EPMU helping Labour
From Labour’s Wellington Central candidate’s (Grant Robertson) latest newsletter:
Hoarding sites
Do you have a house, fence or garage that is visible and gets plenty of people or traffic passing by? Please consider putting up one of my signs. There are various sizes available. – contact Ross: ross.xxxxxxx@epmu.org.nz.
Ross is employed in the Wellington Office of the EPMU. It is of course wrong for EPMU staff to take unpaid leave to be a candidate for ACT but fine to help run a Labour campaign from work.
The EPMU has 103 staff according to its website. Far too much attention is paid to just how much money they spend. Their real value in in allowing staff pretty much as much time as they want to help Labour’s campaign and candidates out during the campaign.
Let’s say the average staffer earns $48,000. If they spent around 160 hours each (that is around 12 hours a week over three months) helping Labour campaign, then the total value of that contribution is over $400,000. That is on top of the $120,000 they are planning to formally donate and/or spend.
Now that’s all legal. But a useful reminder of the role big union money and resources can play in an election.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Mouse over the link if you want to see who at EPMU it was
September 8th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
DOH!
Cept I thought his first name was “Vlad”.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
It’s not far fetched to suggest that the EPMU might be committing $620,000 to the Labour Party campaign in the next few weeks. After all the union is indeed affiliated to the party, and in the past they’ve put similar funds into supporting Labour (eg in 1999 they spent something like $300,000 on a parallel election campaign in favour of Labour, as well as giving Labour another $80,000 donation).
However, I imagine that many EPMU members would think this is a huge a waste of money to be frittered away on a party and government that obviously doesn’t care much about workers. Within the left and the union movement in New Zealand, the EPMU is generally seen as a right-wing union. Certainly the EPMU has been deeply hostile to any forces to the left of Labour unless they are accommodating of Labour’s rule and dominance. So in this sense, the EPMU are the aberration – most unions have broken their financial links with Labour, and apart from the EPMU and some other union bureaucrats, there’s not really a lot of “big union money” around.
And such resources put into Labour’s campaign doesn’t really show that Labour and the unions have an organically close relationship – but just that the leadership of some unions and the Labour leadership are incredibly close. It’s an elite relationship of convenience, whereby the union leaders hand over their members resources, and the the union leaders get a nice career path into Parliament etc. Eventually Andrew Little will be following other professional union careerists into Parliament.
For more on the nature of the “EPMU and Labour”, see my blog post analysis here:
http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2008/02/political-fin-1.html
Bryce
http://www.liberation.org.nz
September 8th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Could you imagine the outcry if the Business Round table were to get involved like this with National???
September 8th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Headlines
BIG UNIONS SUPPORT LABOUR
UNION MEMBERS FUNDS MISAPPROPRIATED TO LABOUR
ROGUE EMPLOYER EMPU SUPPORTS LABOUR
September 8th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Jeez DPF, that’s a lot of money.
Where does a grass roots organization like that get all that cash from? And how can they afford to spend it on Labour instead of looking after their constituents?
September 8th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Another question that never got asked about Labour, is how many churches with Lefty pastors get their congregations involved in voluntary effort for Labour as a matter of custom, year after year, taken for granted, without so much as one single question being raised?
September 8th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
If Owen Glenn hasn’t/Doesn;t come up with a cool $500k this time then the EPMU/other unions may be “Encouraged” to bridge the difference which is a really good thing as it will leave them cash strapped and pissed off if Labour lose. What chance that other pro national EPMU type organisations will spring up to do similar and another example of the law of unintended consequences. In these circumstances a National government may feel a law change requiring all union members to opt in to political levies is appropriate! A double bummer for Labour.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Big surprise, unions heart Labour, union employees spend their work time and resources helping Labour. Unions are so engrained into NZ culture and history that there would never be any real outcry over it – but certainly, as Michaels pointed out earlier, their would be some sort of revolt if the Business Roundtable were overtly helping National/ACT in the same way.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
He just says “hoardings”. They MIGHT be for National or Act!
[/sarcasm]
September 8th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Michaels – IMO National should treat the BRT a bit like the Brethren. BRT properly stuffed up the Nats in the late 1990’s with its fire service reform ideas.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Shock horror
Engineers may support the party that works in the best interests of the working person.
Michaels – if only National would open up their secret trusts we would see if the Business Roundtable does support National. I bet they do but at this rate we will never know.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Micky
You make it sound as if it would be a bad thing to have the business round table funding the Nat’s
September 8th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
big bruv
It possibly would be but the problem is that we do now know.
Labour has disclosed its donors for some time, the Greens are good, NZ First is being dragged kicking and screaming into the light of public exposure but National has not said a thing.
Let them disclose that they are funded by wealthy business backers who are interested in minimising wages and doing away with environmental protection. At least then the citizens of our country can exercise an informed decision when they vote.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Oops last post should say that we do not know (if the business roundtable fund National) …
September 9th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Mickysavage – any corrolation between the money unions give Labour and the money Labour gives Unions?
Why is it that Labour are not so forthright about the huge amounts Unions give them and yet are so vocal about National and ACTs supposed donors? It all seems so fishy.