workers just wanting to keep what they’ve got into a national political issue.

That would end up hurting the workers’ interests and probably the parties too – it would justify National going nuclear on work rights; tying the wharfies to Labour would justify National attacking them (hence Farrar and Slater’s desperate attempts to link them). And, frankly, do you back Labour’s PR team to do more good than harm to the wharfies’ cause?

My response is: when would it be OK for Labour to say anything? Presumably when, according to "Eddie", national interest arises? This is nonsense. The POAL dispute is already fundamentally important at a national level. It is in some ways similar to the 1980s mining dispute in the UK, in which a powerful union was targeted for destruction as a warning to all other organised labour. If publicly-owned POAL is allowed to throw away its labour force and contract in a new one, in the context of a deeply anti-labour National government, the signal to other employers will be very clear indeed.

Eddie's advice reminds me of Martin Niemoller's moving statement:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

Waiting for the "right" time to speak out is a recipe for appeasement and capitulation.