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Ngauranga Workers Confront Monopoly's Power

Salient: Why art Swifts and their parent company. Deltac International, withdrawing from the meat practising industry, and trying to close down the Ngauranga Woks in partitular?

Findlay: The short answer is that I do not know the precise reasons why Deltac Inter national is withdrawing from the meat packaging industry but what I do know is that they have made this decision and there's evidence all over the world that its been made and is being implemented, especially in the Argentine where their investments are worth $40 million

Swifts have claimed that they are closing the works because they would have to spend too much money on capital improvements. Do you accept their estimates of these costs?

The Chairman of Swifts New Zealand Ltd., Sir Clifford Plimmer, slated that between $5 to $7 million would be required to bring the works up to the new E.E.C. hygiene regulations, and also for pollution control. We've seen the breakdown of these figures, and we're satisfied that they're inflated. What the company has done is to lump every conceivable item that has to be rebuilt or renewed over the next five to ten years, dishonestly claimed that is all has to be done immediately, and then they added a further 25% onto that to build it into a figure that looks something frightening to the average shareholder and the New Zealand public.

What exactlv are the freezing workers' proposals for the future of Ngauranga?

Broadly speaking we want it run as a worker-farmer co-operative. There have been discussion; about this idea for half a century, but in particular there was a great deal of detailed investigation into this question two years ago when a proposed new freezing works was to be built in the King Country. The work was done primarily between the Auckland Freezing Workers Union, the King Country Federated Farmers and Farmers Action Committees in the King Country. The present Ministers of Agriculture, Colin Moyle, was involved in these discussions and personally commited to the idea.

The scheme was very close to gelling off the ground, but finally crashed because the then Minister of Finance, R.D. Muldoon, decided not to put up the $2 million necessary, for broad political reasons. There have also been discussions about such a co-operative as regards the proposed freezing works at Omakau in Central Otago, and also as part of the West Coast regional development.

The farmers' main interest is in seeing that their produce is killed at the correct lime. A lamb is a highly perishable product, and its only in peak condition for killing for two or three weeks. Ever since there's been a freezing industry there's been a conflict of interest between farmers and processors. Farmers have screamed that they can't gel their lambs killed at the right time, while the processors have replied that they can't afford to put up that much killing capacity when their works are only running for five months a year.

The day today operations at the works could be run by the workers themselves and everybody from the manger down would be a member of the union. The farmers would be consulted regularly on a three monthly or six monthly basis if important decisions on investments or capital expenditure had to be made.

The marketing side would be handled by the Men Hoard. Last year the board went into trading for the first time and did very well indeed.

How much support is there for your proposals among workers at Ngauranga, workers at other freezing works, and the trade union movement as a whole?

A tremendous amount of support. Obviously, as you might expect, the rank and file workers at Ngauranga are most enthusiastic because if the scheme doesn't get off the ground they stand to lose a great deal. Freezing works are a way of life for men who have been there about forty years. The workers stand to lose materially, and their incomes will drop up to 50% in some cases because their skills will be useless elsewhere.

One thing I've found very surprising is that our proposals have received support among managerial and technical staff at the works, people who have been hostile to unions for years.

There is support among meat workers throughout the country, certainly among the higher echelons of the union and the Federation of Labour. At this level people can see the social implications of our proposals, as a model, not only Tor the freezing industry but for industry as a whole.

What have been the reactions of Swifts and other overseas companies in the freezing industry to your proposals?

The little evidence we have available is that they're very concerned and frightened because of the long term political implications, especially Borthwicks who have put quite a lot of work into trying to soften up our guys.

If the co-operative gets off the ground do you think it will encourage other freezing workers to turn their work into co-operatives?

Yes I think there's a very real chance of this happening and I would welcome it. If you accept the proposition that the Labour Government is likely to be in power for a few years, and that it is broadly sympathetic to this idea, then a move towards co-operatives would strengthen their hand immensely in dealing with powerful overseas companies and governments.

How many Polynesian workers are there at Ngauranga?

There would be roughly one third Cook Island Maoris, one third New Zealand Maoris, and the other third Pacific Islanders from Western Samoa, Nuie, the Tokelaus, Fiji and Tonga, and also a few first generation East European immigrants. About 50% of the workers at Ngauranga arc immigrants.

Immigrants from the Pacific Islands are often used as a source of cheap labour which can easily be exploited. Do you think that working for a co-operative will raise the level of consciousness of the workers, and have a political effect on other immigrants?

There's not the slightest doubt about the exploitation question. About the turn of the century Upton Sinclair wrote a famous novel, The fungle, about the exploitation of East European immigrants in a Chicago freezing works. Exploitation of immigrants is a worldwide problem. In the E.E.C. countries immigrant workers from Spain, Italy, Greece and other East European countries are being ruthlessly exploited.

As far as the Pacific is concerned the exploitation of labour used to be called black birding. Today it carries on just the same under other euphemisms. For example there arc the Fijian scrub cutlers who are brought out to work in New Zealand.

I think the development of cooperatives run by workers would have political effects in lowering exploitation of this class of labour, and have wider implications. There's a broad analogy with the women's liberation movement which will have an effect on the female labour force which is at present a reserve force of docile, low-paid labour.

Could you comment on the co-operative which runs the Longburn freezing works, to contrast your proposals with past attempts at co-operative developments?

The freezing works at Longburn, and at Ocean Beach in Southland, are owned by the Co-operative Wholesale Society. The largest shareholder in C.W.S. is the Trades Union Congress of Great Britain.

The Co-operative Wholesale Society goes right back to the early days of the co-operative movement in the United Kingdom, which developed at the same lime as the trade union movement in the nineteenth century. The Society's original idea was to buy shops to provide workers with cheap food, much the same as the Food Co-operatives around Wellington and Auckland, and to cut out the middlemen. The idea worked and grew bigger and the Society moved from the retail side to buying the raw materials. They bought freezing works in New Zealand to provide cheap meat, cocoa farms in West Africa, and God knows what they didn't get into.

After the second World War the Society's page 7 policies changed gradually and the people running it forgot about the original purpose, and simply behaved the same as any other large profitmaking organisation. For example the Co-operative Wholesale Society at Long-bum is much more interested in selling top quality beef stakes to the American supermarkets than in providing cheap meat for their own shops in Britain, because there's more profit in it.

As employers the Co-operative Wholesale Society at Longburn and Ocean Beach is one of the worst employers of freezing workers in the country. In Britain, where they employ large numbers of shop assistants and storemen in their retail shops, they also have the reputation of being very bad employers. I've talked to people from Britain and I believe this reputation is soundly based. What has happened in the United Kingdom is that the unions in the Society's shops are just company unions with no real independence.

You said in your speech that the sort of co-operative you are proposing is not the "royal road to socialism ". But what lessons are there in what you're doing for the socialists in New Zealand?

I think the position of farmers in New Zealand society is crucial for all socialists, and I think farmers have been neglected for too long. Socialist thinkers like Lenin Mao Tse-Tung and Ho Chi Minh were all very concerned with people working on the land, whether they called them peasants or farmers. But socialist thinkers in New Zealand have written the farmer off because of his historical behaviour as a strong supporter of conservatism. New Zealand is still an agricultural country, and until an alliance is built between farmers and workers there will never be Socialism in New Zealand, to my way of thinking. I believe that the problems of working farmers are no different in Marxist terms from the problems of industrial workers or white collar workers. A lot of work has gone in the last four or five years to build such an alliance.

The freezing industry is the pivot, it still controls the New Zealand economy, particularly in the field of foreign exchange. Despite the growth of the manufacturing industry and the theories of Dr Sutch, the freezing industry is likely to remain the pivot of our economy for at least our lifetime.

You see an alliance with farmers as being u precondition for any fundamental social transformation in New Zealand, As someone who has taken initiatives in building an alliance with farmers, are you proposing an alliance with farmers in general, or do you see schisms in farming ranks? What about farm labourers for example?

As far as the proposal for a co-operative is concerned, and in the short term, we're dealing with farmers as a whole. So far there has been support of varying extents from all farmers and from farming organisations.

The question of farm labourers is really a separate one because their conditions of labour are bloody near feudal. For example I went to a farm in the King Country about two years ago. The reason I was taken there was to try and convince me that the farmer was a worthwhile bloke and an efficient farmer who was in grave danger of being driven off the land.

We went into the farm house and met the farmer, who was a man of about 30, his wife and four or five children. In the kitchen there was a young Maori girl of about 16 or 18. I was introduced to the whole family, the dog and the cat, but not to the girl. I took her to one side and asked where she fitted into the outfit, because she was treated as though she was just part of the farm equipment. She said they gave her a dollar once in a while to go to the pictures. She was an unmarried mother and virtually a slave!

Admittedly that was an extreme case, but farm labourers' conditions arc very bad. I know farm labourers who have been sacked because they receive the Labour Party newspaper, and the farmer was not going to have that sort of communist stuff coming onto his farm. On the broad political question I don't think we've got any worries about where farm labourers' sympathies lie.

What is happening in the farm industry, and to I much greater extent that people realise, is that the National Party image of the family farm is a thing of the past. In the Wairarapa for example industrial companies arc buying up large tracts of land and amalgamating them, simply to diversify their investments and to take advantage of the special taxation exemptions farmers have got. The family farm is doomed in theory, as well as in practice.

At the moment there is a class of very wealthy farmers who have a disproportionate amount of influence in farming organisations, simply because they have the education and the leisure to play around with farming politics. These people will never be allies in any sort of social change, but they can be and they are becoming isolated. The middle area of farmers, the working farmers, are the people I'm interested in.

This is an important point because there are people who in the past have been bulwarks of the status quo, being forced by the economic movement of society into the opposite position. That's right. There's another factor I haven't mentioned, and that's the long term effects of the terms of trade. Meat and wool prices may be booming now, but since the Second World War the industrial nations have been squeezing all primary producers, and this movement in the terms of trade is having its effects on New-Zealand farming. In other words the family farm is not economic anymore, even though the wealthy class of farmers refuse to face the facts.

The importance of building an alliance with farmers is one thing that this co-operative proposal has highlighted. But I want to emphasise that the value in the proposal for socialists is that running their own job in a co-operative will build up the confidence among workers that they are capable of controlling their own affairs. To my mind this is an absolute prerequisite for socialism. One of the things to be learned from Soviet experience is that if workers don't control their own affairs there are grave dangers of degeneration into bureaucracy.

My analysis of the state of the political climate in New Zealand for the last twenty years has been that the political establishment is morally bankrupt. Whenever I'm among people I consider part of the establishment, politicians or wealthy businessmen, in a social situation, I always ask them one question: What do you think the future of capitalism is? I've never had one person tell me they think there's any future in capitalism, they only hope it will last their lifetime.

It is very heartening to see that the ruling class doesn't know how to rule any more, and hasn't got any confidence in its own system. This is why the situation is ripe for change. What is lacking is the will on the part of the rest of us to take over the reins of power.

So the important thing is not electing governments of the right colour but getting people to take control of their own affairs like cooperative ownership of freezing works and the recent rent strike in the Hutt Valley.

That's right.