Jobs Summit - a socialist analysis

The best leftwing coverage of the Jobs Summit has been that put out by the World Socialist Website - see: New Zealand “Jobs Summit” places burden of recession on working people. This article provides a very nice summary not only of the actual Job Summit but also of the nature of the recession in New Zealand. A number of examples and statistics are provided that show the severity of the continuing global economic meltdown, and its impact on New Zealand. The article writer, John Braddock, argues that 'Bill English is preparing a horror budget' in response. And Braddock's particularly scathing about the role of the union movement in helping business and the Government implement their attacks on workers, and that this 'underscores the role they have played, over the past two and a half decades, as enforcers of the government-corporate agenda against the working class'. Furthermore, he warns that the union movement is heading down the same nationalist pathway that we've recently seen in other Anglo Saxon countries: 'This is a New Zealand version of the same reactionary nationalist and protectionist policy that is being pursued by trade unions in Britain, the US, Australia and other parts of the world. It is nothing but a means of tying workers behind their "own" banks, corporations and employers to prevent the development of any unified and independent struggle in defence of jobs, wages and conditions'. You might not always agree with the analysis put forward by the World Socialist Website, but its occasional commentary on politics in New Zealand are always well written, researched, strongly opinionated, and thus worth reading.